A Very Beautiful Poem

Not by me, then. No! This is by David Wheatley, and it has enough cats, narrow boats and riverine daughters to make me love it quite a lot.

THE LOCK-KEEPER’S DAUGHTER

Take me away from this terrible place, 
very slowly, by barge, rising through 
the frothy lock outside my window 
like an old cinema organ. 
Ours will have been the most tacit 
of courtships, the most offhand 
of consummations as I step 
aboard from the vegetable patch. 
Expressionless townsfolk will process 
from the church to the water’s edge 
and my discarded bouquet float by 
to the wheeze of an accordion waltz. 
I too have dreamed of a tattooed 
first mate and an infestation 
of cats in the saucepans and hold. 
The candour of my wedding dress 
will face down scarecrows 
and cornfields from the prow. 
Take me away from this terrible place 
two or three miles down the water, 
no more: nowhere else can I 
be happy but where the water voles 
splash and the kingfisher combusts. 
I hear the lock close behind me 
and grant the water its steely 
abolition of our having 
ever passed through. I will walk 
the length of the barge backwards 
to you and into our future.

Found here: 

http://ireland.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=17728