Dreich day late April, wind

keening from the Thames,

outside drinkers huddling

under frail, flapping,

dripping awnings.

 

Vauxhall interchange, maybe

one of the most inhospitable

places on God’s earth, now

intimidated by gathering gangs

of threatening towers

 

that look almost exactly the same.

Is this the way a capital ends,

not with the bangs of bombers,

or a whimper, or even the odd

helicopter crash, but with a mayor

 

or two’s careless tick of a ballpoint pen,

allowing in invading developers

and investors, architectural

vandals, gangsters in some cases,

obliterating community, vision, the sky.