CITY OF AWESOME NIGHT, CITY OF PERPETUAL LIGHT

Noxie and his mates Wexa, Holo and Taz

must somehow, somewhere, have had to scale

the railway embankment’s vertical wall

and head for the cast iron parapet wall

above the three railway arches – that house

a wine bar, a seafood restaurant

and a Nepali dumpling outlet –

to daub their tags, their noms de plumes in white paint

forty feet or so above the street.

I am processing this in the early hours

from my budget hotel bedroom opposite.

I am assuming that Noxie and the lads –

though perhaps some or all of them were lasses? –

left their marks at such a time, when the street

was empty but the eateries still well-lit

as if they had just opened for the evening.

Beyond the railway embankment –

which, after the arches, becomes a bridge

across the River Thames – I can see

the spire of The Shard, its coloured lights

shimmering like a fairground ride.

The remaining sixty five floors of

apartments, hotel and offices

are out of sight but no doubt lit up.

Looking more closely now I notice that

in the window of the seafood restaurant

there is a video on a loop showing

a pair of hands endlessly dressing a crab.

I recall that the Thames is suffering

from an invasion of the predatory

Moon Crab. Unbidden, yet apposite to this

dystopian scene, the refrain from

Spenser’s Prothalamion comes to mind:

‘Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song’.

I close the curtains, and go back to bed.

I dream of Noxie scaling the Shard crabwise

in absolute darkness.