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water for the whole Torbay area. That and Venford and the Spine Main
    (it’s August and a
    pendulum gladness swings just
    missing our heads by
    a millimetre the sun
    unwrappers the hedgerows full
    of sticky sweets and
    sucks and each hour
    the river alternates its
    minnows through various cubes)
    You don’t know what goes into water. Tiny particles of acids and salts. Cryptospiridion smaller than a fleck of talcom powder which squashes and elongates and bursts in the warmth of the gut. Everything is measured twice and we have stand-bys and shut-offs. This is what keeps you and me alive, this is the real work of the river
    This is the thirst that draws the soul, beginning
    at these three boreholes and radial collectors.
    Whatever pumps and gravitates and gathers
    in town reservoirs secretly can you follow it rushing
    under manholes in the straggle of the streets
    being gridded and channelled up
    even as he taps his screwdriver on a copper pipe
    and fills a glass. That this is the thirst that streaks
    his throat and chips away at his bones between lifting
    the glass and contact whatever sands the tongue,
    this draws his eyehole to this space among
    two thirds weight water and still swallowing.
    That now and then it puts him in a stare
    going over the tree-lit river in his car
    Jan Coo! Jan Coo!
    have you any idea what goes into water?
    I have verified the calibration records
    have you monitored for colour and turbidity?
    I’m continually sending light signals through it, my parameters are back to back
    was it offish? did you increase the magnetite?
    180 tonnes of it. I have bound the debris and skimmed the supernatant
    have you in so doing dealt with the black inert matter?
    in my own way. I have removed the finest particles

    did you shut down all inlets?
    I added extra chlorine
    have you countervailed against decay?
    have you created for us a feeling of relative invulnerability?
    I do my best. I walk under the rapid gravity filters, under the clarifier with the weight of all the water for the Torbay area going over me, it’s a lot for one man to carry on his shoulders.
    wave the car on, let him pass, he has
    sufficiently conducted himself under the pressure of self-repetition,
    tomorrow it continues with the dripdripdripdrip of samples,
    polyelectrolite and settlementation and twizzling scum and.
    Exhausted almost to a sitstill,
    letting the watergnats gather, for I am no longer the river meets the Seat at the foot of Totnes Weir
    able to walk except on a slope,
    I inch into the weir’s workplace,
    pace volume light dayshift nightshift
    water being spooled over, now
    my head is about to slide – furl up my eyes,
    give in to the crash of
    surrendering riverflesh falling, I
    come to in the sea I dream
    at the foot of the weir, out here asleep
    when the level fills and fills and covers the footpath,
    the stones go down, the little mounds of sand
    and sticks go down, the slatted walkway
    sways in flood, canoes glide among trees,

    trees wade, bangles of brash on branches,
    it fills, it rains, the moon
    spreads out floating above its sediment,
    and a child secretly sleepwalks
    under the frisky sound of the current
    out all night, closed in an egg of water
    (Sleep was at work and from the mind the mist a dreamer
    spread up like litmus to the moon, the rain
    hung glittering in mid-air when I came down
    and found a little patch of broken schist
    under the water’s trembling haste.
    It was so bright, I picked myself a slate
    as flat as a round pool and threw my whole
    thrust into it, as if to skim my soul.
    and nothing lies as straight as that stone’s route
    over the water’s wobbling light;
    it sank like a feather falls, not quite
    in full possession of its weight.
    I saw a sheet of seagulls suddenly
    flap and lift with a loud clap and up
    into the pain of flying, cry and croup
    and crowd the light as if in rivalry
    to peck the moon-bone empty
    then fall all anyhow with arms spread out
    and feet stretched forwards to the