Subway Poems

Two unexpected poems about subways! (I love google and the patterns into which it can sort information.)

Subway Wind
Claude McKay

Far down, down through the city's great, gaunt gut,
The gray train rushing bears the weary wind;
In the packed cars the fans the crowd's breath cut,
Leaving the sick and heavy air behind.
And pale-cheeked children seek the upper door
To give their summer jackets to the breeze;
Their laugh is swallowed in the deafening roar
Of captive wind that moans for fields and seas;
Seas cooling warm where native schooners drift
Through sleepy waters, while gulls wheel and sweep,
Waiting for windy waves the keels to lift
Lightly among the islands of the deep;
Islands of lofty palm trees blooming white
That lend their perfume to the tropic sea,
Where fields lie idle in the dew drenched night,
And the Trades float above them fresh and free.



Subway
Carl Sandburg

DOWN between the walls of shadow
Where the iron laws insist,
The hunger voices mock.

The worn wayfaring men
With the hunched and humble shoulders,
Throw their laughter into toil.




I especially love how McKay's poem--sonnet!--is so much about elements of the subway experience that don't exist anymore: those "upper door" windows (I assume he means the little ones that open at the top and hinge at the bottom?) stay closed, and I think that only the oldest trains even have them. The subway must have sounded so different, too. Before air conditioning.