Stand here by the Sunday School,
Beside the Scholars’ House,
Where rubber plant and yellow hammer
And pigeon speak in tongues.
The river brings cold clay,
Washed away, washed away,
And careless ploughs rubbing tynes
Like silent crickets in tasteless hay
Mock the ornamental scythe
Crucified in converted barns –
Take a moment from your rush
And lean to the moorstone parapet,
Shade the mullet, the turning stone,
The lost wheel and ladder-rung.
The eastern transits bring rice and spice
To supply our cosmopolitan plate,
And stevedore-echoes pointed-in
Between courses of quays damply hung
In residues of ebb and morning mist
Greet the verger’s jangling keys –
You might lean an elbow, or release
The shackles of intellect to roam
In a universe of idleness unseen
By tyrant or timeclock, unchecked;
And you might, if you stand deathly still,
Applaud the kiss of land and sea,
The risen spring and curious tide
Lip to lip under bridging feet,
Where lunar stream and village pump
Inadvertently yet purposefully collide,
Where the heart, slipped from grip
Of aunty and uncle street, of cousin
Back from the land of Jack, of mother
Leaded in lichen slab and framed
memory’s mantle to fox, and father,
Dear old man, but half the man
He otherwise was when she was there
To fight his cause – and you may,
On the curlew signal, on still, still air,
Catch the scent of open sea,
The unspent credit of curiosity
And production’s promise of trade,
A place to sell what you may have made –
And in your stolen reflection, your minute
Of time-sold-cheap, of progress steep
Against the climb to chapel and moor,
To raise your feet from spoiled floor,
There you’ll find, in plain sight, clear
As day on the cusp of night, or night
On the bugle’s rise to make the day,
There’s the reason for your town:
Power! Opportunity! Fresh and salt!
Each song sung to get ahead, and yet
Each melody reliant upon the choir
To search the vault for harmony.
The song of bridges competes to welcome
The passages of water beneath themselves,
Below your feet a discourse of arches,
Of eddies and swirls and democracies
Of heron and cormorant, of rook and gull;
And there is no book so full, no stook
Or rick in harvest field, no hedge or gate,
No lane or thorn-over-shadow to bend
Before the easterly gale, can compare
In time or sense with a sudden old-bridge-
Sniff of seaward air, a snatch of whale
And Lander’s skiff by Niger’s mouth
And all of mystery and venture to regale –
Yes! Take a pause, take five, you are,
After all, the only you that will be
In this moment, these five, you alone
And you alive, and you in yourself
Sweetly, without mockery or jibe, free!
Then, on your way to papers and milk,
Or rocking home from Barley Sheaf
Or evensong upon your creaking knee,
Pause and take the air, let your palms
Grip the falling glass’s wheel and ride
The laughter of a gathered sea. It’s here,
On the bridge of your dreaming ship,
With sycamore and granite and chips for tea,
Here you’ll find horizons, and here
Be touched and tempted by the mistress,
The siren and lunar sprite, she
Who goes between the spaces
Night after chiming midnight, her flight
As dark by day, as bright as stars,
As mysterious a pot as turns the clay,
As silent as an oak’s nailed scars,
As fierce as gannets over mackerel prey.