Knock on

So things went from bad to worse
You might say they snow balled
I was rushing for a train
It was a quarter to six on a Tuesday
After a little rain
The steps down to the underpass
Were damp in that new feeling way
And busy commuters were emerging
and swarming up the stairs the other way

As I approached the entrance
A woman stepped in my way
She was old and frail, so I left her
On her way, thinking I may
Side step her, I maneouvered in that direction
My momentum carrying me like a truck
Just out beyond the filling station
I was fast but not fast enough
For a not so young buck
Had stood in my way
And began his encumbered traverse
Down that royal highway of stairs
One might say, he considered himself king
Of it for that day, a king stuck not in forward, but reverse

Now I must say
Before I go any further
That I consider myself fair
In most circumstances demanding faith
And patience in another's ability
To climb or descend, I take a deep breath
And breathe deep, an internal sigh
Feeling in the next life I maybe rewarded
For such virtuous self-sacrifice
However I had already been this paragon
Of uncommon common sense
Probably at least twice before that day
One on my way up from Lehel (or the Hell)
To translate
Another I can't remember now
And this third on the way down at Corvin Negyed (the Crow)
And each time, I stepped in tow behind
I trudged like one of the lost souls
In the inferno
But in this instance- seeing as I was in a rush for paradise -the pub
(Which I actually call an English lesson)
I thought I might skip the purgatory
Of existence
That is the downward resistance to flow
That equals following a very slow fellow

So ladies and gentlemen of the jury
I ask you this
Is it right that I should be condemned
When feeling the need not to extend
My sorrows, I borrowed a leaf from the rabbit
and hopped the queue?
I leap-frogged -metaphorically speaking
Went around my obstacle to freedom
Like any sensible person would
My only mistake was this
I brushed him as I passed
I cannot believe it even constituted a nudge
Did he budge - no way
But he reacted like he was hurt by my affray
Like some wounded animal he began to howl
Like some howling banshee down to hell's bowel

I like the good Christian, I did not wish to engage
You might say I fled, but I did not fight that day
One has a sense sometimes of the murderous intention of folk
I have no doubt that he was capable of all kinds
Of horrible things if he had me in his yoke
But witnessing before in the eighth district a fight
Of a maddened man getting out of his car to yell
In the face of a passer by
I had sensed this feeling of his injustice, his injured sense of pride
That is really his general nervousness encumbered
By an instinctual feeling to fight
Unfortunately my own instinct did not show up in a similar light
And I chose the way of survival - I chose the path of flight

However when two opposing instincts do not agree on their way
What follows is a pursuit down through a subway
And if you can imagine I am not that young myself
Though not that old either nor lacking in legs
To put some distance between me and this red faced elf
I could tell he was behind me, because of all the yelling
and I surely received some quizzical looks
From astonished commuters passing
But that is the trouble with rush hour
As I immediately found
That I came up to a long queue of people waiting to enter the underground

By the time I had entered the escalator
I could still hear my foe
Shouting Blue murder - hey you, hey you
Though in Hungarian I suppose
What did he expect that I would turn and apologize?
By the time I did that he would have hit me
Or spat more insults into my eyes

There are times when I would have stood and fought
Or at least calmly tried to put my position and what I thought
But let's face it I do not speak Hungarian
And I was not about to repeat an encounter
With an enraged and nervous barbarian

Now I reached the platform
And panicked I had no where to go
The train had left in the direction I needed
And kept coming did my foe
My only chance therefore lay in boarding another train
One in the opposite direction
And my thoughts were not in vain

So in the calmest manner possible
So as not to stick out in the crowd
I briskly walked through onlookers
Hoping my pursuer too slow
And that I would lose him somehow
It even entered my brain
To embark a few carriages down
For the last thing I wanted
Was to be trapped in a car with a mad cow

The upshot was I got off at Kliniak
Shaken and somewhat stirred
But unlike James Bond I had no Martini
And the comparison is quite absurd
Next I re-boarded a different train
Travelling in the right direction
So as to make sure I was not followed
By a mad Turk intent on his own correction

Later in the lesson I did have a drink
And it was not that it tasted bitter
But that it gave me time to think
Should I have had more courage and at least socked my foe?
He was an older man and I do not think that was the way to go
Was it my fault? I confess yes
I should have behaved with more decorum
And less rashness
But alas I was rushing
And that is the scourge of the modern age
And it shows how even an English man
can in a foreign country, behave as a knave