Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

Here you will find the Poem The Man In The Bowler Hat of poet Arthur Seymour John Tessimond

The Man In The Bowler Hat

I am the unnoticed, the unnoticable man: 
The man who sat on your right in the morning train:
The man who looked through like a windowpane:
The man who was the colour of the carriage, the colour of the mounting
Morning pipe smoke. 
I am the man too busy with a living to live,
Too hurried and worried to see and smell and touch:
The man who is patient too long and obeys too much
And wishes too softly and seldom. 

I am the man they call the nation's backbone,
Who am boneless - playable castgut, pliable clay:
The Man they label Little lest one day
I dare to grow. 

I am the rails on which the moment passes,
The megaphone for many words and voices:
I am the graph diagram,
Composite face. 

I am the led, the easily-fed,
The tool, the not-quite-fool,
The would-be-safe-and-sound,
The uncomplaining, bound,
The dust fine-ground,
Stone-for-a-statue waveworn pebble-round 


Submitted by Stephen Fryer