Riding The Madrid Metro – By Paul Holland

Hello

Here is an old poem by my bearded friend Paul Holland which I re-read recently. Hope you enjoy it (again!).

Riding the Madrid Metro

1.

I didn’t see the band get on.

The mum and dad

Both wearing Disney shirts and their kids tied to games machines,

The old woman I stood for, after trying to read the metro poetry,

Yes; I saw them.

But I didn’t see the band get on

I heard and stood across from the giggling girls talking in Portugese

I saw them..

But then the band put to play.

2.

The band of Indians

Peruvian?-They’d skipped the ponchos…

I hadn’t been prepared for the band getting on.

Hadn’t seen them put to play.

I had been thinking of you of course

Of our newly found love.

Of how to change this

Make that work what I should do

The details and such.

They put to sing in that dark hole of the heights.

3.

And the band got on and I knew of the depths

That she and I had fallen

Of the coffin nails driven deep into what was a marriage

Of my broken nails in my attempts to free us both.

Of her despair.

And they sang in that hole of the heights

Of joy and hardship

They knew of the yearning of the exiled

Of the long distance of a view.

4.

And I thought of you my new love.

And I remembered

That the winds will blow And thought I don’t mind

For it is of you, not the details or such, that they sang.

As now I’ll be ready for the winds to rage

And for the screaming distance of a view.

I saw that the Portugese girls were laughing.

As before me they’d noticed I’d put to cry

Sweet salt water tears.

I could no longer hide when the band got on.