Cool your heels on the rail of an observation car.
Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour.
Take in the prairie right and left, rolling land and new
hay crops, swaths of new hay laid in the sun.
A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front
of the post-office never blink an eye.
A barnyard and fifteen Holstein cows, dabs of white on
a black wall map, never blink an eye.
A signalman in a tower, the outpost of Kansas City,
keeps his place at a window with the serenity of a
bronze statue on a dark night when lovers pass
whispering.
Prairie stillness and motionless animals leap out at 90 mph
Night from a railroad car window
Is a great, dark, soft thing
Broken across with slashes of light.
Night landscape reduced to dark softness slashed by passing light
I AM riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains
of the nation.
Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air
go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men
and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall
pass to ashes.)
I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he
answers : " Omaha."
Hurtling express makes human lives feel as fleeting as the prairie
Small towns
Crawling out of their green shirts...
Tubercular towns
Coughing a little in the dawn...
And the church...
There is always a church
With its natty spire
And the vestibule--
That's where they whisper:
Tzz-tzz... tzz-tzz... tzz-tzz...
How many codes for a wireless whisper--
And corn flatter than it should be
And those chits of leaves
Gadding with every wind?
Small towns
From Connecticut to Maine:
Small towns crawl past with whispers and sickness, judged from the window
FIELDS beneath a quilt of snow
From which the rocks and stubble peep,
And in the west a shy white star
That shivers as it wakes from sleep.
The restless rumble of the train,
The drowsy people in the car,
Steel blue twilight in the world,
And in my heart a timid star.
Snowy fields and a shy star mirror a timid heart stirring in twilight
Hands and lit faces eddy to a line;
The dazed last minutes click; the clamour dies.
Beyond the great-swung arc o' the roof, divine,
Night, smoky-scarv'd, with thousand coloured eyes
Glares the imperious mystery of the way.
Thirsty for dark, you feel the long-limbed train
Throb, stretch, thrill motion, slide, pull out and sway,
Strain for the far, pause, draw to strength again. . . .
As a man, caught by some great hour, will rise,
Slow-limbed, to meet the light or find his love;
And, breathing long, with staring sightless eyes,
Hands out, head back, agape and silent, move
Sure as a flood, smooth as a vast wind blowing;
And, gathering power and purpose as he goes,
Скорость и ночь сливаются в экстатическом полёте, растворяющем «я» в движении
YES. I remember Adlestrop--
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop--only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
Остановка поезда открывает застывшую летнюю идиллию, которая длится дольше самой минуты
The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.
All night there isn't a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.
My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing,
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going.
Свисток поезда за мили будит тоску по любой дороге, даже когда дома тепло
Mamie beat her head against the bars of a little Indiana
town and dreamed of romance and big things off
somewhere the way the railroad trains all ran.
She could see the smoke of the engines get lost down
where the streaks of steel flashed in the sun and
when the newspapers came in on the morning mail
she knew there was a big Chicago far off, where all
the trains ran.
She got tired of the barber shop boys and the post office
chatter and the church gossip and the old pieces the
band played on the Fourth of July and Decoration
Day
And sobbed at her fate and beat her head against the
bars and was going to kill herself
When the thought came to her that if she was going to
Бегство на поезде в большой город не лечит тоску — она переезжает вместе с героиней
Pea pods cling to stems.
Neponset, the village,
Clings to the Burlington railway main line.
Terrible midnight limiteds roar through
Hauling sleepers to the Rockies and Sierras.
The earth is slightly shaken
And Neponset trembles slightly in its sleep.
Деревня вздрагивает во сне от проносящихся составов, слыша зов дальних гор
That ugly pumpkin-coloured house
That I saw from the train--
I have wondered about the minds of the people inside
But I wonder in vain.
Did they choose that paint?
Or perhaps it was brought them to buy--
Oh I hope now they’ve got it all done that they like it--
And don’t just have to try.
Oh I hope that it shines there for them
In their sunny green fields
Like a lantern at night--
And I hope that on dull rainy days they both say to each other
“Don’t it look nice and bright?”
Oh I think I shall never forget them
In their new-painted house!
A passing traveler spins fond stories about strangers seen from the train window
Stony fields and lonely roads,
Meagre hamlets, very lean,
And most prosperous graveyards
Lying all between.
Each few miles a graveyard,
With its crouching column
And its urns and headstones,
Very dark and solemn.
But with what an accent!
Yellow, purple, red,
Lie the votive offerings
To this public dead.
