The clock in the concourse
keeps its brass face polished,
though the trains run late.
Below it, the tiled floor
is a saga of heelstrikes and scuffmarks —
polished brogues, steel‑capped boots,
heels that click like typebars.
Through the high windows,
light falls in measured squares,
as if the city itself
were an architect’s drawing.
You can almost hear
the draughtsman’s pencil
in the click and crackle of the switchboard,
the hiss and spit of the espresso machine
in the corner kiosk —
each sound another line
in the day’s unfolding chapter.
Here, commerce is not a shout
but a handshake;
industry not a furnace roar
but the steady bite of gears
in the lift shaft.
The air carries the tang of paper,
ink, and rain
that beads on overcoats —
all of it pressed into the floor’s
long memory of arrivals and departures.
We are all shareholders here —
clerks and porters,
managers and machinists —
each with a stake in the day’s
quiet transactions.
The building holds us
like a sentence holds its clauses,
each brick a word,
each scuffmark a comma,
in the city’s long,
unbroken paragraph.
.