A ballad, after the form of Coleridge
Part the First
A traveller waits beside the ramp,
And stops a passer-by.
“You, sir, with the briefcase and the phone –
Why won’t you meet my eye?
You’d stop for a man who’d missed his train,
Or one who’d lost his way;
Why not for me, who’s waited longer
Than either, any day?”
He grips the man’s coat by the sleeve.
“You’ll hear me out, come what may.”
“Let go! Unhand me, wheeled old man!”
He loosed the sleeve and broke away.
But something in the traveller’s eye
Held fast the passer-by,
Who could not choose but stand and hear
Beneath the concourse sky.
He sat him down upon a bench,
Though he had somewhere to be that day;
And thus began the tale that held
The rushing crowd at bay.
“I set out on a journey once
That crossed the whole of Britain’s ways –
By train and bus and coach and tram,
By taxi, tube, and boat, some days –
A fortnight’s trip from north to south,
Booked seat by careful seat,
Assistance rung at every stage,
Each booking marked complete.
I rolled at dawn to catch the nine,
The station bright and bare,
The guard checked off his list and nodded,
Said the ramp was there.
We left the platform, wheel on wheel,
The carriage door slid wide,
And out along the northern track
We rattled side by side.
But at the junction where we changed,
The lift was dark and dead,
A printed sign taped to the gate:
Out of order, it only said.
I messaged them, and messaged twice,
And waited on the reply;
A message said someone would come down.
No one ever did, or told me why –
An hour, then another, on
The wrong side of the stair,
The train I’d needed long since gone,
No guard, no notice, anywhere.
Then down the platform, off the clock,
A cleaner on her round
Stopped, saw me, swore under her breath,
And went and tracked a key down.
She jammed the fire door open wide
And held it as I wheeled myself past,
Through bins and mops and crates,
Into the open platform, at last.
She lingered on, though not required,
Told me which train, and why,
And left before I’d thanked her right,
Back to her round, and by.
She stayed with me in thought alone,
Not name – I’d never asked;
A steady thing to hold to
Through everything that passed –
For still my journey stretched ahead,
By modes I had not tried:
A coach, a tram, a black-cab rank,
The tube’s dark, rumbling ride.”
Part the Second
“At Newcastle I left the train
And found the coach-stop stand,
A National Express, black-windowed, tall,
Its driver close at hand.
I’d booked ahead, I’d rung them twice,
They’d promised me the space;
But when I came the seats were bolted
Into the wheelchair place.
“I can’t take those out,” the driver said,
“They’re fixed, they don’t come free.
I wasn’t told, I’ve had no note,
There’s no room here for three
Passengers and a chair besides” –
He wasn’t cruel, just stuck,
The seats designed in, permanent –
No accident, no luck,
Just planning. An hour passed, another,
The coach-stop wind was cold;
A woman came with folded arms
And spoke to me, too bold:
‘You should have booked in advance, you know,
It’s not our fault, it’s yours’ –
And something turned in me at that,
Some patience closed its doors.
I spoke back sharp, and would not soften,
Named the earlier care
The cleaner showed me on the platform,
Against her cold, blank stare,
As if her fault were doubled by
The kindness shown before,
As if she owed the debt of one
Who’d got me through a door.
I should have held my tongue, perhaps,
And waited, calm and mild;
But weeks of promises unkept
Had worn me, like a child
Worn thin by waiting, worn by hope
Held out and snatched away –
I let my anger loose at her
Who had not failed that day;
She’d only just come on for shift,
She hadn’t bolted it;
I turned the wrong of some far depot
Into a blow I’d hit
Because it wore the badge, I struck
The nearest face I found,
Because she stood in front of me,
Not hidden, underground
Not some abstraction I could rage
At, faceless and unseen;
Just her, in a hi-vis vest,
Caught in between.
A second driver came at three
And got the seats unbolted;
I boarded then, still raw, still tight,
But the worst of it was halted.
And from that hour a heaviness
Sat with me on the coach,
As though I’d broken something fine
Too near for my approach.
The other passengers looked on
And would not meet my eye;
I felt the weight of what I’d done
Sit with me, and not die.
