All the stations full of cracks tilted along the way
The telegraph wires they hang from
The grimacing poles that gesticulate and strangle them
The world stretches lengthens and folds in like an accordion tormented by a sadistic hand
In the cracks of the sky the locomotives in anger
Flee
And in the holes,
The whirling wheels the mouths the voices
And the dogs of misfortune that bark at our heels
The demons are unleashed
Iron rails
Everything is off-key
The broun-roun-roun of the wheels
Shocks
Bounces
We are a storm under a deaf man’s skull…
‘Tell me, Blaise, are we very far from Montmartre?’
Hell yes, you’re getting on my nerves you know very well we’re far away
Overheated madness bellows in the locomotive
Plague, cholera rise up like burning embers on our way
We disappear in the war sucked into a tunnel
Hunger, the whore, clings to the stampeding clouds
And drops battle dung in piles of stinking corpses
Do like her, do your job
‘Tell me, Blaise, are we very far from Montmartre?
” ― Blaise Cendrars, Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of the Little Jeanne de France
Suicide by train is also popular in many developed countries. Without ready access to firearms, suicidal people often turn to trains. —Der Spiegel, July 27, 2011
Once it happens you can’t remember
how you started out: innocent,
barreling into the tunnel,
shooting out at each station
like a dolphin out of a dim green pool.
Pneumatic doors inhale open, puff shut,
lock with a solid thump.
Up and down the line, fifty times a day,
it’s a long slow song. You
feel the rumble as much as hear it.
In your dim green trance
the words retain wonder:
Vorsicht, Türe werden geschloßen.
Caution, the doors are closing.
Then the first time:
someone decides darkness will answer,
hides out in the tunnel,
steps out in front of the train
like he knows where he’s going,
steps out at you, dying at you,
knowing you can’t stop in time.
Now each time the doors close,
they seal you in. You are a human bullet
shot into the tunnels, hoping no one
will block the light far ahead,
each station one minute’s reprieve.”
― Karen Greenbaum-Maya
“Trains tap into some deep American collective memory.”
― Dana Frank, Local Girl Makes History: Exploring Northern California’s Kitsch Monuments
And not in that part of the daily press which is reserved for victims of aviation.”
― Ogden Nash, Hard Lines
