Café Song by Peter Sirr
There we are by a pour of willows in the slender barge proceeding from lock to lock with such leisure a mile is weeks, months already they've forgotten us, and sunk in narrow spaces we glide, keep our eyes on water and water's edges: my captain's hat your trusty something, the lore wobbly for lack of study a long narrow house on water all we wanted or could imagine: bed, board and appetite adrift in the city nothing to do but manoeuvre the racks and gates, the machinery of slowness such stately ascents, delicate fallings and through the trees a sand bricked terrace brilliant doors these journeys into yellow, into forests of windows, and the dark slow ache of our bodies in the stalled drift of the voyage from a café hung with canvas like a huge promise…