WEBVTT

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So here's another
thing that's strange.

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There's-- you know those
magazines that have like

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an airplanes and trains
and stuff that are in--

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like in the pocket,
and you know?

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For a while they had
this magazine at Amtrak.

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I don't know if
they still do, it's

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called The National, which
is kind of like a hip name

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for like a magazine for train.

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Anyway, and they had
this idea that they

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were going to ask a
poet each month to write

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a poem for the magazine.

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And they asked me to do it.

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And being the literalist
that I obviously am,

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I wrote a poem about riding the
train, which I did a lot when

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I was a kid in the East
Coast, up and down,

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like between New York and
DC, and Boston and DC.

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So-- and I was thinking
about how, like, there

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are these moments
in our civic life

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that are these ritualistic
moments of communion

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that we don't really have
names for, or acknowledge,

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like, when we're all
doing something together.

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And like, one of those
moments is like when we all

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get on a train.

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And it doesn't
matter who you are,

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where you're from, or whatever,
everybody gets on a train,

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and kind of does the same
thing, and sits there

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and there's this sort of silence
there that's almost like sacred

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before the train goes.

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And I was just thinking
about how it's strange

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that there's this
collective thing we

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do that brings
everyone together,

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sort of outside of any other
considerations of similarity

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or difference.

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So that was what I found myself
writing about in this poem.

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It's called "Poem
for Passengers."

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Like all strangers
who temporarily

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find themselves moving
in the same direction

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we look out the window

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without really seeing
or down at our phones

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trying to catch the dying signal

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then the famous lonesome whistle

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so many singers have sung about

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blows and our bodies shudder

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soon we will pick up speed

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and pass the abandoned factories

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there has lately been so
much conversation about

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through broken
windows they stare

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asking us to decide

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but we fall asleep
next to each other

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riding into the tunnel

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sharing without
knowing the same dream

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in it we are carrying something

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an empty casket somehow so heavy

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only together can we carry it

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over a bridge in the snow

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emerging suddenly into the light

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we wake and open our laptops

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or a book about murder

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or a glossy magazine

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though we are mostly awake

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part of us still goes on solving

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problems so great
they cannot be named

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even once we have
reached our destination

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and disembark into
whatever whether

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for a long time there
is a compartment

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within us filled
with analog silence

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inside us the dream
goes on and on

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