Close beside the railway,
Where the smoke drifts high,
These are decked in garlands
For the passerby.
Railside graveyards turn the journey into a wave to the restful dead
Fast the new trails lead
From wilderness to city!
Years pass ... Canada!
A hokku traces how fast the wilderness flashes into city from the train
From coast to coast the railroads roam,
Yet every inch of rail stays home.
Playful paradox: trains roam coast to coast while the rails stay home
I NEVER saw that land before,
And now can never see it again;
Yet, as if by acquaintance hoar
Endeared, by gladness and by pain,
Great was the affection that I bore
To the valley and the river small,
The cattle, the grass, the bare ash trees,
The chickens from the farmsteads, all
Elm-hidden, and the tributaries
Descending at equal interval;
The blackthorns down along the brook
With wounds yellow as crocuses
Where yesterday the labourer's hook
Had sliced them cleanly; and the breeze
That hinted all and nothing spoke.
I neither expected anything
Fleeting landscape seen once and never again, yet deeply felt and loved
THEE for my recitative!
Thee in the driving storm, even as now—the snow—the winter-day declining;
Thee in thy panoply, thy measured dual throbbing, and thy beat convulsive;
Thy black cylindric body, golden brass, and silvery steel;
Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides;
Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar—now tapering in the distance;
Thy great protruding head-light, fix’d in front;
Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple;
The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack;
Thy knitted frame—thy springs and valves—the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels;
Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily-following,
Captures the raw power and motion of a train hurtling through a winter landscape
When they flagged our train because of a broken rail,
I stepped down out of the crowded car,
With its clamour and dust and heat and babel of broken talk.
I stepped out into the cool, the velvet cool, of the night,
And felt the balm of the prairie-wind on my face,
And somewhere I heard the running of water,
I felt the breathing of grass,
And I knew, as I saw the great white stars,
That the world was made for good!
A train delay becomes a step into the quiet night, with prairie wind and stars
Only the wanderer
Knows England’s graces,
Or can anew see clear
Familiar faces.
And who loves joy as he
That dwells in shadows?
Do not forget me quite,
O Severn meadows.
The fleeting view from a train window evokes longing for the familiar landscape of home
"Through pleasures and palaces" —
Through hotels, and Pullman cars, and steamships . . .
Pink and white camellias
floating in a crystal bowl.
The sharp smell of firewood.
The scrape and rustle of a dog stretching himself
on a hardwood floor.
And your voice, reading — reading —
to the slow ticking of an old brass clock . . .
"Tickets, please!"
And I watch the man in front of me
Fumbling in fourteen pockets.
While the conductor balances his ticket-punch
Between his fingers.
Travel's interruptions shatter a vivid sensory memory of home
Far down, down through the city’s great, gaunt gut
The gray train rushing bears the weary wind;
In the packed cars the fans the crowd’s breath cut,
Leaving the sick and heavy air behind.
And pale-cheeked children seek the upper door
To give their summer jackets to the breeze;
Their laugh is swallowed in the deafening roar
Of captive wind that moans for fields and seas;
Seas cooling warm where native schooners drift
Through sleepy waters, while gulls wheel and sweep,
Waiting for windy waves the keels to lift
Lightly among the islands of the deep;
Islands of lofty palm trees blooming white
That lend their perfume to the tropic sea,
Where fields lie idle in the dew drenched night,
The subway's captive wind stirs dreams of open tropical seas and islands
We stood in the shrill electric light,
Dumb and sick in the whirling din
We who had all of love to say
And a single second to say it in.
"Good-by!" "Good-by!"--you turned to go,
I felt the train's slow heavy start,
You thought to see me cry, but oh
My tears were hidden in my heart.
Captures the heartbreak of a farewell compressed into a train station's noisy, rushed moment
UNLESS it was that day I never knew
Ambition. After a night of frost, before
The March sun brightened and the South-west blew,
Jackdaws began to shout and float and soar
Already, and one was racing straight and high
Alone, shouting like a black warrior
Challenges and menaces to the wide sky.
With loud long laughter then a woodpecker
Ridiculed the sadness of the owl's last cry.
And through the valley where all the folk astir
Made only plumes of pearly smoke to tower
Over dark trees and white meadows happier
Than was Elysium in that happy hour,
A train that roared along raised after it
And carried with it a motionless white bower
Of purest cloud, from end to end close-knit,
A transcendent natural moment is shattered by the distant roar of a train
Come out and walk. The last few drops of light
Drain silently out of the cloudy blue ;
The trees are full of the dark-stooping night,
The fields are wet with dew.
