Waiting For The Train Poem by Tony Jennett

Part of a trilogy about lost love which includes 'Nightwatch' & 'Landfall'
as well as 'Dawn' For the aftermath read'Waitng for the Train' & 'Crater'


What were you thinking of, waiting for the train?
Did you consult a timetable? Did your tortured brain
Precisely time departure? Did a long-borne tragic
Numbness calm your apprehension with its magic?
Or did the burning memory of things long past and gone
Drive you on?


Why did you come to see me ere you left? An adieu,
Or seeking other vehicles to pastures new?
Or seeking restraint by bonds of old affection
To circumvent your railroaded direction
Toward nirvana? Could I have stilled your fear
Had I been here?

What made you give the medics this address?
Was this true home; this squalid sorry mess
I live and hurt in? Is that why you came?
And will that visit keep your soul-sore, same
Regretful, bleeding, pleading spectre at my door
Evermore?


And was the picture that I painted of your going
So pellucid, uncaring and all-knowing
Obligingly, you played your destined role?
Or did some other torment in your soul
Drive you to catch your speeding train-of-rest
Full in the chest?