a gift here, the easy surrealism of random juxtaposition in the procession, the temporary collection of misfits and freaks that move through the world’s bus stations. Shuffling by tortoise-slow a shabby couple grown old and ugly together. A thin lad with, not so much dreadlocks as a ragged mat of elflocks, self-consciously lifts his legs into different sitting positions. A man as fat and greasy as a parson’s nose expands his backside over two seats. Just why does this leaning man think his careless eating habits irritating his partner should be so amusing? A hurrying mother has her shopping bag split and spill its contents, a bottle rolling under one of the metal benches. The waiting/passing crowd look indifferently upon the comedy of her fussed embarrassment. A small child regards the bottle: a child’s view always a close-up, in the moment, without context. Terrorists target bus stations. Got me to thinking that the more one encounters fanatics the more one suspects they know very little of each their religion, the religion in whose name they are prepared to commit atrocities. Where there are no bus stations they bomb markets – a similar clientele. Poems are where events get packaged and sent to the past.
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Sam Smith
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