The Clerks' Well, Clerkenwell, London

The Clerks' Well, Clerkenwell (in memory of Jane Wisner)

Rest a while, traveller
And imbibe at this well

Present long before any human presence
Sought to haul me up
From a hole, deeply bored
In the ground, I lay undiscovered

Until a fissure cracked the earth
And sent me rippling out over bright stones.
Since when I became sacred, appropriated
And around me all life congregated.

There wasn't a time when I didn't exist.
I came into being at the very beginning
And my molecules still carry the memory
Of that moment across the whole globe.

I am that cloud caught drifting
Across the plains of Tanzanier.
I am crystallized in the frozen wastes
Of the Tundra

I hang in the misty humidity
Of the Rain Forest. Irrigate
The tea hills of the Himalayas.
Plash in a fountain in Tivoli.

I have quenched the thirst of a goatherd
And trickled down the face of the one
Who had dug this well.
This well, where all these waters coalesce

Around which the whole world pivots
Will be remembered, well.


1st version