LOCKS AND MOORINGS
-
Peter
Robinson (U.K.)
‘There will not be books in the running
brooks until the dawn of hydro-semantics.’
J. L. Austin
‘A fact that I would beg you to discuss.’
Kurt Schwitters
1
So to speak out of the flowing river
where a black trout breaks forever
as once it was imagined,
now a swan cranes down for crusts,
glides off on the water lapping
at these worried banks.
The river, flooding in its bad years,
has been canalised, constrained,
answering to sluices, weirs.
In so to speak the water’s own words
you can listen to it bringing
turmoil into town,
hear how its power will lift our pasts,
bear them further with a rhythm,
the graffiti Dare to dream
on a footbridge wall, for instance,
and lets it go whatever distance
with no time to lose.
2
Its brick curve marbled with reflections,
under Brunel’s bridge my theme’s
entrainments all converge
as at this confluence the streams
reiterate, repeat their heartbeat
by the water’s edge –
3
and speaking of water gone under a bridge,
how the current brings its burdens
seeking for a level
inches from these pounded towpaths.
Time silts down or hurries forward
with the water’s travel
bereavement’s, heartbreak’s aftermaths …
Yes, the river takes our lifetimes
and carries them away
beyond the boatyards, locks and moorings,
a one-stop shop behind its trees,
to end perhaps at ruins,
and comes to pause where water music’s
rippling outward, orchestrated
on the seeding flood.
****