I discovered The Man in the Bowler Hat in the 2007 anthology, Railway Rhymes. It is credited there to Peter Black and a little research revealed that it was first published under that name in 1943. Peter Black, however, was merely one of the many names used by the poet whose real name was A S J Tessimond (1902–1962). It was published under his own name in 1947.
Tessimond is a somewhat enigmatic figure, highly thought of during his writing career but pretty much forgotten today, perhaps at least partly because of the confusion over his real identity.
The speaking voice of the poem is a persona that the poet has adopted, rather than the poet himself. He is a representative “little man” figure, perhaps bringing to mind G K Chesterton’s “people of England, who never have spoken yet”.
I think I am drawn to the poem because it describes the world my father knew. He was not a “little man” in any sense, but he did wear a bowler hat, smoke a pipe and commute to his work on the train.
The Man in the Bowler Hat by A S J Tessimond (Peter Black)
I am the unnoticed, the unnoticable man:
The man who sat on your right in the morning train:
The man you 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 catgut, 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 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.
The Good Reader 