It feels a good one to re-read at a time when drivers have been told by the new government that the ‘war’ against ‘them’ is over, they are free to speed without fear of punishment by speed camera, using their own skill & judgement of the road conditions. Those who share the road space on foot must of course just look out for themselves to make sure that their lease does not run out too soon.
The poem also uses the word statistical – there are more poems than I ever suspected which do that.
Over the Road
The woman, holding her face after the dentist,
Has crossed the carriageway safely towards
A known-to-be sympathetic long-haired cat;
The pain is over & the two are smiling.
The tall man wearing pressed corduroys
Has crossed behind her with the jaunty pace
Of a reassured lover, so he too survives
A very high statistical risk.
There is more black death on the M25
Than there was in Surrey in1349.
It was safer to c be in Kuwait than Oxford Street.
It is safer to cross the Atlantic than Belsize Park.
I am half across & stand in the draught
of an island left between two deathly streams.
I rest my hand on a bollard, no protection,
And the venerable rust of antiquity stains me,
But I stand & breathe, in the unforeseen sunlight,
In one of those minutes when nothing can touch me,
as certainly as the woman & the cat
Can touch each other & the man stride on.
There’s a feel of new leases being taken out.
Alan Brownjohn
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