The Trans-Siberian Railroad

The Trans-Siberian Railroad


We pile the extra horse blankets
in front of the heater to stop the flow
of Russian over-compensation
and the gentle undulation
that now has lulled
my colleagues to sleep on narrow sleds
folded out of the edge
of a room unforgiving and metallic as the
clanging of the rails, gaps in them swollen
and contracted by the bitter cold that builds
unhindered.

no hills,

no towns,

no trees,

If not for the pervading darkness,
I'd see the pole. But no-
just a gloss of flaky water
many meters high, and hardened
by months of inactivity- a state
where life cannot survive under suffocating
blankets- a forever sleeping land.
Every couple of hours, a town
approaches and then passes quickly as the
flicker in the lantern of a man
who dons his fox and then his bear
to dutifully prepare to venture out,
the only time today, into the deep
to retrieve unfrozen water from the pump,
then woodenly step back
into his icy little hovel,
where no blankets go unused.