‘London’s Docklands, Pre-Gentrification’ and Other Poetry by Peter Austin

London’s Docklands, Pre-Gentrification

from a sonnet by Wordsworth

Earth has not anything to show more foul
Unless it be the same neath fog and rain;
But no, for like Rasputin’s reechy mane
This horror craves occulting in a cowl:
Abandoned buildings, cheek by scabrous jowl,
Eyes boarded shut or peering all in vain
Through dirt and bird-slime’s cataractal skein,
Each oblong mouth a rotting, splintered scowl;

And see below the wharf, where brownish flows
The Thames, between whose banks in days of old
To trumpet flourish, every schoolchild knows
Rode king and consort, caped in cloth of gold.
Today, a rusting toaster seaward goes,
A toilet seat, a sandwich robed in mould.

Hope Without Work

from a sonnet by Coleridge

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair:
The bees are stirring, birds are on the wing
And, on his smiling face a dream of spring,
Winter is dozing in the open air,
While I, sole idle thing, who ought to care,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing,
Being—for shame!—the sole unbusy thing,
At least from my perspective, anywhere.

But, somehow, care I don’t, for I’m retired
(Forty-odd years’ of sweat already spent)
And, but for the dentures that I’ve acquired,
The rocky knees, the back (painfully bent),
The flagging sex-drive (soon to be expired)
And hemorrhoidal itching, I’m content!

Old Age

from a sonnet by Chambers Baird

Old age, I harbour you, a welcome guest,
Who count no fretting hopes yet unfulfilled
But know, with ardent youth’s wild tremor stilled,
The lulling cadences of measured rest.
My children’s children someone else has dressed;
Their diapers, ere what lies within be spilled,
Are readily renewed by one more skilled,
Who feeds them at her ever-willing breast.

All would be well, but for my troublous knee
(Arthritis-racked), my false teeth (ill of fit),
My bladder’s habit unannounced to wee,
Whilst I—vile irony!—must strive to shit.
Elsewise (barring under-denture debris),
Life had been sweet as a banana split.

Peter Austin is a retired Professor of English who lives in Toronto with his younger two daughters.