At
The Corinth Canal
Like
something a child might aver –
with a
claw and some will-power –
dig to
split
the earth – or not,
a
child would never work this hard –
earth
gashed like hot steel scored,
the
English poet writing his verse,
The Pelopenese and Grecian
earthes
stare at each other’s brows
‘cross the channel,
clay and sand furrowed, pimpled
by shale.
Cruise-ship-wide,
deep as a tanker,
long
as it takes, it takes the tourists–
where?
Away!
– faster. To that other place.
On the
metal bridge railing sea-birds pace,
feet
too big to fly now, stare like old sailors,
wings
folded like boats made of newspapers.
They’ve
taken to dropping pebbles down,
in a
million years they’ll get around
to
filling the wound in the sea.
And
then, as in a miracle, they do fly.
Away!
In the
back-seat the boy looks out
but
the view of the canal is brief – they must
keep
moving, his father pales
driving
on bridges – he clenches the wheel.
The
high school ring on his hand
looks
like it’s choking down his swollen knuckle.
Then
the canal is past – but the white
machine-cut
pulses still, day’s moonlight,
sheer
drop, straight walls, the wink
of
another blue way up at the other end.
Between
his parents in the front seats
(one
driving, one calling out the sights)
there
is also a divide, housing the gear-stick,
and
they keep to their own sides, but has it
always
been that way? Another wonder.
If
only he could know for sure …
as he
now knows Nazis once bombed shut the canal,
and
Nero once drove in a shovel
and
carried away the first load of earth,
starting
the idea, at least, of a canal at