By Fast Train by Ma Huai-rong

[mahuairong]

Dozing on a sofa in the fast train
with passengers I have ever been.
Who pats at the window?
Another rain.

It is sweeping in the vicinity
as fainter and dimmer as is the distance.
Speed and dusk waltz
Like lasses of couples of twins.

Three colors are left with the world.
Grey of firmament
Yellow of torrent
and green of cornfields

Over the platform
road lamps bend and droop.
Inside the carriages
The atmosphere dull, weary and gloomy

A rural girl complains through phone
that her express may otherwise be delayed
of a parcel with samples
to a company from a southern Korean.

A boss smiling brown with tobacco
is negotiating slyly over a mobile.
Busy exporting his garlic and potato
he wants his bills an earlier arrival.

A teacher is reading Othello
Do fall, do fall, he enjoys
And disseminating his ideas through murmurs
Loves the expression he with the way
it flows into the Chinese vocabulary.

Beside him dreaming is a lady lawyer
who is contriving her doctorate dissertation
on Othello, the Moor, being insane
while he murdered his wife, Desdemona.

Trade is tough
and study is mean.
Pulling back quickly are shadows of rail sleepers
across some weather through years and seasons.

Suddenly, Gaomi, a small stop is announced,
where local bandits haunt and
where a quarter and a century ago
a German designer unfolded his railway blueprint.

Without moo and whoop
a pond flashes by imaging the mackintosh
of the sky which is thicker and lower.
From dimness wink the eyes of the finish.
_________________
You see me, you lose me

[Lake]

Hi Mr. Ma,

You have too much to write about.

My work is calling me, I will be back to this later.
_________________
the trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry -- Billy Collins