Sucked down the radiating railway web
we gather for conference, swaying on knots
of wheel polished steel on Edwardian embankments,
Victorian viaducts with soot black stains
of fossil smoke from long-butchered trains.
Climbing the flat cliff face of London
we trace its built geology rifts
past pools in architecture, villages once,
a handful of krill in a tide of whales,
the snake skin limes shedding carbon scales.
Arriving, admiring pin-head architectures,
to count, not angels, but instructions per second,
then later discuss them by the undulating buffet,
balancing food and theoretical gates
On caterers wafer paper plates.
Earnest glasses pressed on faces, or
clasped in ephemeral fingerprints,
reflect the museum room's balconied shelves,
leaning with learning like streets in July
Siesta shutters sheltering sky.
Admiring the wrought iron balustrade,
the green toned binders and gold leaf titles,
bronze-dull sunken lines in old leather,
identically clad like regimental stones,
formally filing uniform bones,
distracted, I notice the whole cliff of volumes
is year upon year of the "Gas Lighting Journal"
the ephemeral tomes of Victorian enlighteners.
Words unchanged, but lit with flourescence
condemn whole libraries to obsolescence.
The afternoon pulses with words and shadows
on phosphers fired by cathode rays.
I ride home in an empty carriage,
illuminated at Clapham while crashing
through junctions by electricity flashing,
so monochrome X-rays light the bones that remain.