Vivian Usherwood, the 12 year old poet who grew up in care in Hackney, from his 1972 collection Poems.
The Lea
I live near the Lea valley, by Lesney Matchbox
Toys factory. I sometimes go there in the
evening about five o’clock. It is said that
part of the Lea is clean, it is not. Fishes
are dying in hundreds and hundreds.
I caught a fish: it had no eyeballs at all, no tail.
That is only one. All that is done by us.
Mostly by the factories that dump oil in the Lea.
We can’t help the sticks that get in the Lea from
the trees.
We couldn’t swim in the Lea, the way it is
dirty. The dirt in the Lea pulls you under then
the river weeds keep you down. Why? Humans
trying to be modern, catching up with new cars.
Which is called a development of the modern world.
Vivian Usherwood
standupandspit 