Last Train

Last Train

Lacrymósa dies illa,
Qua resúrget ex favilla
Judicándus homo reus.
Huic ergo parce Deus:


Out of the depths I cry to Thee O Lord;
O Lord hear my voice.

The iron black door swung shut with a slam,
and standing back up the man took hand
From poker to mop his brow.
“She’ll be ready to go in another nine” he said.

So protesting and resisting with
a thousand tonnes of iron and glass,
The puff of steam and smoke proclaims
an itching of the tiny brain
to breathe.

Metal dragged
kicking and screaming,
onto the track.

The track is clear
it runs in front,
And neither left nor right it steers
And yet it twists and turns much more
than any coiled spring, I deem.

Brazil with verdant forest green,
France for food and cheese and wine,
Lingering in the Rhineland,
Where castles crown the rushing flow
and mirrored in the deep appear below.

For sixty years (a little more)
the steam puffed on
through peace and war.
And though the engine never skipped
it sometimes nearly faltered.
But never did it refuse the load
’Twas better made than that.

But suddenly something was wrong.
The engine was laboured and painful,
wheezing its gasps of air and belching steam.
(A ginger beer I drank in clear
and tiny medicine cups. The ginger
Burned my throat with fire, my tongue to glue,
’Twas hard to speak, I trowe.
But the smell of the air was too clean,
Too disinfected and dead. And suddenly sad
Perhaps I should have done much more
When there was still some things we could do.
The eighteen years was not enough,
I put off most my plans till
later on.)

It was dying. the engine was nearly on fire,
parched of water, unable to turn,
“Who would have thought it would have come to this?”
A disbelief once shared by all.

(I expected to see him again.
only ten percent fatality for this type.
We heard he was ready to go back home…

…The night before he left.)

The engine failed again, it spluttered, started!…

… he died.


• • • • •


The last puff of steam rises in the breeze
and curls, folds, and weaves a spell on sight.
Suggestions of a fallen one
who bravely fought the battle long.

Pink, Clink, the metal cools,
But louder still I hear,
That splash and hiss
as if a water droplet or a tear
had fallen.


• • • • •



And I was scared,
And I had fear,
Could he remember me
on his bier?
The life we shared
The time we had,
I fear I took too much
and gave not back.
The world now seems to be
all wreathed in black.
of Sorrow undying, of dead
and maidens tears.

Screams inside my head.
Desolately loud with Piercing pain
as if a lance or spear had thrust
my heart and brain with chilled
fever and a throbbing drain
of Joy and Light and Life
killed by death.

Screaming missed chances.
screaming regret and remorse.
screaming pain long past.
Screaming ingratitude and deadly spurning.

(I a young boy with my friends,
saw him and they laughed
and mocked him.
Wretched piece of muck
am I,
Who laughed at Love and
affection, and spat an acid
poison from my mouth.)

Wine of forgetfulness flows over me
at times, but sober with the lack
of stimulation I still hear
the echoes of the screams
of pride. Around my head
the scream redoubles.

Screaming.

And louder still
the echoes roll
and swell to bitter wrath.

Screaming.

I am scared,
I have fear:

These screams will never stop.


• • • • •


And if with screaming I could pierce
the lofty vaults of heaven’s halls,
For year on year my voice would raise
and crying from this depth below
The sound of voice would reach his ear,
Crying “I am sorry.”

But I cannot cry.

“Pray why?”

I do not know.
But may his terminus be reached,
I hope,

And let perpetual light shine upon him;
May he rest in peace,

Amen.