Poetry London Clore Prize 2018 COMMENDED 1: Under London by Victor Tapner
Joseph Bazalgette, Victorian civil engineer and builder of the city’s sewer network
As the lid closes
on Hammersmith Road,
muffling the crunch
of brewers’ carts,
stifling shouts
from laundry windows,
he follows Mr Peters
down the manhole ladder
into the sour breath
of the weir chamber
at Counter’s Creek.
Come September,
with the sluices open,
he’d be up to the top
of his boots in foul water,
but for now
the tunnels serve
as quiet caves,
the Fleet and Tyburn
funnelled
under cobbled alleys,
carrying sediments
of hillside streams
that once washed London’s vales
before the Silent Highwayman
sailed down with the tide,
swathed in a fog of cholera.
Here, away from daylight,
he finds an hour’s shelter
from the storms of Westminster
that have stripped
so many nights of sleep,
functionaries who say
he’s draining
the nation’s cash to the sea.
Through the flickering
of Mr Peters’ lamp
he surveys brick arches,
a locking gate,
while a maze of junctions
crowd his head,
months when contours blurred
as he mapped these veins,
outflows that can take a surge
like blood to the brain,
days when he loosened
his collar to breathe,
crushed by the city’s weight.
