By Richard Mather
So the roots of
plants, trees, arteries, sewers, nervous systems, run
down to the shore of the river,
which uncoils like an intestine
past Adam and Eve’s.
Beyond muddy perimeters, the water turns,
churns up contraceptives, insects,
and mushy brown leaves.
The Irwell charms
its way between the crumbling, rumbling jaws
of earth, past restaurants, dustbins, hospitals
like the persistent flow of time, words, people, hissing cars;
past the ruins of
factories, castles and back-to-back slums,
picking up layers of mud, newspaper pages, the ghosts of old songs.
Behind red raw roofs
the old sun
slips
in silence.
Beneath the reign of Aquarius the conurbation squirms
like a sick fish:
sirens, violence,
eyes behind windows, the emaciated beggar.
Bodies traffic through the rain: wind, glide, shiver, trudge
like shades at the river’s edge.
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