THE JOURNEY AFTER.(Poem)

 
   I wedded in the noonday's perfect heat, 
   Although it seemed 
   The marriage should begin when we would meet 
   The one-fifteen which pulled in--late--and steamed 
   A bitter breath of metal in the sun. 
   The heat that hung so damply in the air 
   Had smothered sound and left a silence, old 
   As dust which layered travellers one by one 
   Quite carefully so not a patch was bare, 
   And sunlight altered brown to sparkling gold. 
 
   You did not notice one bride, travelling-dressed, 
   You did not see 
   The singular, but blurred me with the rest, 
   Into a muffled line, a coloured sea 
   Of mobile noise. I paid you not this lack 
   Of compliment, but curiously gazed, 
   A stranger clad in tweed and bored disdain. 
   On many weddings had you turned your back? 
   Or yawned when happy, sweating couples praised 
   Their day, picked grimy flowers, rode your train? 
 
   Each wedding party same as those before 
   Like squares of crop, 
   Shorn sheep or crumbling dry-walled fences or 
   The steaming shrink-wrapped hay. You cannot stop 
   For detail. Restless travel shuts the eyes 
   And leaves you only with a ...