Two poems by Jane Michelson click here for index NIGHT TRAIN A pack of men mounted the night tube, stared beefily into space. Eyes akimbo, they watched the blonde with luggage remove her headscarf, puff out her perm. Women alone at night do not care for children, pets, parents, invalids and husbands. They are on the loose. If it were my daughter, girlfriend, wife, mother alone on the night male train, now if she were mine she would be safe at home with me.    MIRROR MIRROR She had the ugliest face set like jelly on a dead dish. You wondered if she ever saw daylight or just sat there, eyes and fingers twitching at the screen shifting columns of figures. Her body was huddled inside a very long cardigan handknitted, by an arthritic misogynist, from unravelled yak. Only her hair drew the eye. Its long auburn waves stirred down her back like a Leonardo sea, all curls and ripples. You looked at her and marvelled how it grew there. What possessed it to adorn this pasty woman. It did her no good. It was like the moustache painted on the Mona Lisa. It was a practical joke. And you wondered was it deliberate ? Did she know ? Should you tell her ? Who was she anyway ?