Mobilization, 1914

The dream of the train runs through the dream of the country:

the oblique hilltops and abrupt firs, the vanishing

pastures and sudden goat, all of a moment’s desire

like a farmer’s gaze watching the train pass. The windows

are infinitely senile and burning with late June.

Dry-tongued, they roll their own cigarettes, the sly old men

sitting on stone benches outside each station, waiting

for no train, only absolution by sacrifice

of the ticketless young men littering the platform

in uniform, slow-moving, in search of conviction

and shade. Cigarettes cannot take the edge off their hot

procrastination. But soon they, too, will be absolved:

saved from lust and matrimony, their mothers’ straying

hearts and their fathers’ cunning lack of intelligence,

from the pastures, the stiff ache, the complexion of rust,

saved from the old men and their lopsided jowls, chewing

on the same old alibi, bitter to have survived.