Gary Soto - Who Will Know Us? lyrics

For Jaroslav Seifert It is cold, bitter as a penny I'm on a train, rocking toward the cemetery To visit the dead who now Breathe through the gra**, through me Through relatives who will come And ask, Where are you? Cold. The train with its cargo Of icy coal, the conductor With his loose bu*tons like heads of crucified saints His mad puncher biting zeros through tickets The window that looks onto its slate of old snow Cows. The barbed fences throat-deep in white Farm houses dark, one wagon With a shivering horse This is my country, white with no words House of silence, horse that won't budge To cast a new shadow. Fence posts That are the people, spotted cows the machinery That feed Officials. I have nothing Good to say. I love Paris And write, "Long Live Paris!" I love Athens and write "The great book is still in her lap." Bats have intrigued me The pink vein in a lilac I've longed to open an umbrella In an English rain, smoke And not give myself away Drink and call a friend across the room Stomp my feet at the smallest joke But this is my country I walk a lot, sleep I eat in my room, read in my room And make up women in my head — Nostalgia, the cigarette lighter from before the war Beauty, tears that flow inward to feed its roots The train. Red coal of evil We are its pa**engers, the old and young alike Who will know us when we breathe through the gra**?