The Walker
He never spoke to anyone. Or smiled.
Aghast, famished, weathered beyond knowing,
He’d come at you out of every season
And go by. Not to be overtaken,
Or approached, he would draw away swiftly,
Without effort, seeming, in space and time,
A man apart, consumed as by rancour,
Or dread. (Talk of a lengthening stride,
The god of wayfarers disclosed in dust.)
In decreasing circles he would come
To towns, briefly to haunt the shadows there
(A shower in the station toilets, weird songs),
And in widening ones leave them again,
Sick for horizons, some further exile,
A more fearful dispossession. Nameless,
Yet named by each generation in turn;
Speechless, yet in renewing the margins,
Seeming to speak, to utter. Some of us
In cold weather would leave out meals for him,
Offerings, you might say, to appease a soul;
But they were not taken. One summer, then,
Through the flickering windows of a train
Pulling out of the station around noon,
I glimpsed him on the opposite platform,
First his head, then his torso, then his legs,
As in some underhand cubist moment
Deliberately flaunted, mimicry
In stages, mockery by light and movement,
And I thought he’d have seen me this way too,
Part by part, frame by frame, scarce half made up:
An oddly comforting thought, truth to tell –
As though we had that in common, at least.
Aghast, famished, weathered beyond knowing,
He’d come at you out of every season
And go by. Not to be overtaken,
Or approached, he would draw away swiftly,
Without effort, seeming, in space and time,
A man apart, consumed as by rancour,
Or dread. (Talk of a lengthening stride,
The god of wayfarers disclosed in dust.)
In decreasing circles he would come
To towns, briefly to haunt the shadows there
(A shower in the station toilets, weird songs),
And in widening ones leave them again,
Sick for horizons, some further exile,
A more fearful dispossession. Nameless,
Yet named by each generation in turn;
Speechless, yet in renewing the margins,
Seeming to speak, to utter. Some of us
In cold weather would leave out meals for him,
Offerings, you might say, to appease a soul;
But they were not taken. One summer, then,
Through the flickering windows of a train
Pulling out of the station around noon,
I glimpsed him on the opposite platform,
First his head, then his torso, then his legs,
As in some underhand cubist moment
Deliberately flaunted, mimicry
In stages, mockery by light and movement,
And I thought he’d have seen me this way too,
Part by part, frame by frame, scarce half made up:
An oddly comforting thought, truth to tell –
As though we had that in common, at least.
Peter Gilmour lives in Glasgow and has poems and stories in various magazines.
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