Shopping Cart
    items

      ←

      May 23, 2024TracksMatthew Murrey

      Image: “Night Train” by Gerrie Paino. “Tracks” was written by Matthew Murrey for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, April 2024, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.

      after Tomas Tranströmer

      It is the last night—
      stars, moonlight, thin clouds—
      and I am sad nothing
      remains but the baggage car
       
      where I packed myself
      still crying and holding on
      to my mother’s soft skirt
      the second day of school,
       
      where I stowed my sister and I
      watching a black and white
      movie on TV until our father
      says “Turn that off.”
       
      My first time seeing you
      is in there, along with a pair
      of shoes, a funeral, a bed
      on the floor, and two horizons.
       
      What a noon it was when
      the whole train was on its way
      across rivers and fields heading
      toward mountains and the sea.
       
      I was looking forward to far
      more, but this will have to do:
      bright moonlight, leafless trees,
      stars forever out of reach.

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the artist, Gerrie Paino

      “The evening I came upon the solitary train car that is the subject of my Ekphrastic Challenge photograph, I felt a sense of fascination and mystery. What stories would that deteriorating hulk tell, should it be given a voice? The opportunity to have so many talented poets share their answers was both a delight and a challenge, but, ultimately, I kept returning to ‘Tracks,’ as the one that felt absolutely right. ‘It is the last night,’ begins this poem, begging the question, ‘Last night for what?’ From that point on, we are offered deftly-rendered fragments of memory which include a ‘mother’s soft skirt’ being clutched by a child afraid to go to school, a gruff father, and, most striking to me, ‘… a pair / of shoes, a funeral, a bed / on the floor, and two horizons.’ The final stanza, with its sense of longing and resignation, seems to summarize everything that might be contained in that deteriorating behemoth as it crumbles, inexorably, beneath ‘stars forever out of reach.’”

      →

      Related