A new series of poems has started to appear on the London Underground to celebrate its 150th anniversary. I saw a nice one yesterday on the Victoria Line - 'Buses On The Strand' by RP Lister:
The Strand is beautiful with buses,
Fat and majestical in form,
Red like tomatoes in their trusses
In August, when the sun is warm.
They cluster in the builded chasm,
Corpulent fruit, a hundred strong,
And now and then a secret spasm
Spurs them a yard or two along.
Scarlet and portly and seraphic,
Contented in the summer's prime,
They beam among the jumbled traffic,
Patiently ripening with time,
Till, with a final jerk and rumble,
The Strand tomatoes, fat and fair,
Roll past the traffic lights and tumble
Gleefully down Trafalgar Square.
I like the imagery and the fantasy of buses as tomatoes clustering and ripening, tumbling gleefully and, in a certain light, that's so true as the spill out into Trafalgar Square. I shall have to watch carefully.
The Strand is beautiful with buses,
Fat and majestical in form,
Red like tomatoes in their trusses
In August, when the sun is warm.
They cluster in the builded chasm,
Corpulent fruit, a hundred strong,
And now and then a secret spasm
Spurs them a yard or two along.
Scarlet and portly and seraphic,
Contented in the summer's prime,
They beam among the jumbled traffic,
Patiently ripening with time,
Till, with a final jerk and rumble,
The Strand tomatoes, fat and fair,
Roll past the traffic lights and tumble
Gleefully down Trafalgar Square.
I like the imagery and the fantasy of buses as tomatoes clustering and ripening, tumbling gleefully and, in a certain light, that's so true as the spill out into Trafalgar Square. I shall have to watch carefully.
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