Track 20: Listening to Interpol, On the Underground, Overseas by Daniel Seifert
Welcome to the sweet surreal. You are
hunched on a rumbling cannon,
a chattering train carriage
pumping bass overneath
the song in your head.
And you realize:
there’s joy in the melancholy
of being far from home.
A gritty sweetness to burrowing
down London’s ribs, and playing
a song called NYC.
Through your speakers Paul Banks
is moaning about, oh this is perfect —
the smutty, purple subway. Sure
all you see is commuters yawning
under chemical lights, but
that’s okay, see you’re drunk
on jet-lag, on England.
Fatigue in your bloodstream
making everything a miracle.
Sartre proven wrong:
heaven is other people.
Next city, same song and
Copenhagen gleams, even underground.
Effortless perfection, scrubbed clean of ads.
No really, no posters
just clean white lines
just smooth dark walls
just horizontal proof
of Nordic design.
And with fifty feet of dark,
Danish earth above your head
the bass is sweet oblivion
and the drums burrow in your ribs
and for a sec you can say you don’t know
where you’ve gone, you think
How can it all hit so sweet
when you’re underground
over-tired
abroad.
Daniel Seifert's writing is published or forthcoming in The New York Times, Hobart, The Sun, Poetry Wales and the anthology Missed Connections: Microfiction From Asia. His work has twice been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and longlisted for the Letter Review Prize. He has a Masters in Creative Writing from Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore. He tweets @DanSeifwrites.
