wren

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.