At the first stop I called out clear,
Before the doors could close too fast:
‘I spoke too sharp. I’m sorry for it.
That wasn’t yours. It’s past.’
‘You’re not the first,’ she said, and shrugged
A tired smile into place –
Forgiven outright, or just handled,
I could not read her face.
We drove by field and grey motorway,
By service stop and sign,
And still that heaviness sat close,
A guest I’d not resign.
At the services where we stopped
I stayed aboard the coach –
The driver never asked, and I
Knew better than to broach
The unstrapping, and the loading back,
Not worth the time it cost;
And the one accessible toilet there,
I knew from before, was lost –
Small calculations, hour by hour,
Against the miles ahead –
A kind of arithmetic that other
Passengers never dread,
A private sum no timetable shows,
No figure kept on file:
How far, how long, and what it costs
To make it one more mile.
I watched the other passengers
Stretch legs, and buy a tea,
And thought how strange a thing it is
That freedom, plain and free
To them, should be for me a sum,
A schedule, a small war
Fought daily, quietly, before
I even reach the door.”
Part the Third
“Then came a stretch of evil luck
That dogged me mode to mode,
As though the words I’d flung too sharp
Had marked me on the road.
The tram at Manchester stood proud,
Low-floor, and built to serve;
But engineering works that day
Had sent the route to swerve
Onto a rail-replacement bus
With steps I could not climb;
No lift, no ramp, no other tram
Was running at the time.
A woman with a folded pushchair
Climbed the bus’s steps with ease,
Then turned and saw me at the kerb,
And asked the driver, if you please,
Could something else be found for me –
He shook his head, said, ‘That’s the lot,
Accessible bus in four hours,’
And pulled off from the spot.
I waited on the concrete isle
While bus on bus went by,
Each with the same three steps up front,
And not one stopped to try.
I caught the next train south from there,
And came to London late;
I tried the ranks outside the station,
Where black cabs idle and wait;
The driver saw me, saw the chair,
And doused his light, and looked away,
Pulled out into the traffic, gone,
As though I’d nothing to say;
Three more went dark and would not stop,
Each one deciding, almost
Before they’d seen me, what I was –
Too much trouble to play host
To, on a short fare, in the rain;
I waited near an hour, and thus
Was still there when one driver stopped
And waved me over, without fuss.
He took me on, and would not charge,
And said, ‘That’s not right, that,’
And drove me gentle through the dusk
To where the late bus sat.
The local bus, when it arrived,
Lowered with a hydraulic wheeze,
And the ramp slid out, electric, smooth –
For once, no wait, no please.
But the driver would not clear the space
Reserved for wheels alone,
Where a sleeping child lay, pram unfolded –
The only space she’d known
To bring him, quiet, out of the rain.
She would not fold the pram and wake him.
I could not fold myself to fit.
I cannot stand. I said as much.
The driver, from his seat,
Called back to her, and twice she stayed,
Still looking at her feet.
He shrugged at me, as if to say
It wasn’t his affair,
And pulled off into the wet evening,
And left me sitting there.
Forty more minutes crawled and passed,
Rain finding every seam,
Until the next bus lit the dark
Like something from a dream.
At Euston then I tried a rank
Once more, resolved to try,
And found a driver, sleeves rolled up,
Who loaded me and would not shy
From folding down the extra seats,
From strapping down the chair with care,
From talking football all the way,
As though I were just anyone there –
But the meter ran from when he stopped,
Through every strap and fold,
Ticking away as he loaded me –
Standard practice, I was told,
Fair and square, and yet it doubles
Every journey’s real cost –
Stairs I could not use, the gaps
Too wide to close, the time I’ve lost.
I rode the London tube one noon,
Down lifts that groaned and shook,
Through corridors no map had shown,
By a longer, hidden route I took –
For most of the stations on that map
Have steps, and steps alone,
And so a fifteen-minute hop
Became a two-hour zone
Of lifts and buses, stairs avoided,
Staff who tried their best,
And some who looked the other way,
And some who passed the test.
A woman at the barrier gate
Waved through without a word
A dozen striding, hurried souls
While I waited, unheard,
Until a member of staff came round
And walked me to the lift,
Apologising for the wait,
As though it were his gift
To give, and not my right to have,
As though I owed him thanks
For doing what the law required
Of stations, lifts, and ranks.
