Curiosity 12: Train stations

Today it's my turn to provide a prompt—a selection of poems on a theme—for my weekly generative poetry group. I chose trains. For example:

Tracks

 

Night, two o’clock: moonlight. The train has stopped

in the middle of the plain. Distant bright points of a town

twinkle cold on the horizon.

 

As when someone has gone into a dream so far

that he’ll never remember he was there

when he comes back to his room.

 

And as when someone goes into a sickness so deep

that all his former days become twinkling points, a swarm,

cold and feeble on the horizon.

 

The train stands perfectly still.

Two o’clock: full moonlight, full stars.

 

                                                         —Tomas Tranströmer

And coincidentally, on Facebook, my friend Rubén Funkahuatl Guevara posted a photo of LA's Union Station:

Which got me wondering if there's a list online of the most striking train stations in the US. Well, of course there is! Several! The 14 most beautiful, the 21 most beautiful, the best and most beautiful! Here are a few of the stations featured:

Chicago's Union Station

St. Louis train station

Cincinnati Union Terminal

Union Station, Worcester, MA

World Trade Center Oculus, NYC

South Station, Boston

Grand Central Terminal, NYC

There are plenty of others, including beautiful stations in such small towns as Hattiesburg, MS; Whitefish, MT; Glenwood Springs, CO; and Niles, MI.

And let me just end with another poem:

Seen Fleetingly, from a Train

 

Seen fleetingly, from a train:

a foggy evening, strands of smoke

hanging immobile over fields,

the humid blackness of earth, the sun

almost set—against its fading shield,

far away, two dots: women in dark wraps

coming back from church perhaps, perhaps

one tells something to another, some common story,

of sinful lives perhaps—her words

distinct and simple but out of them

one could create everything

again. Keep it in memory, forever:

the sun, ploughed earth, women,

love, evening, those few words

good for the beginning, keep it all—

perhaps tomorrow we will be

somewhere else, altogether.

 

                                                     —Bronislaw Maj