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.
By David Selzer