On Lambeth Bridge

I am halfway across a bridge
and midway through my life,
staring at the midday sun.
How I love politics!
I recall hearing debates
over there in the Commons,

and I know that democracy
is about working days like this,
taxpayers in trucks and buses,
the business of pleasure boats,
foreign policy of tourists
and waiting lists in St Thomas’s,

and as the Eye revolves
like economic cycles,
the nation’s travelled full circle,
and the distance seems to widen
between Lambeth Palace
and the Square Mile,

and upstream MI6
runs information espionage,
while joggers run past
dog-walkers and mothers
with love’s child benefit
in Battersea Park,

and Big Ben strikes the hour,
deploying anaphora,
rhetorically insistent,
as cold winds of change
deliver education
to a hardened electorate.