Competition: Tube lines

In Competition No. 2710 you were invited to supply a poem reflecting on travelling by Tube.

Not something, perhaps, that would inspire many of us to heights of lyricism, though T.S. Eliot evokes subterranean travel to powerful effect in Four Quartets. Here he is, in ‘East Coker’, on the experience of stopping in a tunnel, when life itself seems to stands still: ‘Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations/ And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence/ And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen/ Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about…’ And then, of course, there is Ezra Pound’s ‘In a Station of the Metro’, which Frank Osen’s entry makes a nod to. His fellow victors get £25; D.A. Prince gets £30.

The last deep breaths, then: Oyster Card,
And magic’lly Hell Mouth’s unbarred.
Here’s all foul London’s sweat and heat
Redoubled underneath your feet.