In the Trans-Alpine struggling uphill to Brennero
our compartment door kept sliding open
and shut again with a small click: the day outside
had trained its wide-angle lens on us.

A snow-covered book lay open beyond the windows
into which conifers printed their names, a cuneiform text
as far as the timber line. From three chimneys
smoke rose into the sky scrolled as the hems
of saintly garments - a threefold assumption.

In the strip show of mirrors above our seats
peaks swung round and orbited away from us,
viaducts receded on stilts,
lakes lay still under the greenish sheen of marble.

I was neither here nor there, felt as though
a strange language was drifting through me. Each word
weighed less than a breath. The engine pounded
and pounded as it climbed higher as though aspiring
to gain on some unquestionable transcendence.

It was as set on its purpose as the heart
in a Chicago museum inside which
I had stood and listened a long time ago.

At the last stop before dark
border guards verified us. The night rose
slowly like water. We speeded downhill
past platforms with unspellable names. Towns
spread their brocaded ribbons across the plain,
glimmered and dissolved in a bowl
full of blackness.