To Kenny, Abby, KdS, yabyumpan and Rahael

I
This is the Night Mail, crossing the border
Bringing the cheque and the postal order

Hot day.
Slow burn.
Open
Return.
Leave work.
Find train.
Travel
Again.
Distance run
Old song
Time now spent
Moving on.
Pass the workers
Hived like bees
Pass the plain
The waving trees.
Travel further
Moving on
Distance travelled
Old song.
Lose the platform
Status quo
Find the place
Where one can go
Now as we move on
Clicking and clacking
Inside the carriage
Posting and packing.
Passing through cultures
Flying like switches
Faster than fairies
Faster than witches.
Just like the land
That's flying on through
What may come next will
Fanfare the new.
Flares of new people
In imagination
New as the clocks on the
Waterloo station.
Finding the links that can
Hold us together.
Finding the capital's
Nicest of weather.
Cool like a lake
Accepting a diver
Or like a taxi-cab
Before a driver.
Expectations come
Hurtling by
Wiltshire and Hampshire
And Berkshire and sky.
Finally Surrey
The Oval still passes
Dreaming of Bradman
In nostlagia's glasses.
Forced excitement
Dropping away.
Slowly steadying
End of the day.
Here's the platform
New and wrong.
End of the day.
Old song.
New dream.
New city.
Old self.
Unpretty.
Cool night.
Slow calm.
New friends.
Night balm.

II
Sweet Thames run softly, till I end my song

And so, as evening softens on the wall
I find myself again where dreams are made.
At least for in my head. The ebullient call,
Of London to its blurred inhabitants
That time is not for keeping coiled away
Seems never to affect me, for where they
Are hurried through their baguettes to their homes
I dawdle, dwindling evening to a pocket.
Here memories coexist, and coalesce
Until I see the contradiction, Lord's
With mouth of Space Age yet pavilion's style
So eighteenth-century, with stolid pride.
And Tate, assuredly modern, next to span
Uncertain bridge not sure of century's weight
For other side lives questioning St Paul's.
While ever knowing- never quite forgives.

The streets darken a little- Monet leaves
And something more Picassian takes the stage
The Barbican presents what it decides
While London shows us everything we know.
Half-eaten sandwiches, a taxi-cab,
The Thames, still sparkling, ever to connect-
Wordsworth, thou shouldst be living at this hour!
Like strains of half-forgotten antiphons
Without reply for now- and yet- Old songs.

Meandering like a needle through a cloth
I, less than sharp but full of new directions
Defect from Southern London's brooding style
To businessmen and universal bars.
Still leafy, thinks the wind, which passes through
Still incorporeal to do its bidding
I slump, observe, pretend I can't affect.
But soon I shall be curled inside a group
That modern webs have binded gossamer tight
And rage against the dying of the light.

III
In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo

'Am I in the right place?' 'Probably Tchai-
kovsky?' Relieved they find a smiling I
Laconic. All these people gathered in
And just for talking. Listening a sin?
I know the answer's no, St Paul's reminds
And so the small talk casually grinds.
Although we know each other's selves from selves
And posted dozens, scores, in twenties, twelves
Although each one of us might understand
A film of custard skin lies, as if pre-planned
An hour quick burns the distance right away
Until extinguished evening ends the day.

The table, circular, admits no King
A democratic, social kind of thing.
Each person sometimes mumbles in their way
Then lets the other dogs all have their day.
The food, Italian, bubbles with good grace
The water flows, wine sometimes in its place.
The conversation turns quite soon to stories
of mythic people- magic allegories
Through which the group can find the webs it weaves
The friendship made, and threatened and reprieved.
Little invective flows, a bubbling brook
Is easier to swim than overlook.
Electric light slows the impending dusk
The smell of caramel, and cars and musk
The ever-scented etheris-ed evening
Allows us all to follow where it's leading.
There's laughter, grace, articulate viveurs
Disgruntlement and loss, both howls and purrs
Strangely coherent to our very end
An aria that 144 could send
To sleep. And finally, as night grows long.
We move from our old table, show, and song.

IV
Moon River, wider than a mile

So what of this life? This thing which may
Be flowing, to an estuary of some kind.
It's not a Mississippi. Whereever I'm going
Is some place else. Neither a Thames. Invested
With a history I half-understand. Losing
an ium from Italians, yet still full of
Pasta and hospitality.

How can we weave webs across the world if we
Are a river. Perhaps we are a maze. Or our life is.
One with no centre. Sometimes we are
Deceptively close to people. Other times
Lifetimes away. Our paths diverge, interplay
Distinct, confused, doubling back.
Eventually, one day, with the sound of the
Dreaded, haunted crickets- we find our exit- of
Relief and release and completion and pointlessness.

While we find people in our maze, spun together
By the maze's web itself, we should value it.
Repeat those old songs, complemented with new ones.
Hum ourselves to sleep, to life, to death.
For what is Weetabix and orange juice and
Suspicious cats if not a fabric, uncreosoted-
Yet real. A method of sharing a path that we must take
Alone. We can share power, we can share ourselves
But we must find our journey ourselves.
Not just a train, or a wander through a dream
Or a metaphor in a cafe. A life-dream
Whole. Through the slow burns of hot days
The cool of the evening's divers. And all of it.
Fragmented, nearly headless. Transitory.
Cliched. Repetitive. But ever new. Like
Rerolled dough with enough stretch for another
Mince Pie. Christmas and Summer. Life and Death.
Angels. Here's a place to start:

TCH