Paternoster, London

Hungover in metropolitan Eden
You feel the fragility in me, me
closer to Heaven in a scatter of ash
formed beforehand by Your hand to somewhere
so vast in its longing for green haloes
just past brick’s reach.


Glass palaces; clots of marble cake spruced
in spiralling excess; clean wide roads
like canals dried to wine… here is a clutch
of blossom, winged withering pearls set
in trees by the boulevard-shore. And if

summer warmth exceeds Your limits. If

nuclear warheads illuminate whitely
like synthetic angels then feel, right now,
mercy in this infinite womb. i sip tea,
unsweetened; no milk nor honey in this
Thames-water, but still. Our breath stalls for calm,
contends with tremors, ends fluttering. Amen.