London Loves

Night, when the constellation of crane lights
Rises in the West, and the thrum and hammer
Of a perennially dug-up road
Begins its bedtime prayers; in the glare
Of diodes in car lights and council blocks,
From which the orange haze of street lamps
Offers something almost like relief;

When the last smokers from the pub’s garden
Have crushed their final laugh beneath their feet,
And somewhere in these concrete verticals
The unquiet sleep of wardenless inmates
Drowns out the groan of lift and slam of door,
And the howl of a neighbour never seen
From a balcony along this corridor —

We retreat from the madness of the day,
Both blinds pulled down against the blinding night
And the memories that our dreams await:
When, unheard in this unnatural hell,
The unseen sound of two foxes mating,
Unearthly barking and banshee screeching,
Rises from the carpark’s cornered shadows.

Still like nothing you hear in the city,
Even among London’s nine million voices,
And as many digital shrieks and screams
From throats of flesh and amplified metal:
This foreign presence and welcome reminder
Of a world beyond Our Lady of Bedlam
Turns strangled cries to nightly pleasures.

Morning breaks and enters consciousness
With the sounds of scaffolding and sirens
And cables laid to electronic eyes.
The pillow of love lies beneath our heads,
Underneath, our hands meet across the bed,
Below, our bodies slowly separate
To the yellow noise of the coming day.

Simon Elmer, from his book, Fight and Flight: Poems, 2012-2023, which is available in paperback. Please click on the link for the contents page, preface and purchase options.

Photograph of the Vauxhall, Nine Elms, Battersea Opportunity Area by Mike Urban, 2021.