TRANS-SIBERIAN: from Moscow to Mongolia in five days...

One upon a time, in a far distant land'.... a cloud of mist covers the narrative to conceal its real time and space which are 'now' and 'here'. Mythical past is always present." (R. Alves, 'The Poet, The Warrior, The Prophet', 1990; 41).

Cocooned in the cold metal, we slide past the dark wood of Siberian homes. Autumn grows old as we float through ever changing time zones... sunrise is no longer where I left it. Suspended in the metal beast, imagination turns empty pasageways into fantasy lands of strange creatures to occupy the bored mind of little Ania. Our 'once upon a times' are lost amidst the hauntinng scenes of times past. Forgotton eyes from empty Gulags silently watch our fleeting pass. On the edge of some river, three metal arms of another time claw the blue sky, Comunist consumption unfinished.

I found you broken
(arms outstretched)

I found you abondoned
(fingers splayed)

I found you in a time that was not yours
(the last salute to the world before decay)

I touched your wound,
red
and flaked in the afternoon sun,
cold
as those who left you behind.

your claws disturb me,
the ghosts of scars ripped and maimed
still linger sharp.

but it was the clockwork minds
of tick and tock
that ordered your blows
....thought in absentia.

Oh pity the abandoned machinery of old.
Metal drawn from earth to destroy earth from whence it came.
Oh pity its thoughtless solitude,
the aborted brain child of greed.

I pitied you as I found you that lost afternoon.
But as the rain began to weep cold over your red rust wound,
I too left you behind...

(an ode to Siberian machinery)