All's quiet in the wood but, far away,
Down the hillside and out across the plain,
Moves, with long trail of white that marks its way,
The softly panting train.
Come through the clearing. Hardly now we see
The flowers, save dark or light against the grass,
Or glimmering silver on a scented tree
That trembles as we pass.
Hark now ! So far, so far ... that distant song . . .
Move not the rustling grasses with your feet.
The dusk is full of sounds, that all along
The muttering boughs repeat.
A softly panting train with a white trail crosses a darkening landscape at dusk
Many ways to spell good night.
Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July
spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.
They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.
Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue
and then go out.
Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack
mushrooming a white pillar.
Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying
in a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields
to a razorback hill.
It is easy to spell good night.
Many ways to spell good night.
Railroad trains at night spell good night with smokestack mushrooms of white
The trees along this city street,
Save for the traffic and the trains,
Would make a sound as thin and sweet
As trees in country lanes.
And people standing in their shade
Out of a shower, undoubtedly
Would hear such music as is made
Upon a country tree.
Oh, little leaves that are so dumb
Against the shrieking city air,
I watch you when the wind has come,--
I know what sound is there.
City trees would sound like country lanes but for the traffic and the trains
Roar of the rushing train fearfully rocking,
Impatient people jammed in line for food,
The rasping noise of cars together knocking,
And worried waiters, some in ugly mood,
Crowding into the choking pantry hole
To call out dishes for each angry glutton
Exasperated grown beyond control,
From waiting for his soup or fish or mutton.
At last the station’s reached, the engine stops;
For bags and wraps the red-caps circle round;
From off the step the passenger lightly hops,
And seeks his cab or tram-car homeward bound;
The waiters pass out weary, listless, glum,
To spend their tips on harlots, cards and rum.
The roar of the train and jammed travelers mirror the weary rush and frustration of your journey
The bank broke and I lost my savings.
I was sick of the tiresome game in Spoon River
And I made up my mind to run away
And leave my place in life and my family;
But just as the midnight train pulled in,
Quick off the steps jumped Cully Green
And Martin Vise, and began to fight
To settle their ancient rivalry,
Striking each other with fists that sounded
Like the blows of knotted clubs.
Now it seemed to me that Cully was winning,
When his bloody face broke into a grin
Of sickly cowardice, leaning on Martin
And whining out “We’re good friends, Mart,
You know that I’m your friend.”
But a terrible punch from Martin knocked him
A midnight train arrival sparks a street fight that derails one man's escape, echoing distraction at the station
OFTEN and often it came back again
To mind, the day I passed the horizon ridge
To a new country, the path I had to find
By half-gaps that were stiles once in the hedge,
The pack of scarlet clouds running across
The harvest evening that seemed endless then
And after, and the inn where all were kind,
All were strangers. I did not know my loss
Till one day twelve months later suddenly
I leaned upon my spade and saw it all,
Though far beyond the sky-line. It became
Almost a habit through the year for me
To lean and see it and think to do the same
Again for two days and a night. Recall
Was vain: no more could the restless brook
Ever turn back and climb the waterfall
The landscape flashing past becomes a haunting memory you try in vain to reclaim
Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!
And after April, when May follows,
And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark I where my blossomed pear tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge--
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
Watching foreign fields roll by sharpens the ache for home in all its spring detail
Where is that country? The unresting mind
Like a lapwing nears and leaves it and returns.
I know those unknown hill-springs where they rise,
I know the answer of the elms to the wind
When the wind on their heaving bosom lies
And sleeps. I know the grouping pines that crown
The long green hill and fling their darkness down,
A never-dying shadow; and well I know
How in the late months the whole wide woodland burns
Unsmoking, and the earth hangs still as still.
I know the town, the hamlets and the lone
Shelterless cottage where the wind's least tone
Is magnified, and his far-flung thundering shout
Brings near the incredible end of the world. I know!
Even in sleep-walk I should linger about
The passing country turns into an inner map where memory and love root you
Hushed in the smoky haze of summer sunset,
When I came home again from far-off places,
How many times I saw my western city
Dream by her river.
Then for an hour the water wore a mantle
Of tawny gold and mauve and misted turquoise
Under the tall and darkened arches bearing
Gray, high-flung bridges.
Against the sunset, water-towers and steeples
Flickered with fire up the slope to westward,
And old warehouses poured their purple shadows
Across the levee.
