Observation Car

 To be put on the train and kissed and given my ticket, 
Then the station slid backward, the shops and the neon lighting, 
Reeling off in a drunken blur, with a whole pound note in my pocket 
And the holiday packed with Perhaps.
 It used to be very exciting.
 

The present and past were enough.
 I did not mind having my back 
To the engine.
 I sat like a spider and spun 
Time backward out of my guts - or rather my eyes - and the track 
Was a Now dwindling off to oblivion.
 I thought it was fun: 

The telegraph poles slithered up in a sudden crescendo 
As we sliced the hill and scattered its grazing sheep; 
The days were a wheeling delirium that led without end to 
Nights when we plunged into roaring tunnels of sleep.
 

But now I am tired of the train.
 I have learned that one tree 
Is much like another, one hill the dead spit of the next 
I have seen tailing off behind all the various types of country 
Like a clock running down.
 I am bored and a little perplexed; 

And weak with the effort of endless evacuation 
Of the long monotonous Now, the repetitive, tidy 
Officialdom of each siding, of each little station 
Labelled Monday, Tuesday - and goodness ! what happened to - Friday ? 

And the maddening way the other passengers alter: 
The schoolgirl who goes to the Ladies' comes back to her seat 
A lollipop blonde who leads you on to assault her, 
And you've just got her skirts round her waist and her pants round her feet 

When you find yourself fumbling about the nightmare knees 
Of a pink hippopotamus with a permanent wave 
Who sends you for sandwiches and a couple of teas, 
But by then she has whiskers, no teeth and one foot in the grave.
 

I have lost my faith that the ticket tells where we are going.
 
There are rumours the driver is mad - we are all being trucked 
To the abattoirs somewhere - the signals are jammed and unknowing 
We aim through the night full speed at a wrecked viaduct.
 

But I do not believe them.
 The future is rumour and drivel; 
Only the past is assured.
 From the observation car 
I stand looking back and watching the landscape shrivel, 
Wondering where we are going and just where the hell we are, 

Remembering how I planned to break the journey, to drive 
My own car one day, to have choice in my hands and my foot upon power, 
To see through the trumpet throat of vertiginous perspective 
My urgent Now explode continually into flower, 

To be the Eater of Time, a poet and not that sly 
Anus of mind the historian.
 It was so simple and plain 
To live by the sole, insatiable influx of the eye.
 
But something went wrong with the plan: I am still on the train.

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