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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
DAY COACH, by MALCOLM COWLEY Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Tickets please Last Line: He stumbled off with his burden of stars and hills. Subject(s): Railroads; Stations Of The Cross; Tourists; Travel; Railways; Trains; Journeys; Trips | |||
I TICKETS PLEASE said the conductor and Benjamin settled back into his seat and by this action wrapped the overcoat of solitude around him. Strangers brushed past down the aisle, soiling only the fringes of this mantle; his eyes had turned to watch the hills that so proceeded like awkward vast dancers across the curtain of his eyes to watch the moving mist of his breath as it crept along the pane. II He says to himself it is the placing of the foot upon the step deposited by the porter it is the leisurely procession with baggage up a red-plush aisle out of such gestures there grows the act of travel. Johnstown, Pittsburgh: these cities escape the grasp of the hand these cities are pimpled on hills Manhattan is corseted briefly about with waters. You climb into a train, give a tip, open a paper, light a cigar, and the landscape jerks unevenly past. Your knees straighten automatically at Pittsburgh; a porter takes the luggage, saying rapidly this way to a taxi, Boss this way to a taxi. The hills and fields of Pennsylvania quiver behind you vaguely, the landscape of a dream. III As the other train passed he looked through the plate glass of the dining car the other and saw a fork suspended in the air and before it had finished its journey he was peering into a smoking car with a silver haze and four men playing cards over a suitcase clamped to their knees. A world, a veritable world, as seen beneath the microscope. A world in an envelope sealed with the red tail light that proceeded gravely past him up the track. A world sealed out of his world and living for thirty-five seconds of his life. IV This bell which suddenly greets us at a crossing and dies as suddenly; somewhere this bell rings on for other trains. A girl stands waving to us in a doorway down a hillside children run to meet us a man fishes in a muddy river; they disappear. Somewhere the handkerchief still waves against the train; children still play and I, if I descended from the train would live eternally in these brief towns these momentary towns which overhang perilously, a momentary river. V The lights of the train now move transversely across the water across the water strides the shadow of the engineer; the square barred windows move across the water as if they marked a prison that exists never between four walls, but only moves continually across a world of waters. VI His head drooped lower gradually; he dreamed the locomotive boldly had deserted the formidable assurance of steel rails; it turned and leaped like a beast hunted over the wooded slope (and all the time the engineer leaning out of his cab and saying the four fourteen will be on time at Youngstown the four fourteen will be on time WON'T it, Bill?). His head drooped in a comfortable dream. VII Time is marked not by hours but by cities; we are one station before Altoona, one station beyond Altoona; CRESSON change cars for Luckett, Munster and all points on the line that runs tortuously back into a boyhood, with the burden of a day dropping like ripe fruit at every revolution of the driving wheel, with a year lost between each of the rickety stations: Beulah Road, Ebensburg, Nant-y- glo; gather your luggage and move it towards the door. BIG BEND. VIII O voyagers, with you I have moved like a firefly over the face of the waters with you I was spit like a cherry seed from the puckered lips of the tunnel: come let us join our hands dance ring around the rosy, farmer in the dell round and round this clucking locomotive. Come! (From red cabooses huddled in the yards from engine cabs and roundhouses will stream these others silently to join us.) Come! IX Out of the group at the station no single form detached itself to meet him. The circle of their backs was a wall against him. Oblongs of light reflected from the train moved along the mountainside and vanished. He buttoned his coat and stumbled into the darkness, the darkness proceeded along with him until he picked it up and wrapped it round his shoulders: bending his shoulders under the weight of the darkness he stumbled off with his burden of stars and hills. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...RICHARD, WHAT'S THAT NOISE? by RICHARD HOWARD LOOKING FOR THE GULF MOTEL by RICHARD BLANCO RIVERS INTO SEAS by LYNDA HULL DESTINATIONS by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN THE ONE WHO WAS DIFFERENT by RANDALL JARRELL THE CONFESSION OF ST. JIM-RALPH by DENIS JOHNSON SESTINA: TRAVEL NOTES by WELDON KEES TO H. B. (WITH A BOOK OF VERSE) by MAURICE BARING |
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