This Train is for Victoria Station
A photograph of
Princess Margaret, aged nine, striding
with a long step on a wet London sidewalk,
in sensible black shoes and white mid-calf
stockings bunching around the ankles;
a woman in black to her left, in a high hat
that at first glance makes you think she is
a policeman, perhaps, is holding a small child’s hand.
In the background, men in suits walk purposefully
in the same direction.
It is May 1939, the Princess is wearing black gloves
and a black beret. She is looking straight ahead, and
no one seems to be paying any attention to her, which,
in time, she will grow not to tolerate.
There is the slightest wince on her face, as though
having just emerged from her first ride on the
London Underground, as the caption helpfully tells us,
has been a brush with the working classes she was
not prepared for.
She is a plain girl, on an adventure. Perhaps.
She seems tall for her age.
The art-deco grilles over the windows on the building
in the background are patterned vaguely like crowns.
What a nice touch.
What a nice way to remind us that we are all
in seperate worlds whose edges brush against each other,
and that the sparks of that brushing are the senses,
that the senses are a kingdom unto themselves,
and ourselves but the vassals of others.