Other trains

Her voice was like 

the Siberian air masses 

which chill 

the eastern slopes of the Urals 

 

She worked the tables 

in the kind of bar 

which claims to be in Gdansk 

but isn't in Gdansk.

It had been fashioned from the 

hollowed out 

exoskeleton 

of a giant beetle 

with toilet facilities 

in the tip of the carapace 

 

I was on my way to Kyiv

to give a lecture in deforestation 

and entomology 

but I had taken a 260 kilometre detour 

to see Fleshgore who play 

Ukrainian death metal 

and to collect mummified hind wings 

from the carcasses of the gigantic alien insects

which littered the Northern Polish wastelands.

It was that kind of trip

 

"You should order the Draniki"

she told me, as she took my hands

and placed them on her tiny breasts 

in the walk in larder 

built within the insect's thorax 

 

We had met 

just seconds before 

and it was as if we were maquettes

our every movement 

positioned by the zoo keepers 

 

The locals call me "paskudnyak" - a scoundrel - she told me. 

When I asked her why 

she writhed her attenuated fingers 

around my wrist

"This is not a normal landscape"

she said

"I am surrounded 

by forests without trees 

colour trails in an agate sky 

bisecting the cumuli nimbus 

with the parabola of chariots 

and bile"

"You are gripping me too tightly" 

I replied 

pulling free whilst I still could 

 

"This will be the happiest and the saddest day of your life"

she whispered

when I told her I had to leave 

to catch my train. 

She handed me a tiny 

lightening bolt 

which had been wrapped

in her detritus laden gingham apron 

"This is a perihelion - 

a facet of the mirror

which witnessed the 

beginning of time"

she explained 

 

We watched the sun 

sketch psychotic poems 

across a brilliantine canvass  

 

"There will be other trains"

I told her