Train Track Songs

A train pulled in at a station today

A train pulled in at a station today
A puff of smoke covered the platform cracks
Cobwebbed ticket window, broken lamps,
A pigeon scared from the weed-grown tracks
        A train pulled into a station today.

A train creaked into the station today
Rusty engine, sooty, grimy, and black
Empty coaches, no caboose, no rake
A crack running down its grey smokestack
        A train pulled in at a station today.

But a clock on the wall still ticking today
The signals still going clickety-clack
What will it be for this train I wonder
Green to move on, or red, end of track?
        A train pulled in at a station today.

Jan 02

---

A train evening

Evening comes, the pulse of day
stilled in the dark. The roll of the train
pervades the mind. Somewhere
a faint longing, the stir of incipient desire.
Beyond the window the images of dusk:
Lights coming on, naked bulbs
station platforms blur into pale shadow.
Into this void the mind reaches out
seeking the fragile touch
once lost, magically recovered
under the burden of memory, at once
punishing and nourishing.
Somewhere in that dark void
a room suffused with malhar,
and the faint familiar smell
and your softness underneath the quilt
and your voice tinkling laughter

At dusk, the mind seeks your touch.

Feb 04

---

Trainsound

Saturday night
The fan turns listless
You are on a train somewhere
The roll of distant berths
Keeps me awake

These days,
It is you in the train
And I am the one
Left behind.

Where the tender flow of song
Inundated our whole beings
We have now the metal
Of trainsound.

It rocks you to sleep.
I feel it
Drive across my soul.

8 Aug 04

---

Scandal

Those nights of brewing scandal
Late night phone call: voice unknown -
"Can I speak to Mr. X please?"
Just then a trainsound deluge
Falaknama Express . . .
"Wrong Number."
"Can I speak to Mr. X?"
"Who is speaking please?"
"He's there now, isn't he?"
Hang up.
Ring.
      Ring.
            Ring.

The phones are silent today
There is no Mr. X.
In the dead of night
Falaknama rumbles down
Carrying distant sleep.
I wonder what scandals
May be travelling on it
Today.

26 Nov 04