Read an Excerpt
“Express Train”
The carriages slide over the frets of the tracks to sing on two strings the landscape’s grit.
Fields of stone,
where vines shoot a menacing hand out of the earth.
Nags who lead ascetic lives aiming to enter the bullring.
Haggard hogs gone mad who think they are Salomé
because their hams are rosy.
On the crest of the crag,
dressed for First Communion,
the villagers’ houses kneel at the foot of the church,
they press together,
they lift it as if it were a monstrance,
they are anesthetized by siesta and the tintinnabulation of bells.
At the risk that the trip will end for good,
the locomotive propels the stones at sixteen kilometers per hour and when it can’t go on any longer it stops, panting.
At times, it “usually” happens that a station is precisely there.
Bells! Whistles! Shouts!;
and the engine driver, who bids the station chief seven farewells;
and the parrot, who is the only passenger to protest the fourteen-hour delay;
and the girls who come to see the train pass because it is the only thing that comes to pass.
The carriages slide over the frets of the tracks to sing on two strings the landscape’s grit.
Fields of stone,
where vines shoot a menacing hand out of the earth.
Nags who lead ascetic lives aiming to enter the bullring.
Haggard hogs gone mad who think they are Salomé
because their hams are rosy.
In the first-class compartments,
the seats screw springs into us and uncork our kidneys,
while spiders practice their firemen exercises around the nightlight that kindles on the ceiling.
At the risk that the trip will end for good,
the locomotive propels the stones past at sixteen kilometers per hour and when it can’t go on any longer it stops, panting.
Will we arrive at dawn,
or tomorrow evening . . .—
Through the grimy windows dusk scares off shadows that creep out from the rocks while we go on burying ourselves in catacomb light.
You can hear:
the song of women peeling stew vegetables for the day after tomorrow;
the snore of soldiers,
which assures us,
who knows why,
that they’ve taken their boots off;
the numbers of the lottery summary which passengers learn by heart since they haven’t found anything else to read at the newsstands.
If we could have at least cozied an eye up to one of those pinholes in the sky!
Bells! Whistles! Shouts!;
and the engine driver, who bids the station chief seven farewells;
and the parrot, who is the only passenger to protest the fourteen-hour delay;
and the girls who come to see the train pass because it is the only thing that comes to pass.
The carriages slide over the frets of the tracks to sing on two strings the landscape’s grit.
Spain? 1870? . . . 1923? . . .
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