Trains

We recorded trains speeding past:

successions of windows,

film strips flashing across our eyes,

flapping away into the night.

You described trains passing apartment windows

in an Italian city: photographs of strangers:

a cup halfway to a mouth,

a head bent to a drawer.

A photographic exhibition:

snapshots of the disconnected

lives of modern cities;

ephemeral existences, dispensable people.

In your apartment we watched our footage,

it delighted us: trains are film strips;

they roll and roll and roll

and each frame is a kind of death.