Turnham Green and Camden Town
Where Air Raid huddles laid them down.
Neasden, Willesden, Dollis Hill,
Tottenham Hale and Hearty, still.
Thankyou London Underground.
And all your staff, who get me round.
How deep you are.
I still find it astounding how deep you are.
When you are off, we’re off on rants
We cram the bus
And as we crawl like ants upon the surface…
then we know
The rich resource that’s down below.
The tube is Lubricating.
In February, I’m booked to go
To Jackson’s Lane to do a show – by bus, is my intention, yes
But how glad I am that Highgate Station’s less
Than fifty yards across the road.
The tube is a nourishing subterranean facility.
Like a potato.
A tuber-system.
Since that first open carriage load,
Our Underground, how it has grown, and flourished.
Now, groan I do, I must admit
When I have to sit and wait and wait
For a service to get through
At Edgware Road, but that station does have to accommodate
The Metropolitan, The Hammersmith and City, The Circle, The District and the Bakerloo line.
So, here’s to the gaps, the maps
And the elapse of a hundred and fifty years since that first
Steaming monster hurled
Through its Metropolitan Minotaur world
To all the billiard ball-bottomed straps onto which I’ve hung.
And here’s to the police officer, who when I was illegally busking outside Westminster Station, approached me and said,
‘Do you know any Neil Young?’