Just behind the station, Before You Reach the traffic island, a river runs through 'a concrete channel. I Took you there eleven, I think it WAS after the Leadmill. The water was dirty & smelt of industrialisation, Mesters Coughing Their little lungs up & globules the color of tomato ketchup. But it flows. Yeah, it flows. Underneath the city through 'dirty brickwork conduits, Connecting white witches on the Moor with pre-Raphaelites down in Broomhall. Beneath the old Trebor factory That burnt down in the early seventies. Leaving an antiquated sweet-shop smell & caverns of nougat & caramel. Nougat. Yeah, nougat & caramel. & The river flows on. Yeah, the river flows on beneath pudgy fifteen-year olds addicted to coffee whitener, courting Couples naked on Northern Upholstery& pensioners gathering dust like bowls of plastic tulips. & it finally comes above ground again at Forge Dam: the place where we first met.
I went there again for old time's sake, hoping to find the child's toy horse ride that played such a ridiculously tragic tune. It was still there - but none of the kids seemed interested in riding on it. & the cafe was still there too; the same press-in plastic letters on the price list & scuffed formica-top tables. I sat as close as possible to the seat where I'd met you that autumn afternoon. & then, after what seemed like hours of thinking about it, I finally took your face in my hands & I kissed you for the first time & a feeling like electricity flowed thru' my whole body. & I immediately knew that I'd entered a completely different world. & all the time, in the background, the sound of that ridiculously heartbreaking child's ride outside.
At the other end of town the river flows underneath an old railway viaduct; I went there with you once - except you were somebody else - & we gazed down at the sludgy brown surface of the water together. Then a passer-by told us that it used to be a local custom to jump off the viaduct into the river, when coming home from the pub on a Saturday night. But that this custom had died out when someone jumped & landed too near to the riverbank & had sunk in the mud there & drowned before anyone could reach them. I don't know if he'd just made the whole story up, but there's no way you'd get me to jump off that bridge. No chance. Never in a million years.
Yeah, a river flows underneath this city, I'd like to go there with you now my pretty & follow it on for miles & miles, below other people's ordinary lives. Occasionally catching a glimpse of the moon, thru' man-hole covers along the route. Yeah, it's dark sometimes but if you hold my hand, I think I know the way. Oh, this is as far as we got last time but if we go just another mile we will surface surrounded by grass & trees & the fly-over that takes the cars to cities. Buds that explode at the slightest touch, nettles that sting - but not too much. I've never been past this point, what lies ahead I really could not say. & I used to live just by the river, in a dis-used factory just off the Wicker & the river flowed by day after day & \
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