Limite. (Translation) . Poem by Michael Walker
Limite. (Translation) .
Je voyage sur un express limite, un des meilleurs trains de la nation.
En s'avancant a toute vitesse a travers la prairie dans une vapeur bleue et l'air noir vont quinze wagons d'acier entier qui tiennent mille personnes.
(Tous les wagons seront de la feraille et de la poussiere et tous les hommes et toutes les femmes riant dans les wagons-restaurants et les voitures-lits se passeront en cendres.)
Je demande a un homme dans le wagon fumeur ou il va et il repond: 'Omaha'.
-'Limited'. Carl Sandburg. (1878-1967) .
A free verse poem about travelling across the prairies in a limited express train towards Omaha, Nebraska, at night. Carl Sandburg was ahead of his time in writing free-flowing free verse like this. Don't look for regular rhyme and meter in 'Window', focus on ideas. There are fifteen carriages holding a thousand passengers: it is a crack train, all-steel, just the best. Then the poet observes that one day all the steel carriages will be scrap iron, and the laughing men and women will be just ashes. The highlight of the poem, to me. The line is an allusion to the Book of Genesis:
'For dust you are/ and to dust you shall return'. Gen.3: 19.
This is more than another train journey for sure.
I still can see Carl Sandburg in an interview on black and white television in 1965 saying, 'I hate that word 'exclusive' '. I live by that sentence.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Delivering Poems Around The World
Poems are the property of their respective owners. All information has been reproduced here for educational and informational purposes to benefit site visitors, and is provided at no charge...
5/10/2024 10:13:39 PM # 1.0.0.1119
