I am sitting on a bench beside the Thames
on a sunny April Saturday at Greenwich,
and watching the boatloads disembark
at Greenwich Pier. They wander through the erstwhile
Royal Naval College, and walk up the hill
to the Royal Observatory. They tread,
in its courtyard, the stainless steel strip
that marks the prime meridian which set
the clocks of a thousand shipping fleets.
I watch the river as it flows softly
past the Isle of Dogs on the opposite bank,
and the sun glint on the topless towers of
Canary Wharf’s Masters of the Universe.
I think of elsewhere: across the Hudson
near the Jersey shore, the view from Liberty
Island and Ellis Island of the isle
of Manhattan – its charm, its promise,
its threat – the Twin Towers still intact;
of the stone compass in the cliff-top
fortress at Sagres, the furthest south west point
of Europe, where the Mediterranean
and the North Atlantic meet, where Henry
the Navigator set his naval college,
some of whose graduates made the Slave Coast.
The Royal Naval College here, its elegance
and Portland Stone still pristine, was designed,
during the Restoration, by Wren,
Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh. It has become part
museum, wedding venue, grove
of academe. Mature London Plane Trees grow
in its expansive, graceful courtyard.
Rose-ringed parakeets – offspring of escaped pets
originally from India but now
naturalised through much of south east England,
and spreading westwards, and northwards – flit
their vivid green from branch to branch, their calls
squeaking like infants’ toys.
By David Selzer