London Town

London Town

Is it mine?

I was not to the manor born

But have lived within its confine

For so very long

Beauty and filth go hand in hand

The turrets and spires

Cathedrals of religion

Seen less as a place of worship

More as a heritage site

The real worship

Seems to be at home on a weekend

Watching the team in red

Or white or blue

Almost any hue

Will do

When it sells

Shirts from an online outlet

Where the smell of sweat

And testosterone is less aromatic

Than marsh gas.

People live and die

As a jumble of mistakes

Badly drawn straws

Too short to make it through a good life

Fighting for the higher ground

As eventually

Erosion pulls everything

Into the sea.

So much of its life has been spent

Bartering for existence

Lowlands

Reclaimed from the marshland

Costermongers

And butchers who would be surgeons

Resurrectionists

And graverobbers

Wheelers and dealers

Bobbies and peelers

Go hand in hand

With expansion.

The policy of colonialism

The cosmopolitanism

Of the free market

Stallholders will sell to anybody

With a pound in their pocket

“This time next year Rodney

We will be millionaires.”

The cutpurse will steal

The last penny from a dead hand.

Deportation for the pauper

It is the way of the city

It might look pretty on a postcard

But it is a dirty little secret

Waiting to be told,

In a whisper,

For fear of the press gang.

The abolitionists

With a pious cause

The underclass

Waking up as a galley slave

In a strange land

Where the hold of the old smoke

Will never let you go

And the mystery of its history

Will haunt you

Even as you turn

To gaze down upon it

From Highgate Hill

Beyond Wittington

Where the sweep of the valley

To St Pauls

Is as pretty a picture

As ever it was.