Share:
  Guess poet | Poets | Poets timeline | Isles | Contacts

Randall Jarrell - The Orient ExpressRandall Jarrell - The Orient Express
Work rating: Low


One looks from the train Almost as one looked as a child. In the sunlight What I see still seems to me plain, I am safe; but at evening As the lands darken, a questioning Precariousness comes over everything. Once after a day of rain I lay longing to be cold; after a while I was cold again, and hunched shivering Under the quilt`s many colors, gray With the dull ending of the winter day, Outside me there were a few shapes Of chairs and tables, things from a primer; Outside the window There were the chairs and tables of the world… I saw that the world That had seemed to me the plain Gray mask of all that was strange Behind it of all that was was all. But it is beyond belief. One thinks, "Behind everything An unforced joy, an unwilling Sadness (a willing sadness, a forced joy) Moves changelessly"; one looks from the train And there is something, the same thing Behind everything: all these little villages, A passing woman, a field of grain, The man who says good-bye to his wife A path through a wood all full of lives, and the train Passing, after all unchangeable And not now ever to stop, like a heart It is like any other work of art, It is and never can be changed. Behind everything there is always The unknown unwanted life.
Source

The script ran 0.001 seconds.