The Orient Express

One looks from the

Almost as one looked as a child.

In the

What I see still seems to me plain,

I am safe; but at

As the lands darken, a

Precariousness comes over everything.

Once after a day of rainI lay longing to be cold; after a whileI was cold again, and hunched

Under the quilt's many colors,

With the dull ending of the winter day,

Outside me there were a few

Of chairs and tables, things from a primer;

Outside the

There were the chairs and tables of the world…I saw that the

That had seemed to me the

Gray mask of all that was

Behind it — of all that was — was all.

But it is beyond belief.

One thinks, "Behind

An unforced joy, an

Sadness (a willing sadness, a forced joy)Moves changelessly"; one looks from the

And there is something, the same

Behind everything: all these little villages,

A passing woman, a field of grain,

The man who says good-bye to his wife —A path through a wood all full of lives, and the

Passing, after all

And not now ever to stop, like a heart —It is like any other work of art,

It is and never can be changed.

Behind everything there is

The unknown unwanted life.