Platform One




Holiday squeals, as if all were scrambling for their lives,
Panting aboard the “Cornish Riviera”.
Then overflow of relief and luggage and children,
Then duckling to smile out as the station moves.
Out there on the platform, under the rain,
Under his rain-cape, helmet and full pack,
Somebody, head bowed reading something,
Doesn’t know he’s missing his train.
He’s completely buried in that book.
He’s forgotten utterly where he is.
He’s forgotten Paddington, forgotten
Timetables, forgotten the long, rocking
Cradle of a journey into the golden West,
The coach’s soft wingbeat – as light
And straight as a dove’s flight.
Like a graveyard statue sentry cast
In blackened bronze. Is he reading poems?
A letter? The burial service? The raindrops
Beaded along his helmet rim are bronze.
The words on his page are bronze. Their meanings bronze.
Sunk in his bronze world he stands, enchanted.
His bronze mind is deep among the dead.
Sunk so deep among the dead that, much
As he would like to remember us all, he cannot.

Ted Hughes

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