Bugsby's marsh.
A bleak day yawns awash with sorrows,
waterlogged banks bleed by whoring land,
slushy with damp, limp grasses by pools
uncountable, indistinct, filled to brinks,
beside rotten trees and untame carcasses,
rank, sunk in foul, unhallowed hordes.
Kestrels above on high scan river-dregs,
flapping proudly in thin-veiled virgin-light,
while adders chide eels in taut tangled grips,
wolves, making haste beside unbold-bogs
that seep fouly within new and selfish tides
frothing, rising and crashing with ardour.
Winds, vast, ursine swing rusty gibbets,
full with weary bone and abandoned flesh,
cackling, cawing beneath coursing clouds
that chase across the horizon in grey herds;
forlorn, forsaken boats, baptised once more
in a watery weight of weary silt, faint salt,
swallowing again the wilderness.