I’ve been learning a lot about the Trans-Siberian railroad. So many things about it really fascinate me. The length, the history, its passengers and cargo. I like that it departs from civilization and arrives somewhere completely different, somewhere that’s in Russia, but outside of it. I like that it passes through desert, tundra, permafrost, forest, wheatfields so big you could fit Texas into them. This poem is about all that. This is very much a first draft, but I think it’s interesting enough to post. Ideally this poem will be finished if and when I ever get the chance to make the journey myself.
Trans-Siberian
It begins with a saint covered in mud
and stinking of Finnish salt.
Moves chugging and shaking like a copper kettle
filled with tea, waiting for honey
steaming, melting track slush away
from the narrowest path across
the biggest continent.
Haunted by the ghost of Tsarevich Nicholas,
who lives in the nighttime lights,
the red switch signals,
the lonesome whistle.
Black smoke on spires and striped minarets
chugging and rattling
porcelain cups ringing an endless mass
shortbreads dunked dribble on chin
stand up and look down the car,
dark heads bob and turn together
like the ryefields outside
soon there is nothing but the goat-feast
of steppe and tundra, thawing and freezing,
thawing and freezing, and soon there is
nothing at all.
We ride along edges, tiptoeing between
the deepest lake and the freezing desert,
between life and, well.
Silent. Dark heads bob and turn together.
Breath of vodka.
The air is so cold outside, but fresh,
fresh. Cleanest in the world. I can’t even imagine
the grime of the world from out here.
Parallel lines are infinitely parallel. Strapped
to the earth for thousands of miles (and longer),
permafrost impaled by iron.
After the emptiness we enter the boreal forests
with their phantom tigers; they watch closely as
we steam past.
Omsk, Ob, Novosibirsk. Yenisei, Taishet
Baikal Amur, Ulan Ude, Irkutsk Trans-Mongolia.
Birobidzhan, Amur, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok.
So far east, it’s become west.
The disembodied disembark
and mist quietly out to Sakhalin,
a dark and green place,
a cold and lonely place,
where souls go when their work is done.
