Train journey

        i.

The Warsaw railway station
is grey-clean, in the modern style,
with electronic announcements
and flickering changes on the sign-boards.

Here, a sparrow hops her two-legged way
then flits up to the by-me-unseen rafters
of her life,

recalling the bird in Bede’s history
winging through the mead hall,

then out into the darkness
beyond light and time –

for us it is time to find
our platform for Krakow.


        ii.

She runs with large strides
that her bum emphasizes,

down the platform, step by step,
late for something;

then she, looking harassed;
and he in his suit, fast striding:

slaves to the time of capital,
never early enough.


        iii.

Was there, in the hard days,
such hurry?

Did guards with guns
own time,

each slow
moment?


        iv.

A lone cattle truck
stands still

at Auschwitz-Birkenau,
the train lines coming

through the brick-arched gate
to this terminus.


        v.

Lost at the Krakow station,
you rush to find the tickets to Warsaw;

I, flustered amongst languages,
seek our platform,

telling a young woman
– she speaks a little English –

that I don’t know where to go
for Warsaw; barely know where I am.

“You,” she asserts carefully,
“are in Krakow, Poland”.

We laugh at absurdity. She walks
from my life. Then you, Cape mossie

flitting through the foreign crowd,
come gleefully, flapping tickets.

 - Brian Walter