2 A.M. AT KATOWICE RAILWAY STATION
The stationmaster’s whistle calls our train
back out into the night, leaving behind
this moment of brief brightness and people
dressed in black under fluorescent lights,
silent chess pieces in this game of life:
somewhere a funeral, elsewhere a bride
and groom celebrate their union,
a child is born, a dog dies,
priests perform communion
while kings & paupers alike squabble
over the spoils of the day.
It’s 2 a.m. at Katowice railway station
and this night train to Prague clanks away
down these tracks haunted by a history
that carried its cargo to unspeakable ends:
ovens and labor camps, fresh troops
to the barbed trenches of the front
filled with the stench of rotting flesh,
sacrifices to ideology and madmen
long ago retired to history books and now
Wikipedia pages that so neatly summarize
our greatest failures. I’m unable to sleep,
my mouth has become metallic
from pungent brake odor
invading through the open window.
I want to endure this bitterness
and drink the vodka I brought on board,
medicine for the journey bought in a Warsaw
convenience store. But the moon has already risen
and it’s too late and too early for drinking now —
and I know, I know, I know
it would do nothing to change the past
or vanquish memories of the dead
or silence the stationmaster’s whistle
still echoing deep inside my head.
