Monday 28 August 2017

August Bank Holiday, Bankside. (Revised).


Exposed by the tide
The old quay rots
On the grey beach.

Commerce has moved east from the city,
Colonising the broad wet lands
Once rich with wild life
But denuded of people.
The cold reed beds
And swampy islets
Where the river slowly seeps into the sea.

And now
Where the porpoise once leapt the low wave
Tankers crowd into the bleak Thames estuary
Waiting to be eased into harbour
By the squat tugs
And phone calls in a mix and match of languages.

Today I stroll among the carefree tourists
Who bring their innocent carnivals to Bankside.
They snap blurred selfies where wherries once tied up,
And cranes were lowered to honour Churchill`s passing.
Beneath our feet, two thousand years of history
Underpins the pavement, but slowly crumbles,
Breaks down into slurry,
The liquid silt that shifts beneath the concrete
With the ebb and flow of the river.

"No thing is solid,
No thing is as we see it";
Mutters the ferryman
As the prow cuts into the neap tide,
The weight and tug of the currents
That buckle the placid surface.
"We honour pipe dreams
But truth gets hooked in the undertow".

The clock at St. Pauls
Chimes each passing quarter.
Exposed by the tide
The old quay rots
On the grey beach.


Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
August 27th. - 28th. - 30th. - 31st. 2017. 

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