Camden Bank

Camden Bank

We slide to a soundless stand.
Only the finger-tapping on a laptop
Hurrying to conclude
Disturbs our antiseptic cocoon.
Shafts of sunlight dazzle
Obscuring the dark dank walls
That enclose our premature arrival.
Some wait in stressful silence
But I stare at the black bleakness,
Those shadowed brick caverns
From which glistening dribbles ooze,
Coarse chalked graffiti shouts
And wild buddleia sprouts
At improbable angles,
Visited only by an occasional errant
Cabbage White.

Those walls knifed into the city,
Which aroused such fury
When they first brutally
Sliced the prosperous idyll,
Which absorbed the soot and smoke
Of crimson giants and green dragons
Labouring up Camden’s sulphurous bank.
Blank walls, echoing the stentorian thunder,
Alive, urgent, a kaleidoscope,
An explosion of steam and storm,
Abused and assaulted, set alight
By shooting sparks in the gloom,
Scorched by the midday sun
Which filtered through the smoky haze,
Now but a derelict observer
Of our sleek stationary steed.