Analysis

The poem begins on a journey, with the poem reflecting the movement of the train on its voyage.

There is the image of a baby ‘cradled’ at the start, using a metaphor to make the train seem as though it is being rocked, like a baby, by its mother, perhaps the earth, as it travels along.

The poet has ‘head-phones on’ with a Walkman playing the music as she listened, with hot tea on a table in front of her. The thoughts she has are relayed to the reader as thinking of ‘you’ who we assume is her partner, just waking in bed thinking of her on the train, although it is too soon to call on the phone.

The second stanza becomes more generalised, with the radio speaking, personified as the voices of DJs in the morning, which people listen to as they go to work. The scene of cars dropping children off at school is described. This is contrasted to the quieter scenes of dark pathways further down the line and people locking doors as they go to work or about their daily business.

There is a final image in this stanza of trains sliding out of stations, dreaming their way towards the blazing bone ship, as if there is a sense of the train and all on it travelling in a dream to the promised land, the city and the day’s work and all that it may bring.

There is a mystical sense that something great could happen.

The third stanza brings a mobile phone in, but this one is switched off as the message is the answering machine. There is a sense that this happens all the time, as travellers on the train are often cut off as there is no signal in tunnels and on certain parts of the line.

The repetition of ‘calling later’ shows that some attempt to call several times before successfully getting through. When calling later the phones are answered in normal suburban kitchens, showing a sense of the dullness of normal life.

The ‘wolves howl in the kitchen’ could be a sense of the children crying for their food or their parents, and a sense that the person on the train is coming too and from work, the place where they make the money to pay for the food to keep the children happy.

The final stanza begins with too sharp sentences: ‘I phone. No answer.’ There is a sense that she does not know where her loved one is. There is a longing to be home or for the comfort of her partner’s voice ‘talk to me please’.

The line ‘today I’m tolerant of mobiles’ shows her normal dislike for people answering them on the train and saying the all too regular comment ‘I’m on the train’ there is a sense of humour here, as most of us have experienced the annoyance of someone answering their phone on the train and talking very loudly to whoever it is on the other end of the line and always making that comment.