Departures

I have often stood bemused
across the river from fabled Pocahontas’ grave,
once Defoe country, his brickworks and Crusoe,
a place you don’t name
for fear of ridicule,
now a murk-rippled Thames’ scummy shoreline.

Arriving seagulls shriek in derision;
dingy dredgers dawdle like shifty tramps;
lumpen container ships insult the humbled port;
cranes droop and rust, rail tracks disappear
under shabby weeds –
the only life reclaiming this stretch of river.
A lone angler stares at the unyielding water,
scant hope in a desolate place.    

Behind me a whiteboarded pub,
‘The World’s End’,
named by a jester
as though this miserable river front
could ever match Finis Terrae.
Yet in some ways it does.

It is the crumbling jetty,
the visible vestige, of our old world –
tall ships,
clippers, cutters and coasters,
purveyors of empire and
ten pound liners heading out
to Australia.
Departures with no landmark,
no Three Graces or torch bearing statue,
no nostalgic image to hold dear.
Just a dismissive wave of a hand.

.