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Upon a wide network –
So many kind, and some unkind,
And none quite what I’d asked.”
Part the Fourth
The passer-by leaned closer still,
His question came out low and slow:
“Your eyes have changed since you began.
Where does a tale like this one go?”
“It’s alright,” I told him then,
“I didn’t die that day,
Though I had felt so far from home
I thought I’d lost my way.
For loneliness will wear a soul
As water wears a stone,
And every small unkindness done
Can leave a man alone
Long after it is done and gone,
Long after it has passed –
I carried London’s rain within me
On the tube, and held it fast.
But at the ferry, waiting there
To cross the narrow sound,
A child came running down the ramp
Without a backward bound,
And stopped, and stared, and then she said,
‘Your chair is like a throne!’
And laughed, and ran to fetch her mother,
And left me not alone.
Her mother came, apologetic,
I said there was no need;
We talked the short crossing over,
Of nothing much indeed –
The girl sat on the bench beside me,
Swinging both her feet,
And asked was I a pirate captain,
And was my chair a fleet,
And could she push the little lever
That made the footplate rise –
I let her, twice, and watched her face
Light up with pure surprise.
She talked of thrones, of chairs and water,
Of gulls that wheeled and cried;
And listening, cracked and tired, I felt
The first thaw start inside.
I thought of every driver, guard,
Cabbie, cleaner, friend
Who’d helped me on that fortnight’s road,
Uncounted, without end –
The ones who’d checked the ramp themselves,
The ones who’d waited, patient, still,
The ones who’d fixed what wasn’t theirs
To fix, but fixed it, with a will.
Something rose up in me, unbidden,
Warm, and hard to name:
Each tired face, each steadying hand
That still had stopped, and came.
The heaviness that I had carried
Since the coach-stop, dark and cold,
Loosed a little from my chest
And left me, then, and rolled
Away like water off a rail,
Like frost gone in the sun;
I did not weep, and yet I felt
As though some debt were done –
Not paid entire, for debts like that
Are never paid entire,
But eased, the way a banked-up fire
Still gives its warmth, though lower.
I thought too of the coach-stop woman,
Wondered had she known
How sharp my words had cut that day,
Or had she simply gone
Home that evening, put it from her mind,
One rude passenger, no more,
Forgotten by the time she’d clocked off –
While I sat turning, still, before
My eyes, the small unkindness done,
Magnified by days before –
A thing that weighed on only me,
That she, perhaps, felt nevermore.
And is that not the shape of it,
The way that harm falls, skewed –
The giver often walks on light,
The taker carries, chewed
And swallowed, folded deep within,
A weight that will not shift
Until some kindness, freely given,
Comes along, a gift
Not owed, not earned, not asked for outright,
But offered anyway –
A child’s laugh, a stranger’s patience,
That turns the dark to grey.”
Part the Fifth
Oh sleep, it is a gentle thing,
When it will come at all,
After a fortnight’s broken nights
In hotel rooms too small,
With showers I could not reach or use,
With beds set much too high,
With night-lifts that would never come
No matter how I’d try.
I slept that night upon the ferry,
Rocked by the moving tide,
And dreamed of every station platform
I had crossed, side by side
With strangers who became, for moments,
More than strangers passing through –
The cleaner with the fire-door key,
The child, the cabbie kind and true.
I woke to find the crossing calm,
The engines’ murmur low,
And felt, for the first time that fortnight,
Something easy in me flow.
The bus that met us at the harbour
Had a ramp that worked first go;
The driver knew my booking’s name
Before I’d had the chance to show
My card – as though the system, once,
Had joined its parts up, clean and true,
No fight required, no long delay,
A journey carried straight on through
To every promise, every leaflet.
I will not say it lasted long,
Nor claim the whole day held that ease –
But for those hours, nothing went wrong,
And I was, for once, an ordinary
Passenger, not owed, not spent,
Not fighting, simply travelling,
The way that anyone is meant.”
Part the Sixth
“The ease was real, and while it lasted
It was worth the fortnight’s fight;
But networks do not learn as people do,
Each good day stands alone, and slight
Against the weight of everything
That was in place before –
The same tired staff, the same tight budget,
The same closed ticket office door.
