ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

HL wrote a poem ‘Faces in the Street’. With a bit of thought I wrote a poem about faces on a subway station.





The Faces

Bobbing heads, eccentric, restive rustling feet
and scintillating colours as people come and go.
For most who walk are strangers, and if friends
do-chance-to meet,
it’s only scant acknowledgement to— so-and-so.

The dank darkened tunnel, the rumble, the pound,
and syncopating rattles from archway to the hall;
with clear glass eyes the newborn hurtles from
the womb unbound,
with fiery brakes a’screeching, welcomes one-and-all.

Animated puppets, sweat filled summer days,
and suffocating carriages where luck fills empty seats.
The unfriendly— unnoticed— stand in crowds of
cramped malaise,
bodies tired and worn from the city and the streets.


Wheels slip metal brake shoes, slowly turn on rail
as stimulated motors breathe babbled blatherskite.
Untethered, the silver train moves on down the
chequered trail
to vanish, as a ghost— a spirit of the night.

John Macleod

I rather like trains, or at least I used to. The suburban lines aren't all that flash now, but there is still something magical about an old steam train. Where we used to live before we moved here we lived across the river from the Ipswich Rail Museum and often saw the beautiful old trains passing.

But ... back to your poem, sort of haunting. Love the last line about the disappearing 'ghost' train.

G'day, Leonie.

That a name we don't hear much these days.

Lawson was the master of poetic imagery and simplicity.

Lawson's, Faces in the street, was a graphic account of ordinary people walking past Henry on a corner in the slums of Sydney.

As with Banjo. Lawson wrote poems that started very ordinary but by the last verse tears would dropping, and a patriotic heart would be beating in time with each and every word.

I tried to push a lot of Henry into a few subtle verses of my poem.

There are at least one 14 line in each of the verses.

Lawson was a very sentimental tragic. You only have to read his poem 'The Separtion' to realise what a deep thinking romatic he was.

Then there is 'Ruth' a poem of 61 verses that I vow will bring tears to your eyes.

John

Travelling by train these days in suburbia or the country just doesn't seem to have the charisma I recall traveling as a young lad on the old Sunlander, drawn by an old puffing billy.


Merv