First comes the idea, someone's dream
of a winding street, of streetlamps.
Then sticks, wattle, ships flaring in the sunset,
serious heads on the coinage. Flagons
of small beer, ginshops, a tax on windows, doors.
Light dapples the civic water, a gallows
ghosts the green. Somehow the cathedral
makes it, somehow the wolf tax is revoked.
The centuries relax, flare up, relax.
The pubs are heaving,
stags and hens, bright buses bear
the sleepless to the suburbs, the conspirators
go over the details of the plan again.
It looks good. Silken Thomas, Isolde's eyelids.
Where is the other side of the street?
Any minute now the bubble-wrapped
department stores, electoral wards, silent armies
of statues. Oh protect us. Someone is singing
The Foggy Dew, someone is looking out to sea.
No, it must always have been there,
eternal as water, endless as air, the mudflats
singing, the rivers on fire, the districts
ringing out their numbers and their names