Language & its Heart's ache

'It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.'
Joseph Conrad. 
Heart of Darkness.

More even than August's oppressive heat

I regret the river's timorous retreat

This broader strand & more ample ghat

Beaching the yarer crafts of my burnt out heart

Well, not literally, but its what I now think I should, being literary, have said

By way of esprit de escalier to that not actually too intimidatingly well bred

South African, whose School's exchange with Sanawar did so derange my bottomless brunch

I became a burbling old fart gassing on about Cape Town's water crisis coz, like, so out to lunch

I couldn't see,  Sweet Thames everywhere floods in our daughters' Commonwealth of thought

Rendering buoyant every Gloriana's suitor's barge but also Suhuni's unfired, pot

Ah me! 'Tis difficult from a gastropub terrace in Richmond to see

How wrong Conrad was about our estuary.

Envoi-

Prince! With nothing upon which to float, be it carvel or lapstrake
 Language is a boat whose beams are but Heart's ache.