Bordeaux Bay

Bordeaux Bay
Bordeaux Bay by Guernsey-based artist Tony Taylor

Thursday 30 April 2015

TRAIN OF THOUGHT

There are no trains in Guernsey. Perhaps it would be better if there were, to spare us the daily gridlock caused by an excess of cars.
I travel by train when visiting Britain or Europe and find that I prefer the European experience, maybe because my rail journeys in that part of the world are almost exclusively for pleasure.
The journey in this poem does not fall into that category.
















NIGHT TRAIN

There’re only ghosts on this last train.
A ghost myself, I play my part
with pale face and lacklustre eye.
At stations we arrive, depart,
a dull link in an endless chain
of carriages. Nearby I spy
a sleeping man, more ghost than me,   
drunk, comatose, asleep or dead,
he lies sprawled on a seat and snores,
his journey over. In his head,
he’s home again. Like a banshee,
night howls beyond the sliding doors,
while, underneath a neon glare,
the carriage walls appear to bleed.  
No option now to disembark:                                                        
spellbound, I go, propelled at speed,   
a rabbit, captive, in a snare,
through darkness into greater dark. 

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