One Sunday in London
by Mark Sadler
In the doldrums of
a June weekend
I spied through the
stretched-out dregs
of a foamy lace-work
clinging to the interior
of a pint glass,
the remnants of a Sunday
carvery -
a slender side of beef
too narrow to stand
upright,
it's rough-hewn upturned
face
a sunburned pink
with the texture of
abraded rope.
The landlord, who had a
predilection for fanciful
re-tellings
of London history,
that elbow-nudged his
establishment
towards the centre of
things,
was idly boasting
to a foreign tourist
drinking at the bar:
“This is the oldest pub
in the city.”
(This happens concurrently
at multiple locations across the capital)
Miles away,
unnoticed by the endless
footfall
on the Charing Cross Road,
a tarred shadow, infused
with the totality
of night that has steeped
for hours
in its own fermenting
darkness,
was leaking from the
black-washed walls
of a guitar shop
out through the open
doorway
where it obliterated
the pale mid-afternoon
shade
that laid delicate, faint
overlapping patterns
of roving legs and static
street furniture
onto the paving slabs.
In the square mile
the mirror glass of the
tall buildings
captured blurry fragments
of the surrounding skyline
as indistinct as the
outline of a distant
hedgerow draped in morning
fog
and the open columned
steeple
of a city church put stone
bars
across a rectangle of blue
sky
and on the cornice stones
of bridges
small trees slanted
towards
the nearest unobstructed
source of light;
scouted out small
speculative territories;
poised to reclaim the
city.
Far away
at the Southernmost
extremities of the
Northern Line
a man reached from his
hospice bed to brush
the white-washed wallpaper
of an unfamiliar room
with his finger tips
as if the embossed pattern
were Braille
The randomness of
the bumpy texture
matched perfectly
the shifting patterns
of small wavelets
on the choppy surface
of the river Thames.
