Bristol Temple Meads to Newport

The dark steely rails that shone out before him

The train rolled on its wheels,

That hummed and strummed on their pins

The station arches were open

Like the vaults of a cavern

And soundless syllogism of sibilant terms

Work men in work clothes

Brickwork in patches

Faded green grassy slopes

Hunker down under bridges

Discarded rusty rails brown as old ropes

Tangles of brambles below

Telegraph pylons

And electricity lines run along gravel ridges

Caged in rocks like some bland modern art

Stand in their furnaces

Burning hopes and hearts

Of the people of Filton Abbey Wood

Trash and smash and iron railings

Barbed wire fencings of Patchway

Through tunnels with runnels

Dark and foreboding

Never opposing lamp light

Quenched paths beneath rivers and valleys

And gullies reposing

Stuck with unknowing the emptiness vast

Is somewhere a train like a snake that is glowing

Whistling wind in the breath of the dark

And fortitude comes on the tracks while its snowing

And the breath of a storm, like a hope that won’t last

Then the bright welsh day light

Of the Severn Tunnel Junction

Cattle in the fields stand or chew grass

Little Welsh houses in low flat country

Dark deserted woods and piles of stones

Crops of newer estates appear by the trackside

As another train whizzes past

Then the dead dust of pastel greens and straw

That lie in fields as in seas

And little hills though no great spills

Will be toil for the train as it yet runs fast

The sense of more tight-knittedness

In smallness of place and collection of people

In location greets you or else

Is coloured of what you know of the Welsh

More slate walls with pigeons resting