High over them the black train swept with thunder,
Cleaving the city, leaving far beneath it
Wharf-boats moored beside the old side-wheelers
Resting in twilight.
Golden dusk over a river city glimpsed from a passing train
THE green roads that end in the forest
Are strewn with white goose feathers this June,
Like marks left behind by some one gone to the forest
To show his track. But he has never come back.
Down each green road a cottage looks at the forest.
Round one the nettle towers; two are bathed in flowers.
An old man along the green road to the forest
Strays from one, from another a child alone.
In the thicket bordering the forest,
All day long a thrush twiddles his song.
It is old, but the trees are young in the forest,
All but one like a castle keep, in the middle deep.
That oak saw the ages pass in the forest:
They were a host, but their memories are lost,
For the tree is dead: all things forget the forest
Fleeting roadside details hint at vanished lives and passing time
A WIND comes from the north
Blowing little flocks of birds
Like spray across the town,
And a train, roaring forth,
Rushes stampeding down
With cries and flying curds
Of steam, out of the darkening north.
Whither I turn and set
Like a needle steadfastly,
Waiting ever to get
The news that she is free;
But ever fixed, as yet,
To the lode of her agony.
The train's rush echoes restless waiting for news
God, that I might see
Framilode once again!
Redmarley, all renewed,
Clear shining after rain.
And Cranham, Cranham trees,
And blaze of Autumn hues.
Portway under the moon,
Silvered with freezing dews.
May Hill that Gloster dwellers
’Gainst every sunset see;
And the wide Severn river
Homing again to the sea.
The star of afterglow,
Venus, on western hills;
Dymock in spring: O spring
Of home! O daffodils!
Homesickness for landscapes rushing past in memory, not window
Go up, go up your ways of varying love,
Take each his darling path wherever lie
The central fires of secret memory;
Whether Helvellyn tower the lakes above;
Or black Plinlimmon time and tempest prove;
Or any English heights of bravery.
I will go climb my little hills to see
Severn, and Malverns, May Hill’s tiny grove.
No Everest is here, no peaks of power
Astonish men. But on the winding ways
White in the frost-time, blinding in full June blaze,
A man may take all quiet heart’s delight--
Village and quarry, taverns and many a tower
That saw Armada beacons set alight.
Quiet pride in the ordinary hills that scroll by outside
What is there in those distant hills
My fancy longs to see,
That many a mood of joy instils?
Say what can fancy be?
Do old oaks thicken all the woods,
With weeds and brakes as here?
Does common water make the floods,
That's common everywhere?
Is grass the green that clothes the ground?
Are springs the common springs?
Daisies and cowslips dropping round,
Are such the flowers she brings?
Are cottages of mud and stone,
By valley wood and glen,
And their calm dwellers little known
Men, and but common men,
Familiar scenery passing by holds its own quiet splendor without distant hills
"To see my love suffices me."
--Ballades in Blue China.
Some men to carriages aspire;
On some the costly hansoms wait;
Some seek a fly, on job or hire;
Some mount the trotting steed, elate.
I envy not the rich and great,
A wandering minstrel, poor and free,
I am contented with my fate --
An omnibus suffices me.
In winter days of rain and mire
I find within a corner strait;
The 'busmen know me and my lyre
From Brompton to the Bull-and-Gate.
When summer comes, I mount in state
The topmost summit, whence I see
Observing the city's passing pageant from a humble seat feels like a contented journey
Your footfalls on the drum bridge beside my house
Are like the pattering drops of a passing shower.
So soon are they gone.
Footfalls like raindrops vanish as quickly as the fleeting nearness of a passing window
Jangle of cow-bells through pine-trees.
Grasshoppers leaping up out of the grass.
The mountain is bloomed like a grape
(Silver, hazing over purple),
It blocks into the sky like a shadow.
The South wind blows intermittently.
And the clanking of the cow-bells comes up the hill in gusts.
Sensory fragments of countryside — cowbells, wind, haze — drift by in gusts
THE skylarks are far behind that sang over the
down;
I can hear no more those suburb nightingales;
Thrushes and blackbirds sing in the gardens of the
town
In vain: the noise of man, beast, and machine
prevails.
But the call of children in the unfamiliar streets
That echo with a familiar twilight echoing,
Sweet as the voice of nightingale or lark, completes
A magic of strange welcome, so that I seem a king
Among man, beast, machine, bird, child, and the
ghost
That in the echo lives and with the echo dies.
The friendless town is friendly; homeless, I
not lost;
A moving traveler finds brief magic in unfamiliar streets glimpsed at night