Who Will Know Us?

For Jaroslav Seifert It is cold, bitter as a penny I'm on a train, rocking toward the cemetery To visit the dead who now Breathe through the grass, through me Through relatives who will come And ask, Where are you? Cold. The train with its cargo Of icy coal, the conductor With his loose buttons like heads of crucified saints His mad puncher biting zeros through tickets The window that looks onto its slate of old snow Cows. The barbed fences throat-deep in white Farm houses dark, one wagon With a shivering horse This is my country, white with no words House of silence, horse that won't budge To cast a new shadow. Fence posts That are the people, spotted cows the machinery That feed Officials. I have nothing Good to say. I love Paris And write, "Long Live Paris!" I love Athens and write "The great book is still in her lap." Bats have intrigued me The pink vein in a lilac I've longed to open an umbrella In an English rain, smoke And not give myself away Drink and call a friend across the room Stomp my feet at the smallest joke But this is my country I walk a lot, sleep I eat in my room, read in my room And make up women in my head — Nostalgia, the cigarette lighter from before the war Beauty, tears that flow inward to feed its roots The train. Red coal of evil We are its passengers, the old and young alike Who will know us when we breathe through the grass?