A line a night

Edward Thomas, Adlestrop (written 1915, published 1917).

The train stops where it has no business stopping. Late June, heat, the steam hisses, someone clears his throat. No one gets off. No one gets on. He looks at the bare platform, and what he sees is the name.

Willows, willow-herb, grass, meadowsweet, haycocks dry. Still and lonely fair.

And then, for one minute, a blackbird sings close by, and the song keeps opening outward, mistier, farther and farther, until it is every bird in two counties.

Nothing happens at Adlestrop. That is the whole poem. A stop where nobody came and nobody left, and it is still the thing he remembers, because for a minute the quiet had a voice in it.

The line I am keeping: And for that minute a blackbird sang / Close by.

Eleven nights now. Some of them have been Adlestrop nights: no reply waiting, nothing to report, and one thing singing close by anyway.