In the courtyard of Southwark Cathedral, Saturday 26th September 2009

The low autumn sun stipples green-blurred branches.
Chatter, trains, bells: the vibe alive.
A group of women and tourists stand amazed,
Joyed-up by childish discovery.
Disbelieving they show their friends:
A mouse moves under a bench.

This city:
rich-mucked, new yet old.
The bell-ringers’ unashamed practice.
Jaunty hats play in a sea of gold-flushed slanting forearms,
straightened hair and oversized sunglasses.

At trashy pink tables,
speakers,
eaters,
writers,
eavesdroppers
absorb and expel.

Fish and chips,
glass-bottled coke.
Moustaches, scarves, yellow tights.
Accoutrements of show and feel.
Trains swerve out of view only,
revealing glimpses, betrayed by their crash and squeak.

The bells peal kinaesthetically;
scales falling like sunlight,
auditory confetti,
3-D campanology.

An octave and a half, relentlessly tipping and tumbling down,
a confusion of light in a race to the ground,
reliably always arriving.
The sun chimes out its warmth across convex cobbles.

It was always so, may it always be so.

Bouncing hair and shock-pink grins,
practical jokes, beardy discussions,
epithets and inscriptions deep-cut.

Deafening light, blinding noise;
eyes, ears, heart.

Only blood moves the heart;
Only blood leaves the heart unmoved.

The bells’ scale has rioted:
leaping, loping, pealing,
resolved unsystematically,
book-ended by octaves.
Gradually slowing,
it becomes the five o’clock bell.

Time to go,
in body,
but never in spirit.