In this dream that dogs me I am part <br />Of a silent crowd walking under a wall, <br />Leaving a football match, perhaps, or a pit, <br />All moving the same way. After a while <br />A second wall closes on our right, <br />Pressing us tighter. We are now shut in <br />Like pigs down a concrete passage. When I lift <br />My head, I see the walls have killed the sun, <br />And light is cold. Now a giant whitewashed D <br />Comes on the second wall, but much too high <br />For them to recognise: I await the E, <br />Watch it approach and pass. By now <br />We have ceased walking and travel <br />Like water through sewers, steeply, despite <br />The tread that goes on ringing like an anvil <br />Under the striding A. I crook <br />My arm to shield my face, for we must pass <br />Beneath the huge, decapitated cross, <br />White on the wall, the T, and I cannot halt <br />The tread, the beat of it, it is my own heart, <br />The walls of my room rise, it is still night, <br />I have woken again before the word was spelt.<br /><br />Philip Larkin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tr-auml-umerei/
