Arthur, I must apologize for being so slow to comment on your poem.I love it
and find it rich with experience and alive with vivid details that make me a
part of what you experience.  I am totally involved in your trip on the train,
the sight, sounds, and totality of  Christmas Shopping.  I don't have any real
critique at all.  You captured the feelings of the observer of humanity, the
graffiti on the outskirts, the marketplace, the beautiful woman, the poverty.
It is like Dickens in many ways.  Thank you for it.


                        (i)

The canal, grey and still, is the city's mirror
where phantom campanile drift
and cranes compile quivering apartments.

Frost along a leaf, sunlight golden through the frost.

The train insinuates through the detritus
of a city's back ways where graffiti blares
over bleak walls and fallen factories;
a red brick pub, stark and misshapen, stands derelict.
We roll heavily, metal on metal,
over the web and tangle of  bright rails
shudder and terminate.


              ( ii )

She assailed him like fragrance from flowers
in the meadow's heart. Walls melted as hills rose
over the paved ways of the station mall;
dew glistened like stars where her feet adorned
the shining pathways.

Loudspeakers' nasal instructions
resonated and destinations
flickered across the boards.

Demure, pale and pregnant,
ripe as a gourd, she glided beyond him,
rustled whispers of crisp taffeta at him;
paused and turned,
to check her platform, place and time.

He never knew her, never dreamed to ask,
but in the clamor of that vast hall
he slept a moment in the garden of her face
as centuries uncurled.





(iii)

The open market,
is a cornucopia
crammed for the Christmas
of a heaving hoi-polloi.

Perched on a roof
a starling, beak agape,
boot-black beads
half-lidded in bliss

harks to the rippling murmurs
that flow
from the dark rainbow
of his throat;

beyond his warbled taps,
a milk-white moon
breasts the ragged profile
of the city.


(iv)

'Toasted teacake for one'

Insulted by poverty, badged with age,
he musters crumbs with his grimy thumb.

Away for the day
from the malice
and unreasoned rages of the estate
that lap against his window
like a morning tide of pain,
shits through his letterbox,
tries the latch after midnight,
taunts him through cold mist,
haunts him down the belling streets
-wants him dead,
he has sat here as long as he may,
dared a lesser wrath,
gathered the cossets of neutrality and warmth,
the comfort of folk around him
but already there are lights on outside,
inside, bent eyes and shrugs, whispers,
so he leaves.

Mother Earth billows up Briggate,
all arse and anorak,
rolls like a laden galleon along Kirkgate,
four carriers per fist, and a family to feed, for God's sake,
sashays to the music in the streets
where avenues of Santas nod and beam
but the night wind down by the bus stop,
sharp and cold as a blade,
plucks at his trousers,
burns omens in his eyes.

                        (v)

The city falls behind
dark grips the train
evening papers mask us,
each from each.
I hold my grand daughter tight,
watch the pools of light drift past,
marvel at her small hands
against the pane of night
the miracle of her spread fingers.
My ear against her back
adores the tiny tremors of life.