The Lacuna of Hackney Downs
Represents to me the end of the world – since that day
sketchily retouched by the hearsay of marshes and acres
of football fields, but still I don’t know where it is
(except vaguely north London) and nor do I want to.
I have no idea now where we were going (I think I have
invented the very distant aunt in Enfield who kept
a stuffed jay in a cylindrical glass case); nor had I then
any sense at first that we had reached a destination
as our train stood in what turned out to be a loading yard.
We were like Columbus – except that we were told a name:
the guard, tapping on the side of our single compartment –
You’ve passed the last station – announced it as he handed
three northern hicks (my mother first) down the long drop
to the unpolished rails in that forsaken siding. We had been
quite without apprehension till then, patiently waiting for
the train to move on. There had been no sound of any birdsong.
Page(s) 16
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