Bowl of London Jellied Eels
Photo: www.eelhouse.co.uk

ECONOMICS

In Petticoat Lane by Aldgate East
On jellied eels I’ve seen them feast.
The mute dismembered corpses roll
Salted in an enamel bowl.
Behind his stall the huckster’s loud
Bass ‘cello voice compels the crowd,
Whose gaunt innumerable shoes
Shuffle along the foetid ooze.
And I knew that brick-bound sun must shine
On eels that swim in wider brine,
Where estuaries drain the sea
And agile Aldgate eels go free,
Where in pre-natal silence sleeps
The god of the everlasting deeps.
Where for ten thousand years the sails
Of ships before the summer gales
Trace the great circles of the seas
From Ophir to the Caribbees,
Till sails and ships and men are rotten,
Till years and seasons are forgotten,
Till all that lives is a dead motion
Of slow winds and a sombre ocean.