THE BUS Grown old I know the angel with the sword is coming. Feeling again the fear I felt in childhood I seek a child's escape. I take a bus and put my trust in engines Let their reverberations reassure me Feeling I'm safe as long as I'm in transit. So bowling through the spreading outer city I know the bounding confidence of buses Enjoy the rows of small neat normal houses The spates of shop-fronts brash and bright for business. Lorries and cars and bikes go streaming past Restore my sense of life my sense of living. But now I see a tree a field a mountain And know the journey can't go on forever The bus is parked along a rustic byway. I must get out and wait for the home journey And sitting on a bench and waiting, waiting, I hear the sound of footsteps in the distance And wonder if the angel is approaching. -- Warren O'Connell, "Quartet," Swan Press, Dublin (1995).