Train

(after Max Ernst, ‘Europe After the Rain’)

In the dark

each sits alone

clutching his flag

I have more than my one death

to attend to.

There is a sickness about

and the magician has vanished

But I sit with my 26 years

spread on my palms

and I wait for the silence

when the programme is interrupted

and the actors have no script.

And I think how to carry my children

into the sewers

Roll up the cities.

Let the window explode

in a million glass flowers.

In the darkness already

the woman picking milk from the step

the ashes raked last thing at night

are postures, buried

slipping into dust, rock, ooze,

furniture of a planet

wheeling in silence

lonely as a train

waving its little handkerchiefs of steam