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Best Famous Shunted Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Shunted poems. This is a select list of the best famous Shunted poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Shunted poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of shunted poems.

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Written by T Wignesan | Create an image from this poem

Blinks through Blood-shot Walks

When at five-thirty
In the rubbed-eye haziness
Of ferreting lonesome night walks
The camera-eye refugee
Asleep in the half awakefulness
Of the hour
Peers out of his high turbanned sockets:
Hyde Park's through road links
London's diurnally estranged couple -
The Arch and Gate.

When at five-thirty
The foot falls gently
Of the vision cut in dark recesses
And the man, finger gingerly on the fly
Gapes dolefully about
For a while
Exchanges a casual passing word
Standing in the Rembrandtesque clefts
And the multipled ma'm'selle trips out:
Neat and slick.
They say you meet the girls at parties
And get deeper than swine in orgies.

When at five-thirty
The fisherman's chilled chips
Lie soggy and heeled under the Arch
Where patchy transparent wrappers cling
To slippery hands jingling the inexact change
That mounted the trustful fisherman's credit:
The stub legged fisher of diplomat
And cool cat
And the prostitutes' confidant;
Each shivering pimp's warming pan.

Then at five-thirty
The bowels of Hyde Park
Improperly growled and shunted
And shook the half-night-long
Lazily swaggering double deckers,
Suddenly as in a rude recollection,
To break and pull, grind and swing away
And around, drawing the knotting air after
Curling and unfurling on the pavements.

And at five-thirty
The prostrate mindful old refugee
Dares not stir
Nor cares to wake and swallow
The precisely half-downed bottle
Of Coke clinging to the pearly dew
Nor lick the clasp knife clean
Lying bare by a tin of' skewed top
Corned beef, incisively culled

Look! that garden all spruced up
An incongruous lot of hair on that bald pate
No soul stirs in there but the foul air
No parking alongside but from eight to eight.
Learning so hard and late
No time to scratch the bald pate.
        At five-thirty-one
        A minute just gone
The thud is on, the sledge-hammer yawns
And in the back of ears, strange noises
As from afar and a million feet tramp.
One infinitesimal particle knocks another
And the whirl begins in a silent rage
And the human heart beats harder
While in and around, this London
This atomic mammoth roams
In the wastes of wars and tumbling empires.


Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

Portraits From Memory

 I

Through my bedroom window

The coal carts jolted over the cobbles

A slow heavy rhythm full,

Light and fast returning empty.



The coal office manager was a dwarf

With sixty year old skin

On a ten year old’s body and

Hornrims on a wizened wizard’s face.



The enormous shire horses neighed

In warning if you went near,

Their polished brasses gleaming,

Their worn blinkers waxed;

When they brought in lorries

A two year old died

On the first day.



II

Behind a creosoted fence lay

The goodsyard with a single line

Where LMS wagons shunted from Barnsley

With wet coals gleaming

All the way to Neville Hill.



I never connected the clanking wagons

With our weekly coalmen, their faces

Black like miners, their backs bent

Under hundred weight sacks.

They dumped each load to scree

Down the cellar grate,

Its jet-dust choking

The sunlight.



III

Behind the goodsyard lay the woodyard

With slender knotted planks stacked round.

One night it got alight, the heat

Cracked my window but I never woke.

When I read of the burning of Troy

I remember Standish’s wood yard fire.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry