anthonyhowelljournal

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Here is the first draft of a new slideshow – Tottenham Marshes

No titles – as it works well when it repeats.

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THE RESERVOIR

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Was there ever a book that was censored because

It was a pack of lies? It will be the eagle’s choice,

His, and his alone. What we say, what we read,

And what we are will soon be what we were,

And sold for scrap, each superseded pylon here.

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As some brave admiral in former war

Witnessing the decadence of an empire

Stuffed by the elevation of its fashionable minorities,

Tend your own garden. Spin the web that supports you

Out of your own innards. Shrouds fail to cope.

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Banal signs inundate the web. Crowds hunger

Under a sobbing grey. She felt obliged to mask her joy.

But then, or now, the tense changes. Everything enlarges

And becomes normal. Doris barges past the other barges.

A strong breeze creates waves among the trees.

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Poplars bring the sea to the canal. A pram’s on the loose!

Tall dead stalks cling on. Hardened nettles occupy

The foreground, the middle-ground. Cranes pose

Like herons, predatory, overlooking the reservoir.

Up go the blocks, ever less distant. This is a horizontal

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Stretch defined by the edge of that great grass-surrounded tank,

Its bank raised some twenty feet above the towpath.

The Drum-sheds, it says, on the grey sheds on the other side.

One whole tree has gone yellow below the pylons

That lope across our straight lane for barges and on,

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On, over a chill prairie of nettles and docks

Punctuated by hawthorn or a teasel.

Look how the lines are etched onto a dying day,

The clouds bleeding into a soft whirlpool.

Practise breathing through the nose during your constitutional.

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Further slideshows:

Clouds and Cranes

Earlier slideshows