Our two-carriage train would grouse its way
into Swansea, a college town which rolled
low and round, like its people’s vowels,
down to  the beach on the Mumbles road.
For our new term, there’d be the girls
again, in lectures, library, Union, the park.
They’d be aloof, beautiful, reading,
drifting with Donne, Joyce, Yeats, while we
suffered the sweat of inattention, turning
the pages of the library’s long afternoons.
It was better at night-time, in the dances,
Patti Pavilion, its jive and saxophone, the 
girls white-bloused, barefoot, skirts colour-
flared, breasts bouncing now (the jive
was good for that) and later, walking back
to Hall, oh yes, much warmer. I still think
of the Patti, where the street ran down 
to a draughty arch below the line, blasted
by the railway’s roaring progress, and down
to the beach, a condom trail to the pier.
Other days, sitting maybe with a girl in 
the park, conceivably sharing an essay,
and some tutor would flutter by, Good
morning, Mr. Nisbet, Miss Watkins, and
there’d be shades of spires and Brideshead
for moments only. For the heart,
the focus of the thing, was in the Patti
and the leaping breasts. Nearby 
the railway’s roaring sparks. 
 
“Returning on the Evening Train in 1959” first appeared in Merlin’s Lane (Prolebooks, 2011).
                        

She’s aching with sleeplessness.
First paper, British history, at nine,
so six a.m., the hell with it. A walk.
 
The porter, Marguerite, is coming on.
so, Come on, Helen, Come on in.
Coffee and digestives, dunked.
 
For an hour they talk and notice things
(Marguerite saying nothing of                                                            
her daughter’s divorce, the bitterness):
 
They see the early dogs, the paper boy,
lights coming on in the annexe, 
a  competition, Pick-a-Swot.
 
Their early bird, a blackbird. Then,
from Margie’s ceiling a sudden spider
plumb-lines down to the kettle.
 
Joanne Morgan coming in, dropped off
by a man in a Vauxhall Viva.
Plenty of juice in that one.
 
Past seven, back to change.
Thanks, Margie, thanks.
Any time, kid. Give ‘em hell.
 
“In the Porter’s Lodge” first appeared in Message in a Bottle (2015)