This week's Poetry Choice : The Underground | London Life Archive | Scoop.it

The Underground


There we were in the vaulted tunnel running,

You in your going-away coat speeding ahead

And me, me then like a fleet god gaining

Upon you before you turned to a reed

Or some new white flower japped with crimson

As the coat flapped wild and button after button

Sprang off and fell in a trail Between the Underground and the Albert Hall.

Honeymooning, mooning around, late for the Proms,

Our echoes die in that corridor and now I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones

Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons

To end up in a draughty lamplit station

After the trains have gone, the wet track

Bared and tensed as I am, all attention

For your step following and damned if I look back.


from Station Island (Faber, 1984), copyright © Seamus Heaney 1984, used by permission of the author and the publisher