The Scream of Stations

 By Marina Tsvetaeva

Every station screams: “Stay then!”
Train depots scream: “O pity!”
And screams each whistle stop
(And is it not Dante's pronouncement?) to:
"Abandon all hope!"
And the screaming locomotives
With metals would shake us,
With the thunder of ocean waves.

And peering into tiny ticket windows,
Did you think - that it’s spaces they trade in?
Dealing in seas and in lands?
In the most alive of meats?
We are the meats - not souls!
We are the lips - not roses!
From us? No - upon us 
The wheels carry off our loved ones!..
           At such and such

Speeds per hour.

Tiny ticket windows:
Measly dice for gambling passions.
One of us would be correct
Once having said: Love is a slaughterhouse!

               "Life is rails!

Oh no, don’t you cry now…"
Canvasses - canvasses - canvasses...
(Into the eyes of these wretched horses
     The owners gaze with reluctance.)

"Where there’s no rip and no seam,
There's no joy at all.”

    "Wasn't it already torn when you bought it though?”

But that seamstress was right
To leave this with no response:

"The railroad ties are what's left."