Max thanks enjoyed that I sometimes think that I am part of an old travel
film definitely fading!!
P
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 14 November 2012 05:25
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: old travel snaps
Old travel snaps
If travel must be postponed,
one may fall back on travel film
and photographs, recent or old.
These have the shadowy virtue
of perspective in time -
last year's sharp bright pictures,
last decade's perhaps yellowing,
last century's fading merely,
remotest the sepias of beyond.
The trains I took as a child
steamed out of sight
long since, though rail
(unpatronised except for goods)
still links those towns,
conducting still its sedate
courtship with the sinuous
motorways. These old
NZR publicity snaps
bring back the stifling
darkness of smoky tunnels,
dry sandwiches, thick crockery.
Conscripts I travelled with
waited for the high viaducts
to hurl into the bush despised
plates and saucers. A shllling
for a pillow at the platform
before boarding the Overnight!
The spacey feeling adrift
in the morning at Wellington
Station, looking up at the
big bronze statuary -
ideal Maori nobility,
bare chest and breasts brassy.=
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