Cambridge

I stick a saltwater tank on the back of my truck
and drive my octopus around the city;

down Kings Parade, Market Square,
railings clustered with plum-faced quartets,
high bookshops, the delivery entrance of Dixons.

Me, and the first octopus on Earth
to ever see the spires of Corpus Christi,
we crawl past picture-book parks,
cyclists weaving diagrams around us.

My octopus has never known the sun
to burn so bright and yet so cold,
his huge eyes rotating, taking in every dog,
every crisp, every Medieval crack and splinter.

I toot. He waves. Cambridge loves you, baby!
You’re unscrewing this city like a jam-jar!
And everybody out here knows the deal:
how he could squeeze through a fissure
no bigger than their thumb

and be gone, suckering off
over the high walls, rearranging those blue plaques
into new historical assemblies.

The arrogance! And who wouldn’t want a piece of it?
Who wouldn’t follow this octopus
deeper into the city, beyond those turrets
where teenagers dream in a dead language,
through ancient refectories, over suits of armour
into studies once paced by Charles Babbage.

Who could resist following that watery path?
Somehow reminiscent of the ancient river
that cuts this city in two;

that endless, unquestionable life-force
that every new generation relies upon

to make them feel utterly stupid.