The Train Over the Hills

Balana, April 2013

Overwhelming — these gregarious green covered mountains
Overlook as the train, snail-like trudges on laid tracks.
As passengers and awed foreigners balance doorways for snaps
All is still in paced silence, interfering no gaps

As if to render that all’s futile,
That time heeds not the insignificance
Of the negritude of the passengers some half-dead,
Others clownish in their own day-end sweat
Being pulled to — being pulled from
Town to village; from village to town.
As they return home, work-worn, half asleep; a frown.

The efforts of amateur photographers
Who balance their weight with the expectant moment
Sneered at — as if — in an uproar mocked
By the thunderous bellowing echo the mountain issues to
Fellow tree-topped mountain rock.

Afar, throwing all over the
Eternal light of the day that longs its rest
The rocky wilderness above — Balana’s ancient vantage —
Disregards in its hugeness
The set of combined cars and the collective arrogance.

slowed down, reduced to a humble rock-a-bye rhythm
Its most immediate concern being the weakness of sleepers
The train passes on, moves through the unmoving tomb
In mechanical gratitude, a hiccup at a time, a steeper.

2013-04-19