Paul Connolly
The Inevitable
The second rail, live above the runners,
draws him as the tube suggests and passengers shuffle
towards and across the yellow line. It eases
events summarised in shoulder agonies, in teeth, it
folds him into its zoom-shot’s softened warp, a peace
which soon quietly suggests permanency, then insists. The
approaching tube tightens the moment. But still
throughout the boxy rattles, the remembered sprints
of mice and expected breeze, which this time disappoint,
he weighs up pro and contra, and though he votes
for flight, the brief splatter on a bar across oblivion’s gate,
he wonders once again what makes him stay
still – his position, perhaps, for the rallentando stalls
and clanks, two-thirds up along the platform,
though swift reckonings of force, momentum, resistance
and current dismiss this quibble; duty, the inconvenience
for those who’d order his affairs, loses out
to net gains, since feelings are thin, and he doubts
the durability of love, and at terms like preservation, instinct
he almost laughs out loud. So what is it
that conserves, he wonders, pulled through the opening doors
into a twine of limbs, holdalls and armpit odours,
reminded everywhere by signs and certainty so potent
only caprices everyone (including him) recoils from could thwart it
that he’d get off at Waterloo Station, thread
and be threaded through its interchanges, planes, and head
towards an inevitability named home. That night’s virtuoso
outburst at the internet provider’s call-centre drone,
his determination to prevail in the ongoing diplomatic row
about the fridge temperature, a prolonged shower
are freedom or exhaust fumes from a mechanism whose name demeans
with its simplicity and camouflaging power. Is it all routine?
