When the train stops, the woman said, you must get on it. But how will I
know, the child asked, it is the right train? It will be the right train, said the
woman, because it is the right time. A train approached the station; clouds
of grayish smoke streamed from the chimney. How terrified I am, the child
thinks, clutching the yellow tulips she will give to her grandmother. Her hair
has been tightly braided to withstand the journey. Then, without a word,
she gets on the train, from which a strange sound comes, not in a language
like the one she speaks, something more like a moan or a cry.

“Utopia” by Louise Glück, from Faithful and Virtuous Night. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.

 

(originally posted December 11, 2016)

When the train stops, the woman said, you must get on it. But how will I
know, the child asked, it is the right train? It will be the right train, said the
woman, because it is the right time. A train approached the station; clouds
of grayish smoke streamed from the chimney. How terrified I am, the child
thinks, clutching the yellow tulips she will give to her grandmother. Her hair
has been tightly braided to withstand the journey. Then, without a word,
she gets on the train, from which a strange sound comes, not in a language
like the one she speaks, something more like a moan or a cry.

“Utopia” by Louise Glück, from Faithful and Virtuous Night. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.

A man walks alone in the park and beside him a woman walks, also alone.
How does one know? It is as though a line exists between them, like a line on
a playing field. And yet, in a photograph they might appear a married cou-
ple, weary of each other and of the many winters they have endured togeth-
er. At another time, they might be strangers about to meet by accident. She
drops her book; stooping to pick it up, she touches, by accident, his hand and
her heart springs open like a child’s music box. And out of the box comes
a little ballerina made of wood. I have created this, the man thinks; though
she can only whirl in place, still she is a dancer of some kind, not simply a
block of wood. This must explain the puzzling music coming from the trees.

“The Couple in the Park” by Louise Glück from Faithful and Virtuous Night. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.

You’re stepping on your father, my mother said,
and indeed I was standing exactly in the center
of a bed of grass, mown so neatly it could have been
my father’s grave, although there was no stone saying so.

You’re stepping on your father, she repeated,
louder this time, which began to be strange to me,
since she was dead herself; even the doctor had admitted it.

I moved slightly to the side, to where
my father ended and my mother began.

The cemetery was silent. Wind blew through the trees;
I could hear, very faintly, sounds of  weeping several rows away,
and beyond that, a dog wailing.

At length these sounds abated. It crossed my mind
I had no memory of   being driven here,
to what now seemed a cemetery, though it could have been
a cemetery in my mind only; perhaps it was a park, or if not a park,
a garden or bower, perfumed, I now realized, with the scent of roses —
douceur de vivre filling the air, the sweetness of  living,
as the saying goes. At some point,

it occurred to me I was alone.
Where had the others gone,
my cousins and sister, Caitlin and Abigail?

By now the light was fading. Where was the car
waiting to take us home?

I then began seeking for some alternative. I felt
an impatience growing in me, approaching, I would say, anxiety.
Finally, in the distance, I made out a small train,
stopped, it seemed, behind some foliage, the conductor
lingering against a doorframe, smoking a cigarette.

Do not forget me, I cried, running now
over many plots, many mothers and fathers —
Do not forget me, I cried, when at last I reached him.
Madam, he said, pointing to the tracks,
surely you realize this is the end, the tracks do not go further.
His words were harsh, and yet his eyes were kind;
this encouraged me to press my case harder.
But they go back, I said, and I remarked
their sturdiness, as though they had many such returns ahead of them.

You know, he said, our work is difficult: we confront
much sorrow and disappointment.
He gazed at me with increasing frankness.
I was like you once, he added, in love with turbulence.

Now I spoke as to an old friend:
What of  you, I said, since he was free to leave,
have you no wish to go home,
to see the city again?

This is my home, he said.
The city — the city is where I disappear.

Louise Glück. Source: Poetry (December 2013).