The last leg home I took the train,
The line I know the best,
The one that’s failed me twenty times
And passed a dozen tests.
I thought about the tram again,
Replaced without a stop –
Low-floor, and built for exactly this,
So no one need beg or hop
Between two modes to travel on.
Then came the replacement bus, with steps –
The tram’s whole purpose set aside
The moment the engineers swept
Through, and put up their own new sign –
As though the years of work that went
Into the floor, to make it level,
Were a promise the timetable simply spent.
It had to keep to schedule,
As though it were a treat
And not a baseline, not a floor
That should stand under every seat.
The ramp was there. The guard was kind.
The seats were as I’d planned –
And yet I could not quite believe
An ease so close to hand.
I sat and waited, half-expecting
Something still to go awry,
Some booking dropped, some space reclaimed,
To prove the fortnight’s warning right.
Is this what it is to travel,
Wheeled, upon this land –
To hold each kindness loosely,
Not knowing where you stand?
To thank the ones who do it right
As though they’d done some grand,
Uncommon thing, when all they’d done
Was simply help, first-hand –
As though I ought to carry thanks
For what I should not have to ask,
As though the baseline of the thing
Were a gift, and not a task.
I turned this over, mile on mile,
Watching the fields go by,
Until the platform lights came up
Beneath a darkening sky.
The boarding ramp on the final train
Was jammed fast, would not budge;
No throne now, just a length of steel
Stalled dead against the edge.”
Part the Seventh
“I made it home the following dawn,
Two hours later than planned,
And slept a day, and woke, and found
The fortnight still on hand –
Not as a wound, not as a grudge,
But as a thing I carry,
A tale that comes on me, unbidden,
That I am bound to marry
To whoever stops, and has the time,
And meets, for once, my eye –
For there are those who hurry past
And will not wonder why
A man in a chair might stop them so,
Might need to tell it plain:
That help, when given, is no favour,
And its absence is no shame
To bear alone, and carry silent,
As though it were the toll
Of simply being who I am –
As though my body’s role
Meant I was owed no help at all,
No right to ask, no claim to make.
I do not tell this tale for pity.
I tell it for a plainer sake:
The woman with the fire-door key,
The cabbie in the rain,
The child who called my chair a throne –
These do not need explaining;
What needs it is the rest of it,
The coach-stop woman, sharp of tongue,
Who had not built, and did not choose
The seats, or how it stung –
The stage she found herself upon,
Who was not badly meant,
But caught, like me, in something larger
Than any blame I sent.
Her way was wrong, and she deserved
No more of it than I;
The wait, the cold, the folded arms –
We’d both been passed on by
A system built above us both,
Some failure in the plan,
And I have tried, since telling this,
To hold that thought, and understand
That anger at the nearest face
Is easier than the fight
For systems built to work for all –
Easier, but not right.
There is a word for what is owed,
And it is not compassion;
Compassion is the driver’s choice –
A kindness with no obligation,
Too often blurred, when what
Is owed by right gets mixed
With what is given out of kindness,
As though the two were fixed
Together, indistinguishable,
As though a driver’s grace
Excused the failure of the system
That put me in that place
To need it in the first place, waiting,
Hoping someone kind would appear –
The kindness was not the solution.
The kindness was a symptom, clear
As a locked door, of a gap the law
Was meant to close, and has not, not yet,
Not fully, not in every town,
Not on every train I’ve met.
I am grateful for the driver’s grace.
I would rather not require it.
Both are true, and both stand firm,
Not one canceling, but beside it.
I go now lighter than I came,
Though still I go by chair.”
He turned, and left the passer-by
Still on the rain-wet bench,
Who had not moved, though it had started
Raining hard enough to drench
The both of them – but stayed to watch
The traveller wheel toward the ramp
That, that day, worked, while rain kept running
Down in earnest from the lamp
Above him, down his collar, down
Onto the bench’s rain-dark seat.
He did not rise. He sat there, soaked
Clean through, from head to feet.
A sadder and a wiser man
Rose.
He walked into the rain that had not stopped.
(By Doug with very much AI input for I am no poet)