I stepped beyond...
The station's bounds
Familiar streets before me
Familiar for but a brief time
Bishopsgate - should take me to...
I'm no longer sure
Familiar is not
Familiar any more
The river's over there
Fenchurch is that way...
I think...
Now I see clearly
But I'm on the southern bank
And I don't know...
How did I get there?
Iron bascule bridge
Glass windowed control room
I don't remember this in the waking world
Hooded figures pass close
Shadowed in a fifties smog
As I cross a muddied waste
Building or other works
make for mud on my boots
And I slide
Helpless in the morass
I can see the cranes now,
Servicing the ships
Heavy rivetted glory making
Iron monuments to industry
Tidal inlets grounded in its slime
Is this my London?
Or Yesterday's?
Or Tomorrow's?
Convoluted half-truths
Of a sometime history?
Am I just a visitor?
To a city that never sleeps?
Martin Addison – 05/05/2022
This is an attempt to put in writing a dream that I experienced last night. It was a weird dream but at no time was it scary – just really strange. I felt like I had fallen into my own Neverwhere – into a London that exists beyond what I normally see. Unfortunately, the words can’t do justice to the vividness of the dream.
The Harvester, grimed in dust,
Silhouetted by setting sun
On weary homeward road,
With early frost in valley below
Morrow's work already set
Like clay beneath the soil
Sorting Wheat from Chaff
Doing the God's work?
With another day of toil...
Cranes build nests high
Clouded with mistrust
Make homes above life’s traffic
Martin Addison – 04/07/2021
A view from Clapham Junction looking towards the high-rise developments in Nine Elms and Battersea. The US Embassy and the MI5 building are hidden in there somewhere.
Images from Finchley 