Peter Haythorne
Heavy Water
Here silt had choked another river:
salt turns it into heavier water.
Where cautious fishmen chart vital fathoms
anonymous children tread rushes, carefully:
commerce has ebbed beneath the old horizons.
On the straked shore he kneels, mending
nets permeable as his memory;
eyes probing for lacerations in the mesh
catch invisible sea-birds on another sky.
Those hands wrought subtle ropes to roses;
now the knots invade his sinews:
his hands are tied.
On the quays where cargoes creaked,
weekend whirlpools by the ice-cream parlour
pause to view their history
in his stiffening fingers
in the stagnant street,
dammed by Sunday sports-cars.
He pauses: watery eyes worry the distance.
Somewhere, the tide is changing;
silently the marshes tighten.
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