Poetry Corner
Commuters
At the crossing of Walthamstow Marsh in the morning,Where two lines converge, between grey pylons brittle with ice,
And the broken Cortinas are shadowed by herons in mourning,
A swan breaks out, parting the surface
Of the river, dividing the ribbon that circles
The spokes of the city: the railways that radiate work.
Here the train slows, and five hundred faces turn up from the crossword
To blink at the light on the water.
For the sunshine surprises: the last time we looked there
Was darkness. The next time, the sky will be fragmented glass
And impatient, invisible children — the jottings of commerce —
Will gather to claim our attention.
Now the big diesel shudders. A wave of inertia
Runs down through the couplings — the passengers sag in their seats
And the mumbling solicitor pecks at an armful of papers:
A lifetime used up in the rhythm.
To the south, to the city, the landscape has altered.
The flats and the factories shift, playing tricks with the map
And the memory. Here, only the pub has escaped demolition
And only the chilled reeds remember
The encroaching embankment, the immigrant accents,
The scratch of the shovels, the back-breaking work on the rails.
As the rhythm compels our obsession, we wait in the silent
Wastes. Nobody listens to wraiths.