Gusts.
Transiting skies,
while I’m
leaving, entering the train station,
struck by
brushstrokes
of swollen
grey, with that severe
tiger’s
stare in the air
and on the
canal’s skin a running,
skidding
patch of angered ripples.
The
downpour, as ever, is biding its time
on the
platform, a matter of seconds.
In the
meanwhile the electric board
by the
railway gives no sign, no time
of
departure, it’s empty
like the
railway tracks, and the question
in the eyes
of a growing crowd, waiting.
You stand by
the luggage, I go to the office
for
information.
And here I
am, by a glass door,
it doesn’t
open, I knock, the knocking
is unheard
because of the booming thunder I’m sure,
and the
downpour that has come, just now,
and we are,
as ever, fretting in its roar.
Finally I’m
in and ask: “The train?”,
they say
“Hang on…”, ceiling and walls
filled by
the thunder’s growls,
they check,
they phone, and then say:
“It will
come. “ “Which platform?”
“Listen to
the loudspeaker.”
I leave,
you are among a big crowd now,
brushstrokes
of glances in the rain,
on the
empty tracks, shiny
with shafts
of water.
We gaze at
the electric board, we try
to
intercept the right voice in the interlacing
echoes from
the loudspeaker, I tap
the
shoulder of a man in a uniform,
“Have you
got any idea when…?”
“I am the
conductor” he says “it’s coming,
give me
just ten minutes.”
The stormy
light flickers on his cheeks.
Just give
me time. All we come down to.
Time.
Brushstrokes of time.
