Has anyone ever encountered this poem by Danny Abse? Below with note and link! (It's different...)
NOT ADLESTROP
Not Adlestrop, no - besides, the name
hardly matters. Nor did I languish in June heat.
Simply, I stood, too early, on the empty platform,
and the wrong train came in slowly, surprised, stopped.
Directly facing me, from a window,
a very, very pretty girl leaned out.
When I, all instinct,
stared at her, she, all instinct, inclined her head away
as if she'd divined the much married life in me,
or as if she might spot, up platform,
some unlikely familiar.
For my part, under the clock, I continued
my scrutiny with unmitigated pleasure.
And she knew it, she certainly knew it, and would not
glance at me in the silence of not Adlestrop.
Only when the train heaved noisily, only
when it jolted, when it slid away, only then,
daring and secure, she smiled back at my smile,
and I, daring and secure, waved back at her waving.
And so it was, all the way down the hurrying platform
as the train gathered atrocious speed
towards Oxfordshire or Gloucestershire.
Dannie Abse
Found on this blog (with note below) and also there's a piece about him on the Guardian link below!
http://poemsandprose.blog.co.uk/2011...trop-11655178/
"Dannie Abse, now nearly 80 is the best-known living Welsh poet. He has enjoyed a long and successful literary career, from the publication of his first volume of verse in 1948 to a 2003 volume, 'New and Collected Poems'. Remarkably, most of this career has been conducted while holding down a full-time job as a doctor in a London chest clinic. He has also edited poetry anthologies, been a playwright, a literary journalist and a writer on medical affairs."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/mar/15/featuresreviews.guardianreview31