In the Rushed Hour

Flows the slow Thames to the sea,
the Thames, glassy, majestic,
beneath the far-seeing
eye.

Barges smudge its pearly surface,
necklace glittering
round the neck of London,
diadem

of an island, many-crowned,
through which flows the slow Thames,
beneath a rare sky,
blue-swept.

The city wakens.  Men
flex their muscles of commerce.
Dockworkers swear
in the din

of cargo being off-loaded
for holds to be loaded
anew.  Suits hail cabs
arush

to meetings and to parliament.
Students move in intellectual
pursuit to schools
where Marx and Sartre

debate the necessity of politics
under Plato’s tutelage,
while the sweet, sleek slurping
sound of a rower dipping his oars

flows with the slow imperturbable
flow of the Thames to the sea, to the sea.

Philip Kuepper
(29-30 August 2013)