I’m now reading my way through The Many Days: Selected Poems by Norman MacCaig (1910-1996) and enjoying greatly the directness, simplicity, and thoughtful depth of his poems. This morning I read this poem he wrote on a train from London to Edinburgh. That’s a journey I have done many times but still enjoy. The first time I made the journey was my first trip to Scotland when I went to Edinburgh to study medicine. I was filled with excitement, apprehension, and anticipation. I once made the journey from Edinburgh, where we were on holiday, to London and back again in one day in order to attend a funeral. That day left me with a strong feeling, which I can still feel, that I was living at the wrong end of the line.

MacCaig, a Scot to his toenails, was clear that for him Edinburgh was the right end of the line. He anticipates the train crossing the border and captures the paradox of trains—that is traveling at 70 mile per hour (faster now) but only creeping towards home.

We have no doubt that he’s glad to be away from London despite its “friendly strangers.” With “home and home and home” he captures the sound of the train, but he couldn’t now light a cigarette.

Train journeys are transient and this journey makes MacCaig reflect that “the past grows bigger every minute” and that his “future every minute grows smaller and smaller.”

This is not one of MacCaig’s finest poems, but it’s one that speaks directly to me. I’ll be on the train again on 22 September and then again in 3 October.

London to Edinburgh by Norman MacCaig

I’m waiting for the moment
when the train crosses the Border
and home creeps closer
at seventy miles an hour.

I dismiss the last four days
and their friendly strangers
into the past
that grows bigger every minute.

The train sounds urgent as I am,
it says home and home and home.
I light a cigarette
and sit smiling in the corner.

Scotland, I rush towards you
into my future that,
every minute,
grows smaller and smaller.