The Gawahati Express
from Delhi to Assam
And in the daytime we'd fold up the bunks
to make space for turbans and sarees
and an endless parade of questions
about cricket and Thatcher
and the novels we were reading
and when we'd be starting a family.
To everything the all-affirmative
head shake and always firm advice
never again to pay so many rupees
to the smiling shoe-shine boys.
And every new station's tannoy cry
- chai, chai, caffee, caffee, chai -
heralded a running clink of steaming
chipped glass tumblers to be gulped
and handed back through the bars
as the train began to pant
and leave behind another platform
with its Higginbotham bookstall
and thin red-jacketed porters
balancing impossible loads.
And each night, after the stainless steel shit hole
with mosquitoes hungry for your arse
and raised footplates with a bird's-eye view
of an endlessly flashing glint of track,
and down which we feared anything might slip
- money-belt, bracelet, your foot -
and over which we swayed perilously to pee,
we'd bolt the door: uncurl today's
white cotton bed-rolls; drop sandals
onto colourless lino so sticky
I tried never to have to touch it;
and ease our way into some sort of sleep,
ear-plugged against the loud thumps and whistles
and long unscheduled stops in the middle of nowhere.
Page(s) 9
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The