Austria by Train

This train is clean and cool.
It rocks back and forth, reassuringly.
Calm lullaby, a soft day, the earth green
With the ashes of my ancestors.

A separate poem: the train is hot,
The mouths dry, so many bodies
Together packed
For transport. A separate poem:
Those who escaped, my friend’s
Grandmother giving birth in a plane
From Vienna to Shanghai.

How to separate? Politics slide back.
All that’s missing today is the moustache.
This train glides through pretty towns.
I write in English. All grows green
Over the German tongue.

(Originally published in Voices de la Luna, on 2/15/2018, Volume 10, Number 2)