Monday, May 19, 2014

IMPRESSIONIST


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.