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London through the lens of its river, from Southwark to the Isle of Dogs

Sand of the Thames

Published September 2005
A5, 24pp, stapled, card cover
ISBN 978-1-905465-00-2
£4.00

Contents:

– Borough Digs
– Fox at Canary Wharf
– Red Cross Way
– Riverbus
– Sand of the Thames
– Walking from Wapping
– ludslumber

from Borough Digs

The graveyard’s under the railway
and streams beneath the street;
dust on our shoes
was Roman squaddies’ hidebound feet.

Quaker and robber and whore they
rub their bones in one bed
whilst at the door
of their stews we knock overhead.

Those whose slaver is on the pots
broken below these stones
are tongues that shaped
this sea-going tongue’s rolling tones.

Johnson, Jonson, Shakespeare, Burbage
wet the shards with the lips,
and he that carved
“the face that launched a thousand ships”.