Thanks for those thoughts, Trevor. Definitely worth mulling them over, so I shall.

Cheers

David

I didn't know the Henry Vaughan poem and had only vaguely heard of him. But the poem is very effective, I think, with or without that knowledge. It's a spooked, unnerving picture of eternity. The folk seem baffled and slightly troubled. It's an imperfect eternity, not quite purgatory but with a sense that it isn't quite what they expected. That there must be better to come but they're making the best of it. The tube station blitz image is perfect for summoning up this liminal world: uncanny but humdrum. And the description of dreaming is wonderful.

Very lowbrow to go from Henry Vaughan to The Poseidon Adventure but I was watching that 70s kitsch classic the other night with the twins and along with all the silliness, I was struck by a scene that I remembered really freaking me out as a child: the bit where they come across a group of other passengers all stubbornly and blindly going the wrong way. This made an odd connection with it in my mind.

A shivery, economical gem, David.

Hey David,

Like others have said I like that you referenced another poet's work, and it is a striking line. I like the imagery of the huddling in the tube stations.
I think the rhythm gets thrown off for me on line 6 and I think like
in line 9 it might do better on its own? Especially since it is a powerful line it gives
it more emphasis to me since it stands out. I personally like poems with traditional punctuation and I think this helps readability in this poem.

I saw Eternity the other night.

It was like one of those photos
of Tube Stations in the last war.

Huddled together, mindful
of the booming overhead.

They are all gone into a world of

[flickering contingency.]

[l]ighting up as we think of them, or dream,
which is thinking without the handrails.

They can’t complain.

There may been communal singing.
Someone had a ukulele.

Thanks for that reading of the poem, Mark. It's very close to exactly what I was hoping for.

And thanks for your thoughts, Harry. I'll sift through them.

Cheers both

David

Sorry for the refloatation here, but I wanted to say that, having recently seen the Martin Scorsese documentary about Powell and Pressburger, I was struck by the similarity between my vision of Eternity and the black and white version in A Matter of Life and Death.

There may have been a subliminal connection for me there.