Looking For The Dome… by John Ringrose

Looking For The Dome… by John Ringrose

We walked one Sunday to find the Millennium Dome
traversing zigzag turns
by the oily river.

Trudged round a far corner thinking
‘We must be near!’ and stopped:
for out on the water
six birds, like painted icons,
old as the walls of Egyptian tombs
sharp dagger beaks, black and white,
perched, shoulders hunched
on a weathered timber:
papyrus birds.

Leader on the top bulwark, three others below,
two, younger perhaps, speckled brown;
still, unmoving, looking up river.
Antique birds
presiding between
Canary Wharf and the incipient Dome.

We stared, we photographed; they remained
carved, immobile.
One stray wind rippled younger feathers.

And as we moved away a voice said, ‘Cormorants!’
‘Come from the coast,’ said another
‘Fish in the river now, then!’
‘Which they’ll thin out a bit!’
and their laughter faded on the wind.

On our way home we passed them again
black, angular, priestly, against the setting sun.
Ancient birds from the beginning of time
Bringing thought of hieroglyphs
lustrations, libations and sunburned gods:
Isis, Osiris, and he with a jackal head
by the oily Thames:
almost cleaner for their presence.