The poem
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
Just some corrective footnotes in response to a couple of typos in the above version of this superb poem. The following lines should read:-
The man *you* looked through like a windowpane:
and
Who am boneless - playable *catgut*, pliable clay:
Long may this poem aptly distill the anomie of man in
mid 20th century society...