Not Quite English

She called herself London
On that day
She fell from the sky
Child of apple blossoms

 —      Catman Cohen

Regardless of queen and country

Regardless of the throes of Scottish dissent

Neanderthal spirits

Drink the Thames to slush every eleven hours

From here at Goat Wharf

The strumming of strings on a summer chord

The waft of your breath from a houseboat, London

 You ask me for a suggestion

“Tell me, why have you come here?”

Someone from Scotland Yard squeezes a slice

Of lemon, souring his tea

Dotted by the canal, and at 200 yards

A fluorescent canoe races alone

Fluorescent maple in the mauve settings of dusk

Behind your two storeyed conveyances

Red oak and horse chestnut; the head of a horse

Capsized for photography at Marble Arch

The agony of the Hyde Park of Adrian Stokes

Remains to me Oh London a broken

Bead from the nupur^[1] of your feet

If I find it back for you memsahib

Will you teach me chasse tonight?

Not far where Andy Warhol mannequins

Gaze back at retrograde seeking faces

Your Ferris Eye performs to me

As if askance, like a nagordola^[2]

From villages my fishermen ancestors

Have left behind to high tides.

I noticed, while I was lost, some poplar like things

On either side of the Oxford Street, and on one

Poplar on poplar, Corinthian pillars, spandrels and canopies

Windows from where no one peeps

Massive windows designed for suicide

Or euthanasia to a walker-by

Who is not quite English, so I ask

“What is this building, would you know?”

“Why, Selfridges,” from an anonymous voice

“And, pray, can you name that tree for me”

 to write back home, an English name?

“Look up the internet,” good sir

 No, I just added the last two to rhyme with the rage

Of the coming season they call faux-fur.

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