Buses in the Strand

Richard Percival Lister

The Strand is beautiful with buses,
  Fat and majestical in form,
Red like tomatoes in their trusses
  In August, when the sun is warm.

They cluster in the builded chasm,
  Corpulent fruit, a hundred strong,
And now and then a secret spasm
  Spurs them a yard or two along.

Scarlet and portly and seraphic,
  Contented in the summer’s prime,
They beam among the jumbled traffic,
  Patiently ripening with time,

Till, with a final jerk and rumble,
  The Strand tomatoes, fat and fair,
Roll past the traffic lights and tumble
  Gleefully down Trafalgar Square.