"Joy comes and goes: hope ebbs and flows, / Like the wave."

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday, something a little wetter:


Rising Damp, U.A. Fanthorpe

‘A river can sometimes be diverted but is a very hard thing to lose altogether.’
—Paper to the Auctioneers’ Institute, 1907

At our feet they lie low,
The little fervent underground
Rivers of London

Effra, Graveney, Falcon, Quaggy,
Wandle, Walbrook, Tyburn, Fleet

Whose names are disfigured,
Frayed, effaced.

There are the Magogs that chewed the clay
To the basin that London nestles in.
These are the currents that chiselled the city,
That washed the clothes and turned the mills,
Where children drank and salmon swam
And wells were holy.

They have gone under.
Boxed, like the magician’s assistant.
Buried alive in earth.
Forgotten, like the dead.

They return spectrally after heavy rain,
Confounding suburban gardens. They infiltrate
Chronic bronchitis statistics. A silken
Slur haunts dwellings by shrouded
Watercourses, and is taken
For the footing of the dead.

Being of our world, they will return
(Westbourne, caged at Sloane Square,
Will jack from his box),
Will deluge cellars, detonate manholes,
Plant effluent on our faces,
Sink the city.

Effra, Graveney, Falcon, Quaggy,
Wandle, Walbrook, Tyburn, Fleet

It is the other rivers that lie
Lower, that touch us only in dreams
That never surface. We feel their tug
As a dowser’s rod bends to the surface below

Phlegethon, Acheron, Lethe, Styx.


Fanthorpe published her first collection at the age of 49, in 1978. This poem was written for a 1980 poetry competition, and while it didn't win (ETA:) first prize, third place did get her some attention. She published eight more collections before dying in 2009.

---L.

Subject quote from "To Fausta," Matthew Arnold. Yes, again. It's quotable.

Comments

[sovay]

This poem was written for a 1980 poetry competition, and while it didn't win, it did get her some attention.

It's the first poem of hers I ever read. I love it so much.

[larryhammer]

I love it too. I’ve met other poems of hers before, but this was the first to really stick.

[thistleingrey]

This is very cool. Glad to make its acquaintance!

I guess this is one wellspring for those books?

[shewhomust]

One of my favourite poems by one of my favourite poets.

while it didn't win...

Strictly, it won third prize - and I know this because I still have the copy I snipped from the newspaper at the time (I have no idea what came first or second, clearly they didn't appeal to me in the same way).

[larryhammer]

*snrk*

[larryhammer]

Correction noted.

According to one of the articles I read (possibly her Guardian obit?) the first place poem was by Andrew Motion, the future laureate.

[swan_tower]

I've had this open in a tab for a while, waiting for me to have the time to copy it into the notebook of poems I've started keeping. As someone who has written novels that feature London's buried rivers and things haunting the city from below, I approve. :-D

[larryhammer]

:-)

Keeping a commonplace book is a good idea. I used to do that more.

---L.