River

‘…I saw with infinite pleasure the great object of my mission; the long sought for, majestic Niger, glittering to the morning sun, as broad as the Thames at Westminster, and flowing slowly to the eastward.’

MUNGO PARK

Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa

The strong image is always the river

was a line for the poem I never wrote

twenty years ago and never have written

of the green Wanganui under its willows

or the ice-blue milky-foaming Clutha

stopping my tremulous teenage heart.

But now when I cross Westminster Bridge

all that comes to mind is the Niger

a river Mungo Park invented for me

as he invented all those African villages

and a certain kind of astonishing silence –

the explorer having done the poet’s job

and the poet feeling gratefully redundant.