Alan Whitaker
Doctor Beeching's working breakfast
Laid waste at a stroke.
Handed back to swamp and weeds.
Victorians gather beneath an embankment,
stirred by this outrage.
Sun every morning,
as rails rust and rust.
We check every morning
in the before breakfast chill.
No trains yesterday. None today
or tomorrow.
Never. Ever.
A thin sliver of silver fades
as the rails rust and rust;
beside the goods shed, the cattle dock,
the platelayers’ hut.
Rust.
We have our dreams
of midnight ghost trains
and seaside excursions.
But they are only dreams.
Rabbits feed between coal sidings;
grasshoppers bask on baking banks,
freshwater shrimps glide, turn and arch
in drainage channels along parched cuttings.
Discarded legacy of toil.
And the rails rust and rust,
into September, October.
Winter.
Sunny mornings turning into fog, rain,
leaf blizzards.
Ice.
We protest in vain
as the days dwindle.
Page(s) 58
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