Piranhas on the tube

Glaswegian poet Edwin Morgan (Obituaries, 19 August) was a great friend of London's Poems on the Underground, and his Loch Ness Monster's Song was one of the first poems we displayed. A few years earlier, he was commissioned to write poems for Glasgow's refurbished underground. Alas, the Strathclyde authorities were so alarmed by The Subway Piranhas they dropped the whole idea. This was his typically mischievous offering: "Did anyone tell you/ that in each subway train/ there is one special seat/ with a small hole in it/ and underneath the seat/ is a tank of piranha-fish/ which have not been fed/ for quite some time./ The fish become agitated/ by the shoogling of the train/ and jump up through the seat./ The resulting skeletons/ of unlucky passengers/ turn an honest penny/ for the transport executive,/ hanging far and wide/ in medical schools." Perfect. Judith Chernaik Poems on the Underground