BEHOLDING THE LONDON GLOOM FROM THE OVERGROUND....(SUNDOWNER)

 

'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.