An attempt to convey some of the feelings I experienced when returning to London for the first time for just over 3.5 years. I arrived at Victoria station by train then walked to Lincoln’s Inn Field for a meeting with lawyers passing by Birdcage Walk. I returned to London Bridge station past the LSE and various bits of the City. One strange thing to note is that in prison the air that we breath is scented by the kitchens (a bit like school dinners) and various human excretions and uncleaned waste. On the streets of London I actually found difficulty breathing deeply because of the petroleum polluants that infuse the air. Yet people stand on the pavements drinking….like I used to love to do many , many years ago…. without seeming to notice or mind. Blessèd be their lungs!
London Again
In London again, after so many years
Pounding the pavements, avoiding the crowded subway station
The so-called tube, veritable vale of tears
Has anything changed since my rights’ abrogation?
Gone the great, grey gates, far-flung the fearful fences
Now beyond the razor wire, regained – full use of my senses
But there are guards around the palace, an inverted prison
Barriers and bollards as if where I was
Was the home of a monarch, from the people well-hidden
Unmentioned on television news because…
If the truth were known to the man in the street
Unrest might take place in the summer heat….
But this city, a capital in so many ways
Is still caped in cold, colonial tradition
A tourist, watching soldiers, for an ice cream pays
As guardsmen practice funereal repetition
I pass people purposefully drinking and eating
Pub schmoozers eschewing the outside seating
Youngsters scurrying through the traffic of jam
Bicycles more scary than motorised cars
For the fair-weather cyclist I once was – and still am
My body shows the signs, these well-worn scars
Of past adventures on two skinny wheels
We know how the tarmac of London feels
So I rely on my feet, old but walking the fastest
Mulling over the map that I made in my mind
While Londoners clutch phones, the latest and smartest
I observe, yet manage, to leave them behind
As I did when I used to travel to court
Such lasting memories loud London has brought!
I recall prison journeys, back and forth to Wandsworth
Peering through those rose-tinted windows
On buses of abuse, driven by a jobsworth
Watching as we lurched through evening shadows
O, how very different is all this
From a prisoner’s sorrow to a free man’s bliss!
Here I am now amongst the hustle and bustle of it all
That wealth unseen by co-travelling commuters
Culture creeping even from market stall
Skyscrapers steaming, gleaming screens of computers
Money laundered behind bullet proof glass
Reminding me of the jest of past judicial farce
Unheard by the crowds, the sirens’ wail
As they rush through historic street or lane
Some visitor, someone, maybe weak or frail
Might have fallen from a passing plane
They care not a jot as they rush along their way
They aim to catch their train at end of their day
Their purpose in London, seems to be to get to another place
Or to pass their time until fellow flocks have flown
Consuming substances that obscure the rat-race
Whilst I, like some, proceed on my own
To meet with lawyers in bizarre-sounding chambers
I am another of those aimless London ramblers
So, yes, I feel at home in this other fair city
What has changed in these years is only peripheral
As in that song, I find the girls are so pretty
Where an old man’s ramblings are much more than apocryphal
This is a place of European civilisation
Where this no-nation man can still find his station