Zero hour. The streets cooling in aftermath,
papers offered news new-risen each morning
in the communion wafer of overnight knowledge.

Agents unlocked their shops to fresh loaves
cheaper than newsprint and without headlines.
The river lay overgrown like a black mirror. The Mirror.

The Sun. Along the common, dark-stippled with dew,
no swans broke the burnished, unconscious waters.
Their diligent ancestors breasted the sluggish stream

proudly, as befitted feathered property of a queen.
Local constables have been dragging the river—
gaffhooked bikes lay on the bank, twisted like corpses.

A weedy Cerberus squatted, fax machine hauled
blind from the depths. Everywhere riverboats
have moored illicitly—patched, doleful city afloat,

each roof hauling a woodpile like a preposterous hat.
And then, as the old gasworks rose into sight,

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