The Last Train to Nowhere

By Matthew Parish

Saturday 14 November 2026

There comes a point in every traveller’s life

When all the grand illusions fall away,

When neither God, nor country, nor a wife

Can stop what must come urgently that day.

A station somewhere east of bloody hell,

Its windows smashed, its timetable long dead,

A smell that had a certain tale to tell,

And sudden dreadful movements down below.

The lavatory stood beside the track,

A concrete shed, abandoned to the rain.

I entered, knowing there was no way back,

And thought of England, dignity and pain.

Two footprints flanked a dark and gaping hole,

The door swung open in the autumn breeze.

I crouched, a man deprived of all control,

With trousers gathered somewhere near my knees.

Outside, a woman wandered slowly past,

A railway porter smoked beside a wall.

I prayed this business wouldn't bloody last,

And tried to make myself look rather small.

The door swung open. Then it swung once more.

A dog looked in, apparently impressed.

I tried to reach the handle from the floor,

And nearly lost the little I'd possessed.

There was no point in honour any more,

No private self to shelter or defend.

The wind blew through the hinges of the door,

And civilisation reached its bitter end.

At length the dreadful business was complete.

I stood, restored to something like a man,

And cautiously regained my shaking feet,

Then searched for water in a rusty can.

A tap projected from the crumbling wall,

A relic of some Soviet design.

I turned it. Nothing happened there at all.

The final degradation now was mine.

No water. Not a single bloody drop.

No soap, no towel, no merciful reprieve.

And somewhere, at a distant railway stop,

A train prepared for passengers to leave.

I thought of all the wars that men had fought,

Of empires built, of knowledge dearly won,

Of Kant, of Christ, of everything we'd thought,

And what our proud achievements hadn't done.

For all our cleverness, our art and laws,

Our satellites that circle overhead,

We still must squat with trousers round our drawers,

And wipe our arses in a concrete shed.

The station clock had stopped at half past three.

The wind blew litter down the empty line.

I raised my hands and contemplated me:

A dirty, temporary thing in time.

And walking out beneath the Ukrainian sky,

Past broken rails and weeds grown tall and wild,

I saw the porter watching with one eye.

He nodded once. And very nearly smiled.