Gas flaring on the yellow platform; voices running up and down; <br />Milk-tins in cold dented silver; half-awake I stare, <br />Pull up the blind, blink out - all sounds are drugged; <br />the slow blowing of passengers asleep; <br />engines yawning; water in heavy drips; <br />Black, sinister travellers, lumbering up the station, <br />one moment in the window, hooked over bags; <br />hurrying, unknown faces - boxes with strange labels - <br />all groping clumsily to mysterious ends, <br />out of the gaslight, dragged by private Fates, <br />their echoes die. The dark train shakes and plunges; <br />bells cry out, the night-ride starts again. <br />Soon I shall look out into nothing but blackness, <br />pale, windy fields, the old roar and knock of the rails <br />melts in dull fury. Pull down the blind. Sleep. Sleep <br />Nothing but grey, rushing rivers of bush outside. <br />Gaslight and milk-cans. Of Rapptown I recall nothing else.<br /><br />Kenneth Slessor<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-night-ride-2/
