A MIDLANDS EXPRESS
MUSCULAR virtuoso!
Once again you take the centre of the stage,
The flat Midlands.
The signals are all down, the curtain is raised And with unerring power you drive Straight to your goal.
You pull down all the Northern iron rifted Mountains to your knees, Until they're pressed beneath your feet Dragging my sight back with their weight.
You drive the landscape like a herd of clouds Moving against your horizontal tower Of steadfast speed.
All England lies beneath you like a life With limbs ravished By one glance carrying all these eves.
0 juggler of the wheeling towns and stars Unpausing even with the night, Beneath my lines I read your iron lines Like the great art beneath a little life Whose giant travelling ease Is the vessel of its effort and fatigue.
STEPHEN SPENDER.
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