Sonnet 89

I passed her on the footbridge (underneath,
the cars rushing pell-mell to Hades’ mouth).
Backwards flowed time then as I scoped her face:
lineaments of smack; thin, whorish, thief
up for the morning from the blighted south,
Hartcliffe or some such godforsaken place.
I watched her back recede towards St. Pauls,
then trudged away to heed, hard by the stews,
the elegiac spirit’s fluted call.
Euterpe, was that you, alone and bruised?
Beweep, Mnemosyne, her fallen state.
No more in Frome shall disport lissome nymphs;
’tis all old mattresses and plastic crates,
and scripts defaced by palimpsests of chimps.

–

Smack: colloquial term for heroin.

Hartcliffe: isolated and desolate suburb of Bristol.

St. Pauls: inner-city district of Bristol.

Stews: brothels; refers to the several massage parlours located in Old Market, just across the other side of Riverside Park from the footbridge.

Euterpe: the Muse of classical poetry.

Mnemosyne: the mother of the 9 Muses.

Frome: Bristolian river, running underneath the M32.