An Australian in London ~ a poem ~

I delved into that great cesspool like Doyle said
Where a queue is my forever amongst the boxes red
Where the bleating honk of horns was the music to their beat

And every cobbled pathway walked by a thousand foreign feet.

No one here is sacred to my soul and space

No one will remember this millionth fleeting face -

That is like the sand of time upon this British shore

That the waves of years will wash away forevermore.

Boxed in by iron rails and deep in clipped mistrust
This whirlpool of accents oils down my coloniser's rust
Until proudly, in grandiose tones I can say -
"I navigated the underground by myself today."

Piled upon each other, people have no outward fear
That the other's deepest secrets they could always hear
But British moral forbids them to every really mention
Anything beyond a polite acquiescence to attention.

Soft green are the fields of this blessed land I rome
But still my heart yearns for the parching dust of home -
I will water my wilderness until is flows as a sunlit spring,
And then of my land, this choir boys will finally sing.