'He triumps now, the dead,
Beholding London's gloom'
(Lionel Johnson)
Beholding the London gloom
from the overground
bound to Gospel Oak.
There is a beam of fickle sunlight
that glares onto the buildings plateglass
a succession of drystone walls
with all the verdigris
of centuries and drizzles.
*
Komorebi
-so call the Japanese
the sunbeams filtered through the trees.
I want to be called Komorebi, Komorebi,
even the tender sound of the word
subdues the clicketyclack of the train
alighting on West Hampstead.
Call me Komorebi, Anne, when I be home
with your favourite Jaffa cake and carnations.
Conatus
-so called Spinoza the strength
driving each human being to carry on...
Carry on in this gloominess, Jo,
keep at watching those strands of light
along the bridges and fences.
But how could I avoid watching all that knackered
people in tracksuits and elegant suits?
How can I get rid of that voices chewing
like cows trite and rain-streaked words?
How can I turn all that mud into light?
I can listen outside the leaves
of the ash trees hissing in the wind.
I can see a posse of thugs that pull
a mooney to the train passing by.
I can see a pigeon pecking at a dog-end.
Carry on, mental Jo, sing along with the rain
pitter-patter on the cobblestones.
"Something will turn up"
-says Wilkins Micawber
with his eye-glass and walking stick
waving at me a silk hankie from a park bench.
I smirked him back.
Disabused of reality, down-trodden by hope...
Carry on, mental Jo, ya scum of the earth
enlisted to drink, ya closet poet, dotty low-lifer,
man up and stop nursing the same flummery moans...
*
A smell of deep-fry cast my reveries away.
I still don't know if I got off at Gospel Oak
or at a purple and desolate seaside in Devon.
