The
Thames was always too wide,
estuary
gaping greys, muddy as midge marshes,
a
city tart corseted at Chelsea and not so fresh
below
Twickenham tickles under the bridge.
‘50s
fish bloated there in sweating summers
as
children were daily calipered by polio.
Such
are capitals – swank in the press,
stench
beneath pressings.
Don’t
give us waterfalls, rills, burns, streamlets
dithering
from sources, groping ways to swill
round
tussocks at the low hills’ feet,
slapping
past stones to forward direction
through
urban dirt and the bleak of open sea,
all
beginnings lost in salt. Dilute the downthrust,
fritter
away the fresh; the fish don’t care
and
the end is always hopeless.
The
canal, now! There’s sparkle on the no-flow
except
at sluicing time when boats chug to drop,
no
horses here to heave and snort, the perfect
circle
where a moorhen dibbles and dips,
where
the swans’ wake laps into reeds.
Light
flicks and nips at the crest of wavelets
as
down the while of long water a lone
wren
rattles and churrs.
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