the country opens up. Through the rattling

grime-streaked windows of the coach, streams appear,

pine trees gather into woods, and the leaf-swept yards

grow large enough to seem picturesque.

Farther off smooth parkways curve along the rivers,

trimmed by well-kept trees, and the County Airport

now boasts seven lines, but to know this country

see it from a train—even this crowded local

jogging home half an hour before dark

smelling of smoke and rain-damp shoes

on an afternoon of dodging sun and showers.

One trip without a book or paper

will show enough to understand

this landscape no ones takes too seriously.

The architecture of each station still preserves

its fantasy beside the sordid tracks—

defiant pergolas, a shuttered summer lodge,

a shadowy pavilion framed by high-arched windows

in this land of northern sun and lingering winter.

The town names stenciled on the platform signs—

Clear Haven, Bullet Park, and Shady Hill—

show that developers at least believe in poetry

if only as a talisman against the commonplace.

There always seems so much to guard against.

The sunset broadens for a moment, and the passengers

standing on the platform turn strangely luminous

in the light streaming from the Palisades across the river.

Some board the train. Others greet their arrivals

shaking hands and embracing in the dusk.

If there is an afterlife, let it be a small town

gentle as this spot at just this instant.

But the car doors close, and the bright crowd,

unaware of its election, disperses to the small

pleasures of the evening. The platform falls behind.

The train gathers speed. Stations are farther apart.

Marble staircases climb the hills where derelict estates

glimmer in the river-brightened dusk.

Some are convents now, some orphanages,

these palaces the Robber Barons gave to God.

And some are merely left to rot where now

broken stone lions guard a roofless colonnade,

a half-collapsed gazebo bursts with tires,

and each detail warns it is not so difficult

to make a fortune as to pass it on.

But splendor in ruins is splendor still,

even glimpsed from a passing train,

and it is wonderful to imagine standing

in the balustraded gardens above the river

where barges still ply their distant commerce.

Somewhere upstate huge factories melt ore,

mills weave fabric on enormous looms,

and sweeping combines glean the cash-green fields.

Fortunes are made. Careers advance like armies.

But here so little happens that is obvious.

Here in the odd light of a rainy afternoon

a ledger is balanced and put away,

a houseguest knots his tie beside a bed,

and a hermit thrush sings in the unsold lot

next to the tracks the train comes hurtling down.

Finally it’s dark outside. Through the freight houses

and oil tanks the train begins to slow

approaching the station where rows of travel posters

and empty benches wait along the platform.

Outside a few cars idle in a sudden shower.

And this at last is home, this ordinary town