A Portable Paradise

by Roger Robinson

I’d make the cladding that burned like dry straw be fireproofed to international standards; let life and love continue in Grenfell.

I woke up on the 16th floor of a tower block looking out the window with a clear view of the land that does not belong to me.

I tell him that under these very streets we walk, deep beneath the concrete, beneath the tarmac, beneath the rubble, the dirt, and the rock, there is a river flowing called Effra. A black and powerful river coursing without light. That one hundred and fifty years ago royalty would sail down this river in their best finery into Brixton never thinking about crack, never thinking about cafés.