Sunken Evening

The green light floods the city square –

A sea of fowl and feathered fish,

Where squalls of rainbirds dive and splash

And gusty sparrows chop the air.

Submerged, the prawn-blue pigeons feed

In sandy grottoes round the Mall,

And crusted lobster-buses crawl

Among the fountain’s silver weed.

There, like a wreck, with mast and bell,

The torn church settles by the bow,

While phosphorescent starlings stow

Their mussel shells along the hull.

The oyster-poet, drowned but dry,

Rolls a black pearl between his bones;

The typist, trapped by telephones,

Gazes in bubbles at the sky.

Till, with the dark, the shallows run,

And homeward surges tide and fret –

The slow night trawls its heavy net

And hauls the clerk to Surbiton.