The River Neckinger 

rises at St George’s Fields

 

except now it’s called 

Geraldine Mary Harmsworth Park 

and there’s little sign of water

 

we find a manhole cover

and press our ears to the cool stone 

 

the river is here

but it’s buried deep

Once I lived on Brook Drive

but the river eluded me

 

now it’s in my dreams

 

the newsagent

the bread shop

the corner shop

the Two Eagles pub

 

back in the ‘80s

the Dexys sang Come on Eileen

 

right here

At the centre of the Elephant and Castle

lies a terrible void 

 

so huge, it’s almost impossible to mention

 

here in Southwark, as in all London

the land is under constant scrutiny

from the gentrifiers and developers

with their neoliberal agendas

 

as hoardings replace buildings

we struggle to recall

which part of ourselves

was just cauterised

 

in this shifting world

Down Meadow Row

the land dips into the 

Rockingham Anomaly

 

ancient

ice age

deposits

of peat

Walking the city

is to internalise the terrain

 

until we become

almost interchangeable

 

like Flann O’Brien’s story 

of a bicycle intermingling with its rider

 

our memories

our grasp of the city 

merge with its materiality

The demolished estates of Southwark

 

North Peckham

Willowbrook

Sumner

Camden

Gloucester Grove

Bermondsey Spa

Silwood

Coopers Road

Elmington

Acorn

Heygate

Aylesbury

Tustin

Ledbury

 

13,000 council homes lost since 1999

De Quincey would navigate his way home

through the tangle of Soho’s streets

 

fixing his eye on the pole star 

seeking ambitiously
for a north-west passage

 

we too, align our compass north-west

finding our own way home

The River Neckinger

buried, culverted and diverted

through the mud and muck

of north Southwark

 

to barely a trickle

at St Saviour’s Dock

 

remains beautiful

in its sublime resistance

 

we walk the hidden river

to reclaim

this territory

as our own

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