A Haunting at Clapham Junction: Poem & Process
Whilst travelling, my younger self pays me a visit
Poem & Process is an ongoing series: one poem, and reflections on writing it.
A Haunting at Clapham Junction
Through the translucent grey of a murky dawn
peach-orange light spills from overhead lamps
and in the dark wet tarmac of the platform
I see a spectre: a loose boy-like shape, blurry and luminous
a ghostly half-human adrift in all that black.
A familiar shadow mournfully staring back
from a decade and more ago
when this station was my nearest one -
back then I’d roam its passageways and concourses
the Sainsbury's, the Caffè Nero, the Knot Pretzels
in search of something to satisfy my hunger.
Nothing ever seemed to, then
my emptiness palpable, appetite insatiable
forever seeking to bargain with…
I know not what:
my restless spirit unsettled at the prospect
of moving on; of going home.
Today, this lost soul follows me around as I go for coffee:
reflected in puddles pooling at the feet of stairways
whispering over the tannoyed apologies of delays and cancellations
glimpsed on faces of strangers hurrying to their connections
moaning in the rattle and shudder of ticket barriers closing
shades of his contorted face in the dull metal tracks.
I am not scared of him
this apparition who haunts my younger years:
if I could comfort him, I would
but his business is unfinished
and so he will remain here forever
as I board my train
and move on.
As I regularly facilitate workshops in schools, I am often up early and on trains to various parts of London. Clapham Junction is not a station I’ve travelled through too much in the past few years, but since moving house and changing train lines, it’s become one of the main places I interchange.
This poem manifested out of nowhere around 7.30am one winter morning as I waited for my train. I remembered how regularly I used to frequent this station - mentally travelling in time as I stood still on my platform. I had probably glimpsed the train to Earlsfield or Twickenham on a platform display, and a cascade of neurons activated old pathfinding memories - and instead of leading my feet towards an old home, they took me towards this poem.
My reflection in the black mirror of the wet platform tarmac was distorted, and the idea of a ghost came to me: the ghost of my former self. With that, I wrote a couple of stanzas quickly before heading to get a coffee - intending to finish later (if ever). But my mind had switched to seeing everything as part of the poem, and so going for coffee became part of it. I’ve written before about this heightened state of noticing being integral to writing, and so the everyday elements of the station became material for the poem.
Pleased with my first draft, I sent it to my partner - I think, in some ways, using her as a marker of how far I’d come as a person between then and now. Making both that, and the poem, more real by her witnessing.
I’ve edited this poem today to present it here - quite a lot of editing actually, wrangling with word order and choice especially. I’ve enjoyed threading in references to ghosts and phantoms, along with the poetic descriptions of the atmosphere and mentions of mundane shops. I think I’ve spent this amount of time on it because I want to be proud of this piece: reflecting the tenderness I feel for the unhappy younger man I was, and making sure the poem is - and I am - as strong as possible in the writing, in order to feel safe to share with others. With you.
Thank you for making this poem - and me - more real by your reading of it.