Practising Suicide Poem by Stephen Page

For seven hours on the train
i've read my books and looked again
at stations grey with industry
from Yorkshire Southward to the sea.

By train and coach and car and thumb
my visits home, an asylum
where I'd still be, and certified
if I'd not practised suicide.

Like murderers the same is true
felo da se return to view
the scene of their impassioned crime -
now I've come back to visit mine.

A tale of first-love vertigo
doubled all those years ago
by guilt and the discovery
of wilful infidelity.

We have to die to live again
these little deaths, their mask of pain
a costume worn beneath the skin
to hide the cry of birth within.

For seven hours on the train
I've closed my eyes and dreamt again
of all the places I have seen
and all the changelings I have been.