HUMAN INTERFERENCE: A POEM

In honour of National Poetry Day, let me offer a poem I wrote thirty years ago, just after my birthday, in Geneva. The event it depicts had just recently happened to me, right down to the pigeons jumping on the carriage at Baker Street and off at Edgware Road, where we were being held. It didn't take much revising, and was published in my 1989 Northern Lights pamphlet Homage To Gibbon and then, after some delay, in Tokyo, in the summer 1990 issue of Edge: International Arts Interface. Both times I misspelled Edgware, adding an e, which was appropriate enough given the magazine's title. It is reprinted here for the first time with the name of the station spelled correctly. I've tried out a few other small changes.  TFL, or whatever they call London Transport these days, no longer uses the phrase 'human interference.' 


HUMAN INTERFERENCE

A few pigeons exit the car at Edgware Road.
The platform seems to soften & melt as
We finally pull away. The walls of the tunnel lose
Their blur, become clear as we come to a stop.
We sit. After a while faces move into focus,
Take on expressions, search the car for room or air
Or pigeons or something to read. Eventually
A disembodied someone talks. A person
Has fallen in front of the train. We will have to wait.
London Transport regret this delay, which they say
Is the result of "human interference".
We get in the way.
Many of us are already late.
We are getting later all the time.