Poem

Mortlake

Mort-lake
dead lake
the place where I was born.
Its numerous alleys
were my playground
hidden pathways behind buildings
strewn with rough stones
and dog turds
and dustbins
lined with maggots.

Mortlake
A bend in the river
where the streams
almost touch.
A place turned in
on itself.
The river is the Thames
wide and brown and sullen
whose black depths
never tell what they know.

Mortlake
The towpath is muddied
from the last inundation.
Like the Nile
it regularly oversteps
its banks and deigns to leave
hightide gifts behind
bits of broken branches
plastic bottles
and tattered twine.

Mortlake
The brewery hugs the bank
of a bend in the river.
While the hops ferment
their odour spreads everywhere
like a noxious fart.
The massive trucks haul the brew away
in shiny tankers resembling
mobile missile launchers
of conviviality.

Mortlake
Home of Dr John Dee
astrologer and alchemist
to the Elizabethan court.
I bet your necromancy
never revealed to you
a block of council flats
would be named after you.
How unimaginable
that would have been.

Colin Pink
London,

Colin Pink writes plays, fiction and poetry.

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