Railway rhythms

In Competition No. 2926 you were invited to submit a poem about HS2.

The idea for this challenge came to me as I was listening on YouTube to W.H. Auden’s poem ‘Night Mail’, which he wrote to accompany a section of the terrific 1936 documentary about the London to Glasgow Postal Special directed by Basil Wright and Harry Watt (who described Auden as looking like a ‘half-witted Swedish deckhand’).

Not altogether surprisingly, the tone of the entry was less celebratory than Auden’s, with the notable exception of Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead’s prize-winning submission, written in MacGonagallese. Her fellow victors are rewarded with £30 apiece and George Simmers snaffles the extra fiver.

There’s a thunder down the line at eleven fifty-nine,
And there’ll be another due at twelve o-six.
Yes, several times each hour a train of massive power
Is hurtling busy townies through the sticks,
And leering through the glass of a window in first class
(At meadows trashed and woodlands bulldozed flat)
Is a vicious tabby gent claiming dubious descent
From Skimbleshanks, the famous Railway Cat.
His moggy grin is mirthless, mocking dwellings rendered worthless
By the track that’s scarred the centre of the nation.
Skimble Junior (‘Call me Skimby!’) hisses scorn for every nimby
Who’s inclined to sob at rural devastation.
There’s no mercy in his features for otters or such creatures
Who have lost their fine and ancient habitat.
‘Businessmen demand a beeline!’ mews this hard efficient feline,
Skimble Junior, the modern high-speed cat.
George Simmers

It’s as pointless as cheating at patience,
As cuckoo as ironing the cat,
A businessmen’s scheme, a commercial wet dream
In the shape of a formal diktat.

Though the magic words ‘northern’ and ‘powerhouse’,
Pronounced like a mystical spell,
Are combined to inspire, setting all hearts on fire,
They exude a pestiferous smell.

Prepare for those time and cost overruns
As it links cities already linked
But at much greater speed, like a junkie in need,
All reason and judgment extinct.