London
Shoreditch clung to its ruin
Its roughhewn gate staring out at corpses
And the clutch of travellers heading from the fields,
The shepherds rambling onwards,
The herders with their slow-moving cattle, hoofs
Thudding on the stones. Amongst them the knights recently
Back from troubles in the north, armour
Burnished like Sunday roast yelling oaths
Like washer women until they were, like the beasts they rode,
Quite hoarse. Troubadours sang of the adventures
Of heroes long dead, within narratives of love and
Infidelity.
The city had traveled into itself,
Avoiding the river as it soaked up history
The grand surfaces filled with time
Gargoyle's faces crumbling into varnished vistas.
The Strand flung out Fleet Street with
Slingshot efficiency, and in its palm
Drury lane full blown spilled over
In laughter and song, knights and
Whores billowing over to greet the oncoming
Hordes expanding out towards Cheap Street.
Raddled students lawed in mysteries,
Filed out of Kings College, its cloisters ringing with
ancient High Church bluster
Red brick intensity gathered with Victorian splendour
Into class and rule.
This is where I learnt to define myself
As a class above, even though I went for learning,
My hunger blanching degree by degree.
Below Euston, London’s universities club together
Each rubbing shoulders in scholarly promiscuity,
And nervous tribalism, furiously snapping at each other’s heels
Going for jugulars, in inept competition recognized only
By each other. Imperial College like an island behind walls,
University College expressing it all, Birkbeck College where I psychologized
Myself on Freud and Jung.
A centre of brick and granite, St. Paul’s blistering presence copied
From St. Sofia, boils and carbuncles. And a little further on
St Barts Hospital as prescient in its way as London Wall,
Hung with time like cracks in a dying face.
Brittle, grievous granite
Where Princess Diana, head lowered entranced by the ground
Blond hair dribbling over her eyes to hide her tragic fate, her eyes like
Periscopes as she gently passed through the wards,
I offered my hand. She ignored it and paled by shame I sought
The comfort of white-washed walls.
Worth a quick word or two, London Bridge sturdily coveting
The harvests beyond, filled with traffic rushing along like
Red blood cells from one advantage point to another.
2.
When you’re tired of London
You are tired of life-or was that wife?
Oxford Street is so neat
Piccadilly is a crusty lily,
Hyde Park is a lark
Regents Park a stroll in the dark
The Tower hides two boys and kingly power,
The London eye moves with a sigh,
Greenwich gave birth to Elizabeth the First,
Hampstead Heath is the fun abode
For those who make love in the cold.
3.
St Thomas- Hospital expels babies
In contorted bursts of variety,
And Guys, also near the river referencing
Plenty, where Mary
Nursed her career in nostalgic innocence, where one
City expands into another,
One friend becomes a lover,
One road becomes a highway
One birth becomes a byway.
Between fields and seas, the rumbling
Torments and practices revive and Blakean
Joyfulness as steps are retaken and buses break
Through crowds, doubling up in the sunset.
The healing scent of thyme, garlands of rain,
The final shriek of expanded time.
Copyright ©
stanley wilkin
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