Howard Firkin
Melancholy: stations do a good
line in it. People huddle, drag on smokes,
or wring cold hands. Announcements like bad jokes
that no one gets. Lost platform souls who could
be somewhere else—but always, there’s a catch.
Remembering because there’s time to spend:
this is a boyhood scene, the jigsaw fits
a piece, the Rorschach blot of missing bits
is one bit smaller, closer to that end
when box and puzzle finally don’t match.
The trains arrive, the sets of people change.
Pursuing private ends which they suppose
to be of purpose, faces/bodies rearrange
and something—not timetabled, not known—flows.
line in it. People huddle, drag on smokes,
or wring cold hands. Announcements like bad jokes
that no one gets. Lost platform souls who could
be somewhere else—but always, there’s a catch.
Remembering because there’s time to spend:
this is a boyhood scene, the jigsaw fits
a piece, the Rorschach blot of missing bits
is one bit smaller, closer to that end
when box and puzzle finally don’t match.
The trains arrive, the sets of people change.
Pursuing private ends which they suppose
to be of purpose, faces/bodies rearrange
and something—not timetabled, not known—flows.
