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DEPOT
Low-lying
along the estuary,
this
fuel city. Devout personnel
contrive
far from sight the refinery
of
oil from tankers out of foreign wells,
an
installation far from real cities.
No
place of birth, no home of nostalgias
for
chapel pews where penalties were eased;
no
pubs or soldiers’ billets or high schools
dedicated
to music. No one lists
its
walk-way patterns in learned journals.
Across
the land, reclaimed, a telescope
makes
out, this side, sheep. Across
the river
no
common magnifying picks a shape
of
any creature, although one gathers
there
must be shifts, and crews inside those ships.
Beneath
the still perfection of the sky,
the
squat oil silos, dull white cylinders,
are
safely over there, out of the way.
A
tall tube-mast burns an unceasing flare—
not
to be marvelled at—not vividly.
At
night a hundred or a thousand lights
make
this oil factory look like a live town.
It
must have several grids of lonely streets
allowing
access, where mute caravans
of
forecourt tankers fill up and depart.
Alan
Marshfield
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