Iron Train

(Paris Café, 1924, by Eugène Atget, 1857-1927, French
photographer)

“At first I was afraid of going to places where H. and I had been happy — our favorite pub, our favorite wood,” wrote C. S. Lewis in his book A Grief Observed. “But I decided to do it at once — like sending a pilot up again as soon as possible after he’s had a crash. Unexpectedly, it makes no difference. Her absence is no more emphatic in those places than anywhere else. It’s not local at all. . . . Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”

IRON TRAIN

The train stopped at a little station
and for a moment stood absolutely still.
The doors slammed, gravel crunched underfoot,
someone said goodbye forever,

a glove dropped, the sun dimmed,
the doors slammed again, even louder,
and the iron train set off slowly
and vanished in the fog like the nineteenth century.

~ Adam Zagajewski, born 1945, Polish poet who now teaches in the U.S.