CYCLE, WITH CYTOLOGIST

Looking back, we did nothing but laugh at her
green bike, wire basket, three stiff gears and pedal-
powered lamp. Before it was stolen, that ‘Shopper’

was her delight and she was the Grand Lady
of the Great West Road, scorning the dragon sleep
of rush-hour.  But how to remain steady

at Gillette Corner when you have to keep
glancing round... That’s why we gave you a mirror
like the Lady of Shalott, and then a yawping

slughorn fit for Roland.  I’ve a child’s horror
of that razor’s edge, long for her release
from the dark tower, the curse.  Now, tirra-lirra,

she comes winging towards us out of the West
Middlesex’s bright labs, tracking cervic-
al cancer through a dark glass.  Smear. Stain. Test

results, and laughter. The glass she would never
consult, I see now, was one that knows more
about the juggernaut that’s coming over

the brow at your back, that’s carrying cures
to all disease, that shows Persephone’s
route home, past birth and love and all the winters.

KENILWORTH

Before anyone is about, I walk
from our B&B to find the castle
where Leicester over-reached to
Elizabeth with his fireworks, water
pageant, masque and mystery play.

We have given up on all that.
We see what there is to see in daylight
with only the odd celebratory shot
or squib, preferring our shabbiness,
the rust and clunk of an old Rover.

It is a ruin, of course, and costs
to maintain or visit. But Kenilworth
has the air of the real thing:
an act of love with time,
still able to command a skyline

usurped from Coventry by con-trail
and phone-mast. Imagine that
ridiculous abundance, imagine
her gasps.  And it has come to this,
down the narrow lists of the A452.

THE TRAIN

I

A name that pulls away effortfully
into a blue tunnel: that screen of blue
they use to graft the fantastic
on to the everyday in Hollywood
but here untouched

puffing a life
towards its woodland terminus
where Horsted Keynes will come to mean
more than the terrifying hiss of steam
as parents insist you must go with them for the bluebells.

              II

I turn the page and it is
La Flèche d’Or:

this golden arrow
straight to the heart

of France entrances me,
a sleeper across

the night seas
of these short

interminable years
before I turn the page

and there are words
and flesh to adore.

 

      III

Was it Burton Bradstock we were returning from,
a long haul through flooded Dorset,
delay after delay,

when the train at last had ground to a halt
somewhere outside Castle Cary
and through a glass

smoking with gloom and shadowy work,
one cry — we ain’t got no steam! –
made us hoot?

                  IV

As if it weren’t exciting
enough to be in a
camping coach
at Lyndhurst Station,

the steam trains hurtling
past us all night
through the New Forest,
through our dreams

of lines that switch
into a clearing
where King William
is assassinated –

Oh to be in England...
was the April
headline as we woke
to a whiteout,

all the greenwood
blank as the pages
of a 1960s
domesday book.

               V

Past Cologne,
past the Lorelei
and the Mouse Tower

we advance along
my green and narrow
sixteenth year

towards a dark
platform where the Sandmann
family reach out

and shake my hand
and take me in the car
blinking  blinking

over level crossings
that have forgotten
what once wept through

and blindly salute.