The Girton Poetry Group

Not Averse

Decomposed on Westminster Bridge, January 3, 2002

Early in the evening, we left the school.  Wandering out along the darkening lanes we went to cross the river, black and cruel.  This city now extinguished, empty, spent; the beauty of the day submerged in silence.  Buses, bicycles, cold commuters, they passed us by as we stood on the bridge, suspended sense of solid pavement in smokefilled grey.  I asked you why you seemed so sad, but all you did was turn, leaning over and reaching out as if to touch what ran below in streams of oily debris, further than I could fathom and far enough to fall at from a height in swift surrender.