Below the moveable gardens of this shopping centre
down concrete ways
to a level of rainwater,
a black lake glimmering among piers, electric lighted,
windless, of no depth.
Rare shafts of daylight
waver at their base. As the water is shaken, the few
cars parked down here seem to rock. In everything
there strains that silent crash, that reverberation
which persists in concrete.
The cardboard carton
Lorenzo’s Natural Flavour Italian Meat Balls has foundered
into a wet ruin. Dutch Cleanser is propped at a high
featureless wall. Self-raising Flour is still floating
and supermarket trolleys hang their inverse harps,
silver leaking from them.
What will help the informally religious
to endure peace? Surface water dripping into
this underworld makes now a musical blip,
now rings from nowhere.
Young people descending the ramp
pause at the water’s brink, banging their voices.