Nostalgia & History > For National Poetry Month

Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1892-1950

Travel

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn't a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing;
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going.

B&O Bill
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/24 06:22 by bandob.

Lucille Clifton, 2000.

what i think when i ride the train

maybe my father
made these couplers.
his hands were hard
and black and swollen,
the knuckles like lugs
or bolts in a rich man's box.
he broke a bone each year
as if on schedule.
when i read about a wreck,
how the cars buckle
together or hang from the track
in a chain, but never separate,
i think; see,
there's my father,
he was a chipper,
he made the best damn couplers
in the whole white world.

B&O Bill

"Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going."

In the 20th century and my youth, that used to be my motto.  Now, not quite as much.

 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/24 07:25 by Hou74-76.

i'm with her even though the service is what she would have experienced on some unreserved milk train.

I quick internet search revealed numerous railroad-themed poems.  Here is a poem about a very dramatic train journey written by Will Carleton, a poet from Michigan.

Up the Line

Through blinding storm and clouds of night,
We swiftly pushed our restless flight;
With thundering hoof and warning neigh,
We urged our steed upon his way
Up the line.

Afar the lofty head-light gleamed;
Afar the whistle shrieked and screamed;
And glistening bright, and rising high,
Our flakes of fire bestrewed the sky,
Up the line.Adown the long, complaining track,
Our wheels a message hurried back;
And quivering through the rails ahead,
Went news of our resistless tread,
Up the line.

The trees gave back our din and shout,
And flung their shadow arms about;
And shivering in their coats of gray,
They heard us roaring far away,
Up the line.

The wailing storm came on apace,
And dashed its tears into our fade;
But steadily still we pierced it through,
And cut the sweeping wind in two,
Up the line.

A rattling rush across the ridge,
A thunder-peal beneath the bridge;
And valley and hill and sober plain
Re-echoed our triumphant strain,
Up the line.

And when the Eastern streaks of gray
Bespoke the dawn of coming day,
We halted our steed, his journey o'er,
And urged his giant form no more,
Up the line.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/24 19:30 by RuleG.

Perhaps the O.P. will also post his own original composition from 7 decades ago on "Poetry of the Rails"?

Hakk

> "Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
> No matter where it's going."

Remember, this woman never rode Amtrak.