The Old Northern Line Poem by Richard George

Strangers don't talk on the Tube.
It breaks unwritten laws
of a city millions craven.
Adverts, and our wan
reflections. Are we coring
cholera dead? Down here, in this
warm, sick dark, do plagues
incubate, an AIDS
that can kill virgins who breathe it
in a hot September night's
Calcutta crush? I must get out.
Forty years layered
in the station, and footsteps gone.

Footsteps gone.

A dart, on cinder track.
It is dragging a MacDonalds burger
carton, five times its size,
to the under-platform dungeon
where it will breed. All it knows.

I kneel. 'O Muse'.