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Thanks Stephen... Looks like this is one of those slightly disturbing poems that other people understand better than I do. The namelessness, the could-be-anywhere, the lack of adjectives, detail, personality, wasn't something I thought was that important, but now that you mention it I realise it's actually at least half the point of the poem. I read this at my writers group and each person there had a different response. I always think that's a good sign! Janet Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]> comments: > Janet, I particularly like the document aspect of this - the incomplete > sense of factuality. The poem's opening stanza names the genre of what is > seen (security cameras, mansions, etc.) but gives no detail. As if the new > world is entirely familiar cookie-cutter template of "semblables." If not, > that one appears to be coming to most places for sure. > > I am not sure about what happens with and after the "a half world away" > stanza. > > But the last stanza I like and resonates back to the generic nominal > emptiness of what the poem sets up at the start. ... > > > When the train came, I cried > > ---------------------------- > > > > I walk with the ghosts who walk on the beach. > > > > I photograph the rails, > > the security cameras, the grey sea, > > the mansions on the hillside. > > > > I touch the stone walls, > > sit on the steps, breathe the air, > > read the graffiti. > > > > I climb the hill and look at the view. > > > > I stand at the gates, > > peer at the carvings, record the leaves > > and branches, the signs. > > > > Half the world from here and just under > > my skin > > Thousands of miles in a breath, in a word > > Thousands of steps in a sigh, in a song > > > > I buy a ticket and wait for a train. > > > > There are names for everything but you > > have no name > > for this. ------------------------------------------------------- Janet Jackson <[log in to unmask]> Poems at Proximity: http://www.arach.net.au/~huxtable/janet/proximity.html "When one acts in accord with the time, the yang energy is expansive, like thunder going out of the earth and rising forcefully into the sky, startling an area of a hundred miles with its rumble, so that all demons flee. The life-giving potential continues increasing, and the earth is always covered with yellow sprouts, the world blooms with golden flowers. Wherever one may walk, everywhere is the Tao. No happiness is more delightful than this." Liu I-ming, trans. Thomas Cleary -------------------------------------------------------