The Westbound Train Poem by Wangchat konyak

My destination lay in the east,
And that I knew full well.
Yet I took the train to the west,
Knowing with absolute certainty
That I was on the wrong track.

I did not bother to step off,
Driven by wild, carefree impulse.
I accepted the journey,
Making a silent pact with the unknown
That I must see where the rails lead.

It stopped at a station nearby,
Yet I refused to stir;
The view before me was breath-taking.
I allowed the train to sweep me away,
Deep into the sunset land.

As I looked back,
The familiar mountains and the valleys
Became smaller and smaller,
Fading into nothingness,
Until they vanished into the horizon.
Yet I did not care—
I was drunk on my own freedom.

The train paused at a hundred platforms,
And still, I chose to let it carry me.
But when it finally reached the end,
The passengers poured out,
Hurrying toward their homes.

I stepped onto the ground,
And found the platform strange,
The city peculiar,
The people utterly alien.


They spoke in foreign tongues
That I could not understand.
I asked for directions, but heard no response.
I looked for shelter, but found no roof.
I begged for bread, but no hand reached out.

Submerged in grief,
I realized I had lost my way home.
I starved through days and nights,
Through sunshine and through rain,
Bound to a lonely end.

I closed my eyes
And remembered the beginning.
I regretted.
And I asked myself:
Why I did not get off.