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.
Trickles in increasingly fickle
And unsettled rivulets through deserts
Carcasses, 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 Windsor's throne stole
as rest
The Fleet with quays, carved Farringdon
valley
Are cased in concrete tunnels under
us
Like spent mine shafts, the hewn veins
once precious.
Hidden in the Byzantine 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
Empty all liquid from vast depressions
The great motors turning, bound in
velum
Bolted tight with torts. Gearing and
levers
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.
The velum casks that bind the pumps are
rotting
If they were to rupture, burst
And all this liquidity flood upon the
common
A thousand flowers. The Flamingoes
would return
Elephant and Ibis. The Whales in the
sky
Sharks, yachts would beach upon
glass bottoms
And watch the earth's innumerable
flowers
There are oceans in the sky
That take PSI and power.
