ISSUE: Fall 2010
Something in a locomotive, that black-clad traffic’s rush,
something in the silver-tinted background: always
that tally of progress & catastrophe, engines wrecked
those dark men bunched, clutching shovels, indistinct
in coils of smoke, and engines whole: here a crowd of
dusty workers clustered far from the lens
capped townsmen on a new bridge cutting ribbon;
with their teeth a flash in shadow of wide brims
still the Author grieves for photos junked, reciting
ching chong chinaman give me hongkong money give me
names of engines never photographed enough: Sunset Limited
those nameless ones who laid the iron miles for
the Century, White Star, Zephyr. Admitting he’s grateful for
what this book calls Empire. Their sole remains:
coincidental & emergent chance that brought the railway
tools, mahjong tiles, pipe bits; graves unearthed
into being with the means to capture it on film, still
full of glass & willowware, & in no living memory:
he mourns plates shattered or deliberately erased, mourns
the tunnels, drill & dynamite, supplies cut off for strike,
the glass used for greenhouses, wifely frivolities: unforgivable
the real loss of life. All ghosts of smoke & motion now
waste & error; the famed electric bridal sleeper Gladiolus
in the golden city’s dream dominion, the rumor of America
long-gone & slumbering, that even thus lost rushes on—
