Provenance

Down at that place hung a town after the beginning,
every green a water-sheen on the great plain sliced

by the Thames, Thame, Teme, Time, Ten, even,
of ditchly trickles to a wide gush, a-flush near up-West

and the Great Wen, a now astride the glide,
its straddle wide in a slip to a cold sea tipping:

London, eh, that fort or fart of Lun, or Lud, or Lugh,

or Lan, or Lug, or, at a raven’s rasp, Bran, even Vran, 

where stomping Romans pulled in Paul, hung up his

‘Ding-dong, bong-a-dong’ gongers and gaugers away

from titchy Mary down at the ‘eyes’ and ‘seas’ with her

‘Poll, toll, moll, fol-de-loll’ Monday night ringers and dingers,

she’n me both from Batter’s-eye, Patter’s, Batric’s, Patric’s,

Fattrick’s, a slobber of mud and splatter the wrong side of the

Reach at Chel’s-eye, aye, aye, that isle again where Chil,
or Kil, or Childe, or Kel, or Chal, even, or Rich Chuck Cashshit
hung out his silken drawers up-beach of the old stench,
away from the splodging and graft of the dank poor yonder

and me dropped in the Mews when V2s noodled and doodled
loads overhead that flopped atop the rows where even crows
dared not hang out, corpses charred under beam and brick
and bed bugs dead as rats in cholera time, as safe from
pecking and packing as my old Gran and her chant-a-charm,
'In with a wasting war, out with a score, long sore.'