Philip Hewitt

Philip Hewitt Poems

The Best Poem Of Philip Hewitt

Piccadilly Line (1965)

Down where the sun never shows
the wind never blows
the rain never goes,
where patent air pumped clean and fresh
slowly circulates.

In the blue-green neon light
a lone Jamaican, sad for the sun,
swish-swishes with a bristle-tufted broom
down the long bright corridors of tiles.

Gone are Betjeman's bronze electroliers,
gone like the trolleybus and EMBANKMENT tram;
gone are the sepia prints of Rayners Lane.

Sixty feet below Green Park
shop-girl, businessman and clerk
are swallowed whole by silver glow-worm trains
that burrow through the city in the dark.

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