| a solitary vigil |
| I stumbled onto the train in a dreafully tired state of mind stumbled, owing to my state of mind, my state of mind owing, perhaps, to the late hour at which I had at last disengaged myself from the ceaseless conversation I had had the night before I had come, with all of my possessions, eastward and had sat beside a grey-faced man, reading a book of poetry, though I could not read the cover Due to the angle at which he was holding it, so I could not discern whose poetry, and at length, eager for any reaosn to speak, I endeavoured to enquire as to whose poetry it was he was reading. the grey-faced man said to me 'I cannot recall the name But he was once like me; I knew this man, and he was a good man, but he was far too troubled but he was far too troubled - this book, long for the world as it is, is less a compilation of poetry than it is a chronology of events of deepening despair Though, I suppose, we all have our troubles, and his were, I suppose, no greater than my own - he merely chose to immortalise his.' He spoke as though I was not being addressed; merely that I was in the presence of a man who in generis verbae addressed an audience that did not exist. But, turning from the book, he raised his eyes to mine And said 'I am indeed troubled, but I see you are too' to which i replied 'Sir, you have found in me an understanding if it is the troubled frame of mind of a man whose world has left him behidn that you speak of.' the light was leaving us - we were advancing into the night - and it was all taken, in a second, without a word from the grey-faced man who paced in silence in a corner of the room with his eyes on a book of poetry 'Now, take me; I am a sensitive man Would you believe that I write poems?' He stopped moving his finger across his forehead (rising and falling with the furrows) long enough to look up and see what the poet has said - it was half inconceivable, half profound - the words semed almost to hang about in the air they stood, like hemlocks over a river - where the leacherous, hungering eyes of the grey-faced man could study them, and think on them, and about his head they danced chanting 'I am troubled, but I see you are as well' and to each he replied 'You have found an understanding in me' and he turned, at long last, from what must surely hve been a mirage (though if it were, it were indeed well appointed, for I saw it also) and asked for one quarter to use the telephone - a single Canadian quarter - and he called home to ensure that noone was there I shook my head, and he saw He removed himself from the otherworldly scene and put down his book, the book he was writing, but not yet finished, and rejoined me at the table where we discussed prose and works of fiction long into the night, the still night, for this was a night when no metaphors strayed into the course of our conversation And every so often, from the darkness just out of reach of the fading light, would come a voice not like mine, or his, that would say 'Fellow, I am troubled, but I see you are as well' and to each, we would reply 'You have found an understanding in me' with each recital of this phrase, the night air closed on the pensive end of the conversation, the unspoken inevitabilities that lay waiting in the darkness just out beyond the sentence's end with each lapse into meditative silence, the grey-faced man seemed to grow fainter, owing perhaps to the late hour, owing perhaps to the ceaseless melody, the stream of the rhythm of the waves of light that washed over us periodically as another virgin town would slink towards the train and then stealthily steal away back into the night He slept fitfully, voices did not stop calling to him in his sleep, and to each in turn, he replied 'I am troubled, but I see you are as well' a solitary vigil, watching the towns retreat into the night any man in any of the windows I saw, whether I saw light there or not, could have been looking out at this train and could have seen me at my window Searching for nothing in particular, anything of interest, and losing myself in the blur of trees that whistled by and to each man who might have wondered why the stranger might be awake, at such an hour, on such a long journey, I would think 'You are no closer to home than I and this you will see come daylight.' and, come daylight, this train will have stopped on a landscape I vaguely recall, and I, dreary, perhaps owing to the lateness of the hour when I at last managed to release myself from our conversation, will climb aboard another train, beside another grey-faced man, with another book of poetry, who will greet me with no more than 'I am troubled, and I see you are as well.' return to the sanctuary |