Toward Another Country

Furthermore
and it is over.
Like a train on time
I wait.
The clock, is it standing still?
No news.
There's a merry-go-round
in the far distance
and, for that matter,
there is a whole continent over there,
where, yes, there is
waste too – and history –
and moths that fly in old houses.
There is smut in their newspapers
(and here too but I don't read it)
and then there is Homer
newly translated
and then of course there is you
whom I wait for.

Time is long and wasteful
but eventually the clock does move on
and the train stops – right here