SOUTHERN OCEAN

Force ten antarctic gales are shrieking

And tearing the crests off giant waves

While leopard seals are down there treading water,

Alert for anything alive and vulnerable,

And pods of killer whales, too, or orcas,

Cast about in the enveloping coldness.

Meanwhile in Berkeley Square the nightingale

Sings on as he has done since nineteen-forty.

They tell me the angels at the Ritz

Are backing musicals this year; our smiling

Cocktail maestro, serving among the mirrors

And strip-lights of the modish buttery, pours

Desensitising slugs for the well-to-do

And nicely spoken; they all laugh softly.

In a room off Wigmore Street some fiddlers

Practise the scherzo of a string quartet,

Berg, possibly, and a fragment of Webern.

But the Southern Ocean is still there, you know,

Far off, boundless and screaming to itself

In the darkness, with Paolo and Francesca

And turbulence beyond our understanding –

And still alive with leopard seals and creatures

Eternally eating and being eaten.