How many bricks between Liverpool Street
And Bethnal Green? Years of smoke
And steam and soot have left them
Impossible to count, obscuring the story
Of the fight to keep East London from
Swallowing the railway whole.

There are cuttings and there are
Embankments: the yin and yang of
The urban railway as it forges its path
Through fissures in the city.

It is too quiet now. Trains no longer
Haul themselves heavily up the curving bank,
A baptism of fire and water before
A life of relative ease, busy suburbs
Giving way to endless East Anglia.

Now, they hum gently and have
Power to spare: the enemy is
Not gravity, but time.

The place is not mine, but I feel
I know it, seeing it in minute detail
Through adolescent eyes that
Resided in the head of a middle aged man.

His mind, too, felt like familiar surroundings:
Tile Cross and Chelmsley Wood were my
Spitalfields and Bethnal Green,
Places we knew so well that changed so much.

Simplification of layouts, disappearance of
Contemptibly familiar motive power,
Destruction of barely noticed buildings:
All these fates eventually befall
Even that which seems most permanent.

Somehow, though, the names refuse to change
(Though they may soften or harden
With time and language): they are
The fulcrum of so many memories
Through which even transient human creations
May receive eternal life.

01/28/2016

Author's Note: For Iain Rice.

Posted on 02/20/2016
Copyright © 2024 Richard Vince