1240. Train travel

Constantia wasn’t too sure about the latest craze. Trains had fairly recently come into frequent use. People could travel from one village to the next on a train. It was definitely going to be the cause of a new wave of immorality to sweep the country. Young men could take the train to a neighbouring village and no one would know them. They could get up to all sorts of hanky-panky if not chaperoned. The women of every village in England were no longer safe.

Then there was the threat of people travelling from another country. One does not like to imagine the havoc red-blooded Frenchmen would cause among devout English maidens. To say nothing of the Germans. And the Spanish. The Spanish! Oh my goodness!

As for those train carriages for long journeys that had sleeping facilities. Such heinous thoughts entered Constantia’s head as to what could possibly go on, that she could only shut her eyes tight and think of England.

This so called “Industrial Revolution” consuming the country was striking the death knell for an upright and godly society. The sooner trains for travel were banned the better.

Poem 18A: Shadorma’s almost dance

(By way of explanation: I have decided to post on the first of each month a poem in a specific form. Throughout that month, if further poems are created and posted, they will all use that form. The poetic form chosen for February 2016 is the Shadorma. The shadorma is a pseudo-Spanish poetic form made up of stanzas of six lines with no set rhyme scheme. It is a syllabic poem with a meter of 3/5/3/3/7/5. It can have many stanzas, as long as each follows the meter. Little is known about this poetic form’s origins and history but it is suspected that the form is not Spanish but a concoction of some scally-wag at one time having some fun! In my reading and experimentation with the form, I have found it to be a relatively useless literary shape; one that has made an insignificant contribution to the canon of Planet Earth’s literature – hence the poem below!)

It’s a shame
when a poetic
form speaks of
nothing but
self like an introverted
narciss’stic idi-

ot. But e-
nough of me, it says,
let’s talk a-
bout you. What
do you think of me, O Ode?
Am I not pretty?

Shadorma,
replied the wise Ode,
speak of rain
on window
panes in winter’s irksome days.
Or blue irises.

Anything!
Dance a Spanish dance!
Click fingers!
Fast stamp feet!
Do the tarantella as
if you’re spider stung.

Warm cockles
of the heart with cast-
anets and
shake the ma-
racas louder than a train.
Drive all cold away!

Thus spoke the
Ode to Shadorma.
Shadorma
stood to dance
but sat again content to
mope and hug her knees.

To hear the poem read aloud click HERE.