Lost Rivers

We are the Tyburn,
Walbrook, Westbourne,
Effra, Fleet, Falconbrook, Peck,
Neckinger and Stamford Brook.

We are rivers rushing downwards.

Down to the District, Hammersmith and City,
Piccadilly, Jubilee, Bakerloo, Waterloo,
Northern, Circle, Central, Metropolitan:
lines under ground, under water.

We are lost in the earth, in the flood.

We’re submerged, diverted,
sewered, turbid, caught in a culvert:
tide in a tunnel, grey-blue, suited
flotsam flecked with white.

We're so many: we are all undone.