Poem inspired by Claude Monet's "La Gare Saint-Lazare."
Corbot wrote, “Nothing has value except
in the hunger for them which seizes us.”
But sometimes the hunger is but vague yearning,
inarticulate as confused mist, obscure as
steaming plumes of smoke & suffocating
fog, overwhelming us with so much muchness.
Hunger competes with hunger. One train arrives
as another parts. I can’t get my head above
the clouds. On my tip-toes I rise
to meet your eyes. Yes, at last I am certain.
It must be you, both arriving &
departing, both the sharp spike taken to
the heart of perception, & the answering thrust
sent in every direction. Hear those churring
engines, unmistakable even in the dark, calling
for images instead of a muddle
of adjectives?
About the AuthorThe author is a Ph.D graduate of SUNY Buffalo where he wrote his dissertation on working-class poetry. A former school bus driver, he has taught at universities in Ankara, Turkey; Seoul, South Korea; and Buffalo, NY, his native city where he studies French and is finishing his degree in Mathematics Education. Publications include At the Musarium, a chapbook of semi-procedural verse based on word frequency lists, and the essay “The Clabber Dreg in the Glom,” (Published in New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing) which reflects on the composition of that series. LA GARE SAINT-LAZARE, ARRIVÉE D’UN TRAIN is from his series of poems responding to paintings and photos.
Read Pif on Kindle
Books We Love
