That Whitsun,
I was late getting away:
Not till
One-twenty on the sunlit
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all
Of being in a hurry gone.
We
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock;
The river's level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.
All afternoon, through the tall heat that
For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle,
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges
And rose: and now and then a smell of
Displace the reek of buttoned
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.
At first,
I didn't notice what a
The weddings
Each station that we stopped at: sun
The interest of what's happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirlsI took for porters larking with the mails,
And went on reading.
Once we started, though,
We passed them, grinning and pomaded,
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,
As if out on the end of an
Waving
To something that survived it.
Struck,
I
More promptly out next time, more curiously,
And saw it all again in different terms:
The fathers with broad belts under their
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
The nylon gloves and jewelry-substitutes,
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochers
Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
Yes, from
And banquet-halls up yards, and
Coach-party annexes, the
Were coming to an end.
All down the
Fresh couples climbed abroad: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to
Just what it saw departing: children
At something dull; fathers had never
Success so huge and wholly farcical;
The women
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter,
At a religious wounding.
Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
Now fields were building-plots. and poplars
Long shadows over major roads, and
Some fifty minutes, that in time would
Just long enough to settle hats and sayI nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side-An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl -and
Thought of the others they would never
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:
There we were aimed.
And as we raced
Bright knots of
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened
Came close, and it was nearly done, this
Traveling coincidence; and what it
Stood ready to be loosed with all the
That being changed can give.
We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelledA sense of falling, like an
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.
