Waterloo underpass poem to be restored

A mural poem composed to comfort travellers descending into one of Britain's most dismal underworlds is being recreated after more than 1,000 people who mourned its destruction paid to have it restored. The poem, Eurydice, is one of the longest pieces of public art in the capital. It was inscribed along a concrete tunnel connecting Waterloo station with the Imax cinema and the South Bank 10 years ago. It was destroyed last autumn – a fortnight after Time Out magazine listed it as one of London's best pieces of secret art – when contractors for Network Rail painted over it, claiming to be cleaning up the tunnel. The poem, by Sue Hubbard, was originally a joint commission by the Arts Council, the British Film Institute and the Imax architects, Avery, as part of a campaign to improve the landscape of the South Bank. Her publisher, Christopher Hamilton-Emery, was horrified to discover that the poem had been obliterated and started a Facebook campaign, called Put the Poem Back in Waterloo Underpass . Tributes to the poem poured in. Its message of the triumph of hope, as Eurydice descends into the underworld leaving a recognisably London landscape of sodium streetlights, train tracks and the Waterloo station clock, declaring "I am not afraid", so moved people that one man chose to propose in front of it, and a mother visiting her dying daughter in a nearby hospital was comforted every day by its words. Money poured in, a lawyer volunteered to undertake, free of charge, the months of legal negotiations needed to have it restored, and a software firm, Neural Technologies, offered to top up the public donations. The poem is this week being stencilled back on to the walls by James Salisbury of the City and Guilds of London art school – in gold this time because of the new colour of the wall but, at the insistence of the Facebook campaigners, in its original font. "I was incredibly touched," Hubbard said. "I always hoped people liked it, but I never knew they had such strong feelings about it." Eurydice I am not afraid as I descend, step by step, leaving behind the salt wind blowing up the corrugated river, the damp city streets, their sodium glare of rush-hour headlights pitted with pearls of rain; for my eyes still reflect the half remembered moon. Already your face recedes beneath the station clock, a damp smudge among the shadows mirrored in the train's wet glass, will you forget me? Steel tracks lead you out past cranes and crematoria, boat yards and bike sheds, ruby shards of roman glass and wolf-bone mummified in mud, the rows of curtained windows like eyelids heavy with sleep, to the city's green edge. Now I stop my ears with wax, hold fast the memory of the song you once whispered in my ear. Its echoes tangle like briars in my thick hair. You turned to look. Second fly past like birds. My hands grow cold. I am ice and cloud. This path unravels. Deep in hidden rooms filled with dust and sour night-breath the lost city is sleeping. Above the hurt sky is weeping, soaked nightingales have ceased to sing. Dusk has come early. I am drowning in blue. I dream of a green garden where the sun feathers my face like your once eager kiss. Soon, soon I will climb from this blackened earth into the diffident light. © Sue Hubbard