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)
