Summer solstice, At the Royal Maritime Museum, Greenwich & NW/SE
by Danny Birchall
[ poetry - december 07 ]
Summer solstice
The year before you left, we set alarms for four
And called a cab, hurtled though deserted streets
To where the nightlit London spread before us
Waiting for a chink of orange flame.
Some were there with drums, and tea in flasks,
And lit illicit fires, sang folk songs;
A few remaining cruisers sprawled below
Dry icy mist burning from the heathy ponds.
Hand through hand, we watched a year begin
Together; and each alone we'd see it through
With wine, a cigarette fingered clumsily,
At last I felt the warmth of sun, and you.
I've brought in summers since with tents and acid,
Missed it all or lurched with tired limbs
Through sallow cornfields hunting pagan ruins
Woken damp and chalky-green to rain.
No-one dances for the equinoctial balance
Day and night in equal measure, we feel the call
To celebrate extremes, darkness compacted,
Dawn's light distended taut, as if about to snap.
At the Royal Maritime Museum, Greenwich
Marble cannonballs, wooden figureheads, dolphins
Rotating angled dials that read the sky.
An intimation, nothing more, that here's
Where the rhumb lines end. It's over. Let's go.
It's over. Pupilless explorers' busts
Face the horizon, sightless and longing,
Hands on armillaries, looters of continents,
Telescopes, orreries, astrolabes. Let's go.
Let's go, triple-masters, sea-heroes,
Parabolic angles, twine, oak and tar.
Altazimuth, northstar and lodestone
The botanist's pencil-sketch. It's over.
The beginning and the end, degree zero, it's over.
An imaginary circle, the whole world, let's go.
NW/SE
The kid from Kidbrooke met her match in Camden
His heath was pondy, hers was black (and white)
His trains burrowed through to Highgate, Hendon;
Hers sailed Erith, Lee and Eltham, London's bight.
The Old Kent Road stops short of Kentish Town,
And the new-crossed lovers found no easy bliss:
Her eyes come-hither green, awakened
The princely finch of Frognal with a kiss.
But a penny has to choose, to make its tumble falling
She curls around him, whispers down the light
'You're a long way now from Temple Fortune, cookie
In the midst of life we are in Deptford. Goodnight!'
