I was on the train from Kings Cross to Berwick, up the East coast of England passing through Cambridge, York and Newcastle.  

It must have been around nine the morning when I'd arrived at St. Pancras from Paris after a great weekend speaking at UNESCO .  I had a hangover  behind and a five hour train ride ahead of me.  My American debit card didn't work in  an  English point of sale machine at the liquor store so   I left the bottle behind and wandered around the station until I found a Tesco express.  Tesco Express sells booze, and they also handled my card just fine so I bought  a bottle of Famous Grouse, a liter of Perrier and some digestive biscuits.   

If the cost of Bourbon is astonishing in London, it  is prohibitive in Paris - I put 23 euros on the UNESCO charge for each of several glasses of Jim Beam on the rocks.  There's no alternative anywhere though, except an occasional Jack Daniels.  No Wild Turkey (my first choice).  No Makers Mark, no nothing.  No Bulleit.  No Bookers.  No Basil Haydn, Woodford Reserve  or Pappy Van Winkle.  Old Crow? No. Old Grand Dad? Nope.   No Blanton's , Buffalo Trace nor Eagle Rare. 

No Rye, neither, but that's not much to miss for.  I'm OK with Jim Beam, but I chose Grouse and I'm glad I did.

So I sat myself down at  the corner of a platform with a scalding cup of tea and a hip pocket full of whiskey.  Nobody likes a dirty old drunk, mid-morning.   I still don't know what the open container laws are in London, but people do tend to see what they want to see.  They want to see a quiet poet, waiting for the train, sipping from his cup and filling up with Famous Grouse.   If only I'd known, I'd have worn a beret.

The line goes north through Peterborough, where I was halfway through the pint.  I had some music on my laptop, but something about the morning caught me on a repeat loop  and I listened to Johnny Cash sing 22 times,   "He Stopped Loving Her Today".   A song like that, a song listened like that, the lines start to merge.  The first line of the first stanza and the first line of the second stanza create a standing wave with the first lines of stanzas three and four.  Same  with the second, third and fourth lines of each stanza.  The song becomes one verse,  outside of a sequential performance.  The music stands isolated, shining against the lush flatness of the Fens. 

Words are like the breaking point of a wave, the moment where all possible meanings collapse in to one.  Scansion  interacts between lines  like waves, adding  to the peaks, deepening  the troughs,  cancelling out.  What remains are the offbeat  single exhalations, the momentary gaps, or the catch in the voice.  The song becomes a hieroglyph, the moment it was recorded etched in to the moment that I heard it.  

Leaving Peterborough, I wrote a poem, and here is that poem:

there’s an instant when you know that you will die
there’s an instant when you know there you will die
there’s an instant when you know when you will die
there’s an instant that you know when you will die
there’s an instant that you know there you will die
there’s an instant that you know that you will die
there’s an instant there you know there you will die
there’s an instant there you know when you will die
there’s an instant there you know that you will die
that an instant that you know there you will die
that an instant that you know when you will die
that an instant there you know when you will die
that an instant there you know that you will die
that an instant there you know there you will die
that an instant that you know that you will die
that an instant when you know there you will die
that an instant when you know that you will die
that an instant when you know when you will die
when an instant that you know there you will die
when an instant that you know when you will die
when an instant that you know that you will die
when an instant there you know that you will die
when an instant there you know when you will die
when an instant there you know there you will die
when an instant when you know when you will die
when an instant when you know there you will die
when an instant when you know that you will die