Capital Poet

City

First, perhaps, we should view it across water,
passing two islands on a surging tide –
the second highest rise and fall anywhere.

Our ship would pitch where the sea wrestles the Severn,
muscular with rain from heart and hinterland,
sullen with slag and silky river silts.

Whoever they are, whatever tongue they speak,
from what continent, what distant island,
they crossed the ocean to help make the city.

Rounding the headland a hundred years ago,
most of them frozen, feverish, seasick, heartsick,
rolling up Channel into the throat of the Severn,

they’d see the clock tower of the City Hall,
rumoured white buildings between broad avenues,
parkland and pleasure grounds beside the Taff.

For me it was ‘let’s pretend’, lying awake
to the blink and sob of the Breaksea lightship,
my day trip on the paddle steamer a voyage

from Africa, not Ilfracombe, the Cardiff Queen
smashing the evening sea to smithereens,
a going home made glamorous by dream

to a city we’d imagined into being.
Seeing’s believing, believing’s seeing.

Gillian Clarke
12th July 2005