China Keeps Time with Trains

China keeps time with trains. What would I give to live near the tracks that cross China? On sonic whistle lines that prompt cities before dawn? China wakes to the train like waking an anxious rooster. The alarms rippling and resonating against pavements and the ticking street light transponders. Or, trembles midday without noticing the rumbling vibrations adjust her squat position in a countryman’s bent contemplation. Echoes distant murmurs fly repel on her mountainsides with the distance of a shepherd’s call.

Boxed, stained work yards grind forward at all hours like the clockworks of an organism telling nothing but speaking to nothing, to nobody, to nowhere like a universe within, the heartbeat of a city, hidden tucked, cloistered in brick, residues of soot and burnt oils.

There is now dim view for her humanity; those who view the humanity by her bustle. The windows are watching glassy-steel frames run by like an old movie reel, tested, forgotten, aged, recent but forgotten. Cells of time built to produce nothingness. Earnestness of simple purpose bears a fading whistle.

China’s train howls of its Awareness, Abstraction, Abdication, Amelioration.

The train howls and passes these four points of pride over her Class Consciousness.

China keeps time from trains…were that eternity might listen.

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Bent Reeds and Rusted Grasses

Bent and Rusted

Yards not
As filthy
Now
As when people
Lived
On them.

Now, steeled,
Less curious,
Slates,
Ties and granites,
Tendered
More silenced
Provided with
Full security,
Stern walls,
Weighted wire.
Bent reeds and rusted
Grasses

Winter
Stained in diesel
Roughed dusts
And fog
There are houses
For conductors
Engineer
Tenements
Railway men
Live amongst
Us here.

Behind
Guarded
Plots of vacancy

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