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LOCKS AND MOORINGS

 


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.

 

 

****