3
CRESSON : change cars for Luckett, Munster and ail
points on the line that runs tortuously back into a
boyhood, with the burden of a day dropping like ripe
fruit at every revolution of the driving wheel, with a
year lost between each of the rickety stations: Beulah
Road, Ebensburg, Nant-y-glo; gather your luggage and
move it towards the door. BIG BEND.
VII
O voyagers, with you
I have moved like a firefly over the waters;
with you I was spit
like a cherry seed from the puckered lips of the tunnel.
Come: let us join our hands,
dance
ring around the rosy, farmer in the dell
around this clucking locomotive. Come!
And out of the red cabooses huddled in the yards,
out of the engine cabs and roundhouses
will stream out silently to meet us
these others.
Come !
VIII
Out of the group at the station, no form detached itself
to meet him; the circle of their backs 1
was a wall against him. He waited
until the checkerboard lights of the train had shown
phantasmally along the shale of the cut and vanished.
He buttoned his coat and stumbled into the darkness,
the darkness proceeded along with him until
he picked it up and wrapped it about his shoulders,
bending his shoulders under the weight of the darkness,
he stumbled away with his burden of bushes and hills.
MALCOLM COWLEY