The first part of
London Bride
by John Gibbens
babylondon
We wintered on the Sea of Lunder
where points of reeds stuck through ice.
Beside the blue cheek of a drummer boy
could be seen the place that had been an eye.
Worldbeat percs in
a Coffee Republic
and the Inca’s gold conducts our microvolts.
Where fire rolled down Gracechurch Street
the glass fronts cool.
Most were not so near the surface:
ridges of a bootsole unbudged by kicking;
stiff leaf of weed, it seemed,
was the elbow-crease in an olive sleeve.
Guitars go smoothly
on a juice squeezed from the south,
white foam sweeps the sand slick
with an immaculate backbeat. Meanwhile elsewhere
oils are holding the heads of drowned waves under.
I took up a tress in my hand
that struck each finger to a thread
and spread in a wire cage
through you and yours, distributaries of breakage.Who will ascend the hair
of a maid in the Hawksmoor tower?
Nine, eleven, the dead hours ring
that the old lady lays her eggs by.
Note the high ferroglyph
twinkle
above the end of the Causeway,
no-one dancing in its chambers.
A moon nearly
two-thirds grown
falls through a half-fog,
dissolving
in isn’t and doesn’t.
The skeleton of a cage
ascending in a half-fogged sky.
