"Automatic Doors"

Automatic Doors
By Paul Farley

When I see some kids springing the gallery doors
I lament the great revolvers. As we enter
a new era of doors, I can remember
the thrill involved, the stately, dumb inertia

at first, before they’d give, a slow surrender
to four heaving kids, storing our power,
a glass and darkwood turbine, now whatever
effort we put in, the doors would answer

as they gathered speed, until only a shoulder
nudge was needed (and though no passengers
were carried, now and then I’d grab the bar
and dangle in my quadrant). We’d spin for hours

or so it seem: we were time travelers
fast-forwarding ourselves into the future
before we were thrown out, into an era
of never even having to lift a finger.



This poem is taken from Paul Farley’s latest collection, out last year, Tramp in Flames.

He has already won quite a number of awards : the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 1998; the Forward Prize and the Somerset Maugham Award for an earlier collection, The Boy from the Chemist is Here to See You; and Whitbread Poetry Prize for The Ice Age.

In this poem Farley recalls a time when there were “great revolvers”, those old-fashion revolving doors you find in grand old hotels, apartments or old buildings, which you have to push in order to get in from outside or the other way around. With “the new era of doors” the new doors would “spring” open when you get near them, because they are automatic.

Farley regrets the passing of those revolving relics, and remembers the excitement they could give. “stately, dumb inertia” recalls a slow moving and regal time, probably in Victorian or Edwardian days when trains revolved steam turbines, and ran carriages within which “passengers were carried”. See also “slow”, “heaving”, “power”, “effort”. Entering into “a new era”, these machines were replaced with faster ones (“fast-forwarding”, “thrown out”).

In the first line and first stanza Farley sees “some kids”. In the second line, a caesura or a pause marked by a full-stop in the middle signals a significant change, in time and in subject. He seems to have time-travelled back to being one of “four heaving kids” of the new subject “we”. The line appropriately and effectively runs-on at “enter”, into “a new era of doors”, in the next line.

In the last line of the first stanza we seem to have reached an end-stop with the last group of words “stately, dumb inertia”. However, reading on at the start of the next stanza reveals an extension to those words, so that “inertia” is really a run-on or enjambement, giving it a forward movement quite the opposite of the word’s connotation. The words towards which the run-on goes next sit in a new stanza, further heightening the run-on effect. These words, "at first", suggest that the object might be "slow" and "stately" initially but it can store power and gain speed.

The rhyming of “power” with “answer” makes one wonder if replacing with something more powerful is really the answer. Are we being precipitate (“fast-forwarding”) in rushing into a “future”, “a new era” in which everything is “automatic” and you don’t have to even have “to lift a finger”.