Arriving trains will leave us breathless;
Anticipation fills the room;
No sooner does the engine loom
Than naked corpses, crushed, stupendous,
Rush to mind in filth and fumes —
Sinister carriages, rocking and endless.
But gone off to the edge of the fields,
The train is frozen, small and still;
We hear no more the keen of wheels,
The whistle crying, wet and shrill.
The quay is silent, stark, bereft,
Swept clean of history and leaves,
And all that’s left of the oppressed’s
A distant, dusty line of trees.