Conrad
lived on the Hope tapping his
typer in Victoria Avenue
where
now
commuter
flats block-paved communal yards
back onto
the Misery Line
that
goes on
and up to town and down and along to the old seaside
where
the pier
stretches over shallow miles
and holiday
boats would moor for London weekenders
that
was burnt
and then was burnt again
and
Pepys
lurked in the Worlds End
for navy
brews
and
later i’m
there for lock-ins by the open sewers
and
Pepys ran
off to dig up
his cheese and diary pages
and
the
peasants revolted on the
hinterland hills and in village pubs
where
old kings
once slept incognito out on the
Dick Turpin roads
and
smugglers
tunnels used to
lead to river wharfs
now
rotted on
the receded estuary curves
of wild
birds and wilder horses
where
graffiti’d
concrete pill boxes of toking boozing teens
get
rumbled in late night thunderheads
by mad
farmers with schizophrenic sons
and
forced to herd calves and cows
into the
lee of flood barriers
high and
laughing
and
shovelling
bovine
afterbirths
into quicksand for the tide
to
hide
