Like the Train's Beat
Like the Train's Beat - meaning Summary
Transient Impressions Aboard a Train
The poem sketches a brief, cinematic encounter on a moving train. The speaker watches a young Polish airwoman whose animated speech and precise features are lit by the passing sun. Motion and landscape reduce her talk to bright, musical fragments: striking but linguistically opaque. The observer registers beauty and foreignness together, where language becomes rhythm more than meaning and a solitary voice enlivens an indifferent, travelling world.
Read Complete AnalysesLike the train's beat Swift language flutters the lips Of the Polish airgirl in the corner seat, The swinging and narrowing sun Lights her eyelashes, shapes Her sharp vivacity of bone. Hair, wild and controlled, runs back: And gestures like these English oaks Flash past the windows of her foreign talk. The train runs on through wilderness Of cities. Still the hammered miles Diversify behind her face. And all humanity of interest Before her angled beauty falls, As whorling notes are pressed In a bird's throat, issuing meaningless Through written skies; a voice Watering a stony place.
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