1. Two Fragments
Love holds me captive again
and I tremble with bittersweet longing
As a gale on the mountainside bends the oak tree
I am rocked by my love
Sappho
Translated by Cicely Herbert. Reprinted by the permission of the translator
Poems on the Underground: A New Edition (Particular Books/Penguin 2012)
MAYOR OF LONDON tfl.gov.uk/poems Transport for London
2. A song for England
An’ a so de rain a-fall
An’ a so de snow a-rain
An’ a so de fog a-fall
An’ a so de sun a-fail
An’ a so de seasons mix
An’ a so de bag-o’-tricks
But a so me understan’
De misery o’ de Englishman.
Andrew Salkey
Reprinted by permission of Patricia Salkey
Poems on the Underground: A New Edition (Particular Books/Penguin 2012)
MAYOR OF LONDON tfl.gov.uk/poems Transport for London
3. A Dead Statesman
I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
from Epitaphs of the War 1914-18
Rudyard Kipling
Poems on the Underground: A New Edition (Particular Books/Penguin 2012)
MAYOR OF LONDON tfl.gov.uk/poems Transport for London
4. The Emigrant Irish They would have thrived on our necessities.
What they survived we could not even live.
By their lights now it is time to
imagine how they stood there, what they stood with,
Like oil lamps we put them out the back, that their possessions may become our power.
of our houses, of our minds. We had lights Cardboard. Iron. Their hardships parcelled in them.
better than, newer than and then Patience. Fortitude. Long-suffering
in the bruise-coloured dusk of the New World.
a time came, this time and now
we need them. Their dread, makeshift example. And all the old songs. And nothing to lose.
Eavan Boland
Reprinted by permission of Carcarnet from New Collected Poems (2005)
Poems on the Underground: A New Edition (Particular Books/Penguin 2012)
MAYOR OF LONDON tfl.gov.uk/poems Transport for London
5. Concerto for Double Bass
He is a drunk leaning companionably He is a polite but devoted Valentino,
Around a lamp post or doing up Cheek to cheek, forgetting the next step.
With intermittent concentration He is feeling the pulse of the fat lady
Another drunk’s coat. Or cutting her in half.
But close your eyes and it is sunset
At the edge of the world. It is the language
Of dolphins, the growth of tree-roots,
The heart-beat slowing down.
John Fuller
Reprinted by the permission of the author
Poems on the Underground: A New Edition (Particular Books/Penguin 2012)
MAYOR OF LONDON tfl.gov.uk/poems Transport for London
6. Swallows Their annual regeneration
so flawless to human eyes
that there is no seam
The swallows are italic again, between parent and child.
cutting their sky-jive
between telephone wires,
flying in crossed lines. Just always the swallows
and their script of descenders,
dipping their ink to sign their signatures
across the page of the sky.
Owen Sheers
Reprinted by the permission of the author from Skirrid Hill (Seren 2005)
Poems on the Underground: A New Edition (Particular Books/Penguin 2012)
MAYOR OF LONDON tfl.gov.uk/poems Transport for London