Come Let Me Take You Away

Come, come let me take you away

From these headless phantoms roaming the terrace of filth

And brainless citizens losing their ways in this map of maps,

From these screeching shadows of betrayal on immoral walls every night.

Come, let us leave

By the last train of justice from this world of bibelots.

Oh dear, don't look on those blood spots on that rail yard.

Don't look on those blood spots on that rail yard.

Oh dear.

In this station of the hideous midnight,

Owls have perched on the rusty roofs;

Their hooting sends shivers

Down spineless passengers.

Crooked faces with deformed desires

Greet the new moon

When wolves of the fairy tales

Howl.

This is the last train

Leaving the ramshackle station:

Opaque masks of decrepit skin

Shrouded white cream

And deathly screams from faraway villages

Greeted the shuddering train.

The train is whistling.

Come, let's aboard.

Through the thoroughfares of caged light,

The bogies see strange notices hung on passing signals

And peculiar forests by the side

And run like light into nothingness.

The guard waves the green flag

Of peace:

Away, away;

Far away from the distant city

That wore veils of death,

The red flag is nowhere.

Perforating the cold December fog,

The train runs into a misty doom:

Towards a palace of dreams.

I imagined children

Peeking out from dim households

In horrible fear

Of this surreal train.

It is the remorseful agitation

Of past sins that surrenders us to our Fates.

It is this deadly forest surrounding this train

It is this cold wet night of merciless winter.

Back in the dead station

At half past one

Addictions arrived in a beautiful lady’s

Worthless bijouterie.

The stranded phantoms were too late.

They missed the train.

They were to sink with the world.

The addictions came in like approaching storms

Whistling through glassless windows:

Reminding passengers how they fled

The ramshackle station.

The coaches jerked like rattling skeletons

In ancient coffins during earthquakes.

Flustered by the hazy surrealism of

These hazy surroundings,

Insomniacs in compartments slept like the dead—

Drunken with the whiskey of freedom.

The storms rained caustic,

Wiping the floor dust

Of this night train

Whistling through the thoroughfares

Of Justice.

I heard the mind’s clock striking

Three.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

The countdown to dawn began.

Stuffed corridors of red bogies

Filled with the useless belongings

Of earthly life

Were to be discarded.

The next station would not allow them.

We were ‘waiting for the sun’.

Hours passed in restless sleep

Dreaming dreams of torn pasts

And listening to crooked tales

About crooked fairies.

The sun cleared the empty morning vision:

As the train receded into the station

Of this beautiful morning,

All the sights dissolved

Like dust into the air:

The train had gone up—

It had gone up

At

One Sixty Five Degrees to the horizontal

Till it reached this place.

It was a different town:

More like a Spanish village

Of the olden days.

Far below as the street went down

Sights reached fire and destruction—

You were looking down—

You were just looking down.

We were cleared—

Cleared.

We cannot hope to revive that erstwhile station of the night—

It’s burning.

But we can gather the ashes

And offer it to the false god.

  

Come let us live in this place

Of new-found justice;

Away, away

From those blood spots on rusted rail lines.

Courtesy: 

1) 'Waiting For The Sun' is an album by The Doors.

2) Repetition of word 'crooked' is inspired as in:

'You shall love your crooked neighbour

With your crooked heart.' (W.H.Auden)