Inge smiles and offers me money
I will never take
For having travelled from Paris
Through Austria by train to see her;
Offers it as gentle as a blessing,
Offers it with her kiss as sweet as kindness,
She knowing I have paid a week’s wages
For a trip that ends as soon as it begins,
A trip hurried into blindness, Munich and night falling.
With the ticket takers
And station masters, the jurisprudent ones
All of us must deal with, all of our lives.
Their faces so clean shaven—
Those who would never take advantage of anyone,
Except some child running away in winter,
Orphan out of step with all the others,
A man who can never speak the language
And has been trying to all his life,
A woman with a pleading smile,
Or a stranger,
Yes, a stranger they can better.