Walking in Essex on a Saturday Night

Old men crouch and beg.
A murder of lads
stripping branches from trees by the bridge,
bewailing the night, and making you
uneasy as you move between
the Nando’s and the off-licence,
to whither you walk to waste
your money on junk food.
 
And twice you pass the patron saint
of stab victims, the spotlit Knife Angel,
a sculpture built of blades outside
the Mercury theatre, the old Greek boy aloft
with winged helmet and serpentine sceptre,
now painted white with guano like  
a ship’s mermaid. You pass a Roman wall
as drinkers amble by on heels and phones.