Poetry Thursday - Gherkin Music by Jo Shapcott

A "poem on the Underground", 2013 (via)

Gherkin Music by Jo Shapcott

walk the spiral                      

                             up out of the pavement

                       into your own reflection, into

transparency, into the space

                                      where flat planes are curves

                and you are transposed

as you go higher into a thought

                                   of flying, joining the game

                    of brilliance and scattering

where fragments of poems,      

                                         words, names fall like glory

                   into the lightwells until

St Mary Axe is burning. 

(Did you notice the self-reflective -ie, spiral- form of the poem, and the fusing of secular and spiritual?)

Published in 2010, the poem captures "the iconic shape of the modernist City building in a celebration of architecture, science, poetry, and music " says this site, where you can read more Poems on the Underground about London.

"Intellectually ambitious and eschewing the personal, Shapcott's poetry nevertheless belongs as much to the body as the mind" says this site. The poet was born in London in 1953, studied at Trinity College Dublin, and has won a heap of literary prizes, including the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

30 St Mary Axe (via)