The Day After London

Some distillation of experience
seems to have occurred
between my landing like a sack of concrete
and flying like a bird:

the vast amalgamated town –
condensing, purifying, trickles, falls:
where candle-lit John Donne
ruled pulpits at St. Dunstan’s and St. Paul’s:

the roiling skies above
the patient, slow-revolving London’s “Eye” –
the strange inviting Thames
beneath each London bridge: as if to die

there would be quite enough
to justify a life entirely endured:
Hampstead’s bracing heights –
the Strand’s slight swelling scribing line – insured

production of one strain –
thin vivid stream – of shimmer: quite a find:
despite a grinding jet-lag
my brain does not now seem at all to mind.

.