Cricklewood Station, Cricklewood Station, I wait for the five o’clock with resignation.
It’s down to King’s Cross for a conversation with a man in a bookshop creased with perspiration.
I’ve never seen the colours over west so hard, like ripples of blackcurrant on a faded postcard.
No coronas on the floodlights in the marshalling yard.
It’s the kind of night God must have used for passing on the word.
Graffiti on the shelters on Cricklewood Station, chalking the genetic code of mass imagination, putting out the candles of a deeper indignation, jumping on the five o’clock for a private assignation.
I’ve never heard such singing of the voltage in the wire, like the suicidal pleadings of a tabernacle choir.
They can keep you out of work, they can’t put out the fire.
It’s the kind of night God must have used to push sexual desire.
Graffiti say that God was here on Cricklewood Station.
If I had known it soon enough I would have booked a conversation to offer to that great divine heartfelt congratulation for leaving us a night like this in form of compensation.
I’ve never seen the moisture on the brick so sheer, like ear-rings that are clinging to a deaf mute’s ear.
There’s a cutting kind of silence in this section of the year.
It’s the kind of night God must have used to make his passion clear.
Cricklewood Station, Cricklewood Station, I wait for the five o’clock with indignation.
It’s down to King’s Cross for a brief flirtation.
And the evening in the back row of a godless generation.
Peter Campbell This poem is published in Brown Linoleum Green Lawns (Hearing Eye, London 2006), review on page 20.