She’s no Celia Johnson and he’s not
Trevor Howard.
(Is it actually
Possible to be adulterous
While wearing a trilby?)
And where’s the smoke?
Great sooty billows from grimy funnels,
A monochrome miasma making eyes
Of parting lovers, tearful with regret
And irritation, while spinning steel wheels
Screech for purchase on slick rails.
Of course,
There is only the efficient hum as
Electric locomotion whispers
Through the station almost unnoticed.
Now, liaisons end at the barriers;
Only one has a ticket.
Until then
They stare across unquaffed glasses, utterly
Oblivious to magnificence
Of ceramic clad walls, to the lagers
Going flat between them, to breaking news
Newcastle United might be signing
Trevor Celia and Howard Johnson
According to Sky Sports report glaring down
From the big screen by the modest mezzanine
Where a poet’s declaiming his peon
To the Centurion Bar’s glazed splendour
And the table with two halves abandoned.
Dave Alton
