Blueprint - Oceans I

We have built oceans in the sky

Glass bottomed that gleam in the sun

They are clouded, the keels of yachts

The slow whales, swift sharks visible

When the clouds part.

The great imperial locks and seals

The black bitumen seams that sweat

High vaulted walls, their narrow shore

The face of safe doors that perspire

Condensation on the steel skin

Creaking gaskets of old money

Dripping. Where the great pipes empty

In a Niagra, spray rises

High into the air and some winds

Set the waves to lap in thin cascades.

There are waterways in the sky

That we have built. Modern pipework

Like the Westbourne over Sloane Square

Canals that sluice, spaghetti mesh

Fairground wheels and yes

It trickles down.

II.

Trickles in increasingly fickle

And unsettled rivulets through deserts

Caracasses, the bones of asses in the dirt

Reapers sickles over wishes, this dearth

Of liquid.

Hackney Brook, hundred foot wide at the Lea

The Tyburn, that the throne stole as rest

The Fleet with quays, carved Farringdon valley

All cased in concrete tunnels under us

Like spent mine shafts, the hewn veins once precious.

III.

Hidden in Byzatine marble jungle

The York stone Baobabs with termite blocks

With ants, the concrete mangroves

                                                     where the call

Of soot stained statues and tin rats

                                                     echo,

The penguins and the parrot carouses

Hidden here amid ceremony and veneration.

Are the great pump houses.

Gargantuan pipes, the old hide replaced

By copper, by stainless, in a forest

Concrete towers like a tall coal furnace

The spinning whirlpool

The suction mouths of graft, quotas, licence

Hoover all liquid from vast depressions

The great motors turning, bound in velum

Bolted tight with torts. Gearing and levers

The whirring din of paper bladed turbines

With the power of language and routine

The monumental PSI

To force this liquid

To vast oceans in the sky.