Prophet on the 259
When he got on the bus, his stench was enough
For all eyes to fall footward and arms to fold inward
Sainsbury’s bags stacked between rows of cold knees planning evenings as tables for tea and TV.
“We’re all sleeping!” he cried with the mountain bus groaning
As the wheels felt the weight of his message and bearing
“Our senses deceive us! Don’t trust what you see!”
A man in the aisle nods but cannot agree,
As our suspect and prophet, with grubby beard twitching,
breaks all of the contracts with suspicious diction.
Mobiles raised like the shields of a leaderless army
Deflecting the spears of the obviously barmy
With silence like gravestones, like rule books, like grown ups
Wishing him only away, away
Wishing him only away.
“Tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll hear you tomorrow,
Today I toil in a field of tall sorrow,
Give me some time to come around,
Give me just one more day.”
But he, of the barrows, could no longer contain
What he’d learned in the marrow of the cold and the rain
“You are not what you think,” he went on to explain
And the eyes, oh the eyes they went down,
Down with the strain.
Three stops was the time that he spent on our bus,
With we who were never a we or an us
but a jangle of shadows in a tin box of time
In North London on board the 259.
He got off at the stop at Seven Sisters station
To a laugh and a sneer and a sighed incantation,
And normality flew to its usual perch
As the 259 continued to lurch.
“Tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll wake up tomorrow,
Today I toil in a field of tall sorrow,
Give me the gift of one more round
Give me just one more day.”