Apprentice

Come with me, though the wave is wild
			Shelley : To William Shelley


His hair is a flag and openly like fields
	he faces the coming water. His mind fills
with floating pieces of the jigsaw - bridges
	reaches, currents, wharves. Night signals. Knowledge.

His father will tell him what to remember.
	Not the hard hand of the wind in December
but the days of colliers loaded with labour,
	not the cave or gap at the foot of the ladder

but nights on the jetty watching for ships from Greece.
	The river doesn't scare him with its deepset looks,
its endlessly provsional position. 
	He stands on the steel, a still point round which things

burn or float to sea.  Canary Wharf is crowned
	in polar cloud. Limehouse is Table Mountain.
The freemen, passing, test him on the radio
	to check the things he does not know - how you

can leave and not come back again, how certain
	things are snatched away and certain things remain.