II Gare centrale

I had it for a moment, quick as the clash of two winds on a rooftop:

the smell of barley, hops, fresh diesel and its negative – used air;

then Belga smoke over the exhalations of the waffel-stand:

This feeling of penetrating misery is sponsored by Brussels

City Council in association with SNCB announced a voice

in white over the station tannoy. I filed this one away between

two stops, between Bruxelles-Nord and Bruxelles-

Midi, between the word départ, so definitive and final,

and the word partance, an ongoing going, a leaving

still entangled in itself years later like the sound of a train

turning the corner, its siren coiled around the echo of the last to go

and the tunnel taking a moulding of our departures.