Silvertown

Where the street was a valley
and each ship in its turn
a collosus or cliff at the mouth

out of which you might dream
you could slip like a sea-going question
or Lemuel Gulliver longing for more.

But the sun was our gold, thrown down
for the children to catch as they could
between shadows for hopscotch

and scars cast by derricks and spars,
and at full moon the alleys were paved
with something like silver

then the lines became threads
just powerful enough to tie a man down
and the ship seemed to shrink

become part of the sky
with its far away stars to navigate by
and tell us just where we were now -
the hammer, the pan, the plough