i
- Our traveling narrator is now in London.
- He sees Omeros as a homeless bargeman—the tired poet rests on the steps of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, but is quickly shooed away by an angry churchwarden.
- Omeros highlights the cleric's hypocrisy by pointing to the Bible verses for the day, which are about the virtue of charity.
ii
- Omeros sits on the Embankment (the walk along the Thames River in London) and sees the icky bits on the underside of the statues there.
- He observes the city around him, reading names off the boats as they are reflected in water—the daily life of a "devalued empire."
- He sees what is likely the statue of Queen Boadicea (the leader of the Iceni tribe who fomented a revolt against the Roman Empire) reflected in the Thames, raising its hand to Parliament.
- Fog rolls in, obscuring the evidence of empire before the poet's eyes.