Tyne Tunnel

These days I tune in specially
as I approach the tunnel, hoping for
sopranos, pianistic flourishes,
colouristic passages, as I pay and wind
my window up, switch on dipped lights
and descend to the river's underbelly.

The static comes in swells, quite leisurely:
it pulls itself over the voice, the strings,
it shushes, couries, smothers, sinks,
and then it reigns like poison in the lug,
a crush of other traffic, a scrape and drag -
cans across rock, silt through gills: the gully.

I always feel it will be troubled by
some voice that breaks in with a song
you only hear down here, the tongue
compressed - half ham, half Janacek,
its syncopation slewed like Lutoslawski -
but there's nothing till sunlight and, gradually,

the same tune altered by the weight of water.