Going Underground
December 12, 2023
The historic London Underground, its incessant steel rattle and unbearable thick air, has been the beating heart of the city for 160 years. The station catacombs have unearthed Roman ruins and other forgotten histories, with tiled archways and signage that pays polite homage to architecture of years passed. The Underground plays witness to the lives of millions of commuters each day – the screaming children, the tourists, the businessmen. There is an inevitable affinity Londoners feel for their own tube line, their passage home.
Here’s to the gaps, the maps
And the elapse of a hundred and fifty years since that first
Steaming monster hurled
Through its Minotaur world.
To all the billiard ball-bottomed straps onto which I’ve hung.
And here’s to the police officer, who, when I was illegally
busking outside of Westminster station, approached me and said,
‘Do you know any Neil Young?’
John Hegley, ‘Thank You London Underground’
