The steam trains have been busy tooting this week and it is always a joy to hear them from our house, so I thought a suitable poem was in order.
The Railway Children
When we climbed the slopes of the cutting
We were eye-level with the white cups
Of the telegraph poles and the sizzling wires.
Like lovely freehand they curved for miles
East and miles west beyond us, sagging
Under their burden of swallows.
We were small and thought we knew nothing
Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires
In the shiny pouches of raindrops.
Each one seeded full with the light
Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves
So infinesimally scaled
We could stream through the eye of a needle.
Seamus Heaney
Lady Book Dragon.
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