[From an anecdote by Alexander Yakoulov, who tells of one of Stalin’s trains on the way to Siberia stopping very briefly at a crossing and leaving behind a litter of small scraps of paper full of addresses, names, and phone numbers]
I was there when the train stopped,
Vents open in the cardinal corners like scars
Or better — the pox mark left by a crucifixion.
The day was a solid blue, so pretty, beautiful.
I could not know what was soldered in behind
Sealed doors and steel curtained windows,
But I could see the litter of paper scraps like rain.
When the train left, I picked up as many as I could
Pretending to be the one in charge of cleaning platforms.
When you bend to work, it is easy to deceive.
Money was hard to come by then, the war just over,
And food, yet there were things you knew needed doing.
Twice before I had failed: A woman across town
Wailed for help when her baby stopped breathing,
And I could have done one thing, but did not.
Then there was a failure of the shelves at the art fair,
A lifetime’s work crashing to dust and broken clay.
Was it really so impossible for me to balance one shelf
To save the others? I left her to her dust and tears.
I had one pair of torn shoes and I was hungry,
And I gathered the scraps of paper and waited.
Somehow I knew I could do the right thing.
Years later I still find a phone number in a crevice,
An address in a pocket, a name stuck in a box
I knew I would never send.
| Copyright © 2019 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s latest volume of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else, was published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018. |
I find this poem redolent of human suffering, doubt, second-thinking, apologizing, atoning. It is transcendent. Thank you, Michael for submitting it, for sharing it with others whose lives have touched on those human movements of soul.
ReplyDeleteMorris, thank you for your most kind words.
ReplyDeletePlease keep on witnessing, writing, Michael. And submitting to Moristotle & Co.
DeleteVery compelling. The ache of agonizing regret is palpable.
ReplyDeleteThose trains, whether in Germany, Russia, or elsewhere in Europe, are like an icon of the era's disregard for human life and liberty. The furtiveness with which the subject picks up the papers, thinking always of getting caught doing something wrong, or just getting caught. The failure to send any of them, it all speaks to the evil men do to each other in the name of-what? Ideology, religion, politics, it's all a basket of horror borne of our own arrogance. Good stuff sir.
ReplyDeleteRoger, yours is so much better put than mine. And speak of classic (you used the word in a comment on a Goines piece) – how can a poet’s work get any better than this? Michael is a prophet, a witness, a voice of our times.
Delete