Because there are so many cars and motor bikes and purposes,
so many lorries carrying cargoes, so many buses loaded with human stories;
it is necessary to have traffic lights at crossroads, a very concrete
nexus of inextricably linked concepts, compass points and cause and effect.
The lights burn up an angry red, the flow stops with answering angered brakelights,
the lights burn amber, green, engine notes change as the flow accelerates
past the Tube or the pub, down solid rivers of blue-black,
and all the time pedestrians patter through and pass like rain.
Traffic is filtered to separate compass points,
indicators wink orange as drivers work out these rationalisations,
and at night, headlights glide their pools, without friction or effort
over the scarred, hard tarmac, along the gleaming lines of turning cars.
It has beauty of its kind, that of human design
for the unthinking demands of a population
that imagines it’s going somewhere when
no grass grows on the smothered earth, and no birds sing.
You won’t meet La Belle Dame sans Merci on these feeder roads
but you might meet anyone’s daughter, coming up smiling out of the Tube,
or anyone’s son, coming home from a lock-in in the pub, at 4am:
the automated lights will still burn red, the traffic will be rationalised just the same.
