I should like to know what there is beneath us
Lieut. H R Bowers, Antarctica 1912
Lower Hope Point: brought away by the pull
of the moon, glass slides towards the east.
At Blackfriars the ice remains solid and silent
like something completed or maybe about to begin.
In the opium dawn see how the air falls through
to the other side of nothing and survives.
Is it not amazing how the man continues to write?
Remarkably fine here on this limitless snow plain.
He dreams they are roasting a sheep, that someone
has driven a coach and four down from Queenhithe
and right through the tent. We have sandpapered
the runners, this has made a tremendous difference.
At the plying places wherrymen clear the way
for walking on water and the talk is all of the plumber
who ventured to cross with the lead in his hands.
The lord only knows how deep these chasms go.
Clairvoyants gaze at the accidents formed in the frost
while printers’ boys carve their names in the monument
of the ice, sell papers to punters to prove they were there
at the last winter fair on this white village green
with its swingboats and puppet-shows, streamers
and flags like an army waved off to a war.
This afternoon 5.2 miles. The writing on the water.
The ash-strewn paths. Your name here.
Tideway extracts
Salvage
Silvertown
Public Records Office
Last Frost Fair
No 3 From Uses for the Thames
Surgeon
St. Mary Overie
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