The child is at the window; he is there every evening
at this time, as the
clouds of the world are catching fire. He knows
the fields behind
his house: the hay-shed with the tunnels through the bales,
the wrecked car
under the elders where some of the hens are laying,
the field with the
maze of pathways through the furze.
Beyond that, the
railway line where the lesser known world begins.
He has been there,
where the fields are wide and there are no houses,
to the water hole
where the small fish dart from weed cover to weed cover;
that’s where the
prairie begins, where cowboys travel alone.
To the left, the
railway line cuts straight to the white gates;
he has seen the
gates; beyond them trains travel days, weeks
across parched
deserts, open steppes, past wadis, oases. The passengers
seldom look:
tuxedoed gentlemen with glinting teeth are tipping whiskeys
lit by a million
lights in crystal glasses to feather-boa’d women
whose champagne
drinks sparkle back from the tips of their slender arms.
He knows the station
is to the right, and there’s the bridge he loves to stand on
when the four
o’clock is coming through. The excitement as the engine appears,
slowing to the
platform, then starts up, and the carriage roofs passing beneath him,
he loves that; then
the last of it, the tail slithering away from the station.
Where to? He does
not know. It goes into a place he has no thoughts on;
the evening train
into the hours he sleeps through; that is where darkness is.
