Hemisphere-straddling town beside the Lea,
that gulfy erstwhile Saxon-Dane frontier
King Alfred fished in, catching condoms, tea-
bags, shopping trolleys, cans that once hugged beer,
old Leyton, jellied-eel-and-mash-rich birthplace
of my parents and the pie-stuffed gaffer
of the silver screen, Sir Alfred Hitchcock!
The most notorious psychos on the earth’s face
couldn’t sabotage you, no Luftwaffe
turned you into desert. So then, which cock,
which bushy-chinned bridge-bomber waxing hairier
described you, Leyton, as “a Muslim area”?
Some swastika-and-crescent-waving penis.
Yet saying this means I’m the crass extremist.
