When there are stars

The train is always departing
Or skidding through without stopping.

Because the crows blend in to the night sky
They lose their right to complain

If a thought intrudes on the view.
The thought– it wakes you in the night

After the candle has guttered into its glass
And the house is a helmet too small to wear

When there are stars. The thought’s engine
Is fierce but its tracks have already been laid,

It will go right on by whether consciousness
Stands by with its ticket or not:

When the train wakes me in the dark
I think of people I know, the cost

Of their freight, of a mile of empty cars
Pushing through the darkness with dust

Their only passengers. In the morning
The crows stomp their feet soundlessly

But can finally speak again, about everything
They saw when their eyes were closed

And they slept above the earth, like the stars
We do not see during the day. About

An empty train and what it used to carry.