[Tim Murphy]

NIGHT TRAIN TO DELHI

Pale stabs of light whirl swiftly by
And weave among the flashing trees
The chugging motion underthigh
Half lulls the careless heart to ease.

The carts and trucks that nightly go
Between two rising walls of scree,
The distant mountains, crouched and low,
Are glimpsed but momentarily.

Sine-waving stars assume the speed
Registered by my northbound train
All other things contract, recede,
Some laggard, some in frantic vein.

Each farm, each road, each ghostly brook,
Approaches, fills, then falls behind
The square of glass through which I look
As on the sleepless axles grind.

The moon – tree-splintered, weightless – seems
An image of my life to date,
The years behind a lunar dream,
Untouchable the years in wait.

No change of mind, no newborn prayer
Could stem this car’s velocity
Nor save me from dismounting where
With half my heart I wish to be.

[Richard Wilbur]

Alan Sullivan taking dictation from RPW in Key West:

The night train to Delhi seems to me a very evocative poem, both of night travel on a train, and of a transitional condition of mind in the traveler. I think I'd like to comment on each of the stanzas.

The first two lines seem to me an extremely good glimpse of the sort of thing you see out a train window at night. The next two lines gave me a little trouble. I accept the interesting coinage "underthigh" because that seems quite exact. But the fourth line of the poem "half lulls the careless heart to ease" made me come back to it again and again, trying to be sure. The question is whether the heart is already without care before the train's motion lulls it. I find that unclear, and I wish it could be simplified, because this line is very artfully reprised in the last line of the poem: "with half my heart I wish to be."

In the second stanza I take it we're looking at a highway which passes through a gap between mountains. I'm less sure about the third line of the third stanza. I don't know what "sine-waving" might signify. It's something in trigonometry that I can't find. But I do see that the stars keep pace with the train, whereas other things fall behind at one speed or another.

The next stanza is particularly graceful and clear. And in the next we learn more than we've learned before about the traveler's state of mind. He's in transition to Delhi, but he's also in transition between his former life and what his life now will be when he arrives. In his sleepy state both his past life and his life to come are vague and unreal.

I make one little objection to this stanza. I think the special meaning of the word "untouchable" in India makes that word an unfortunate choice when something like "incalculable" is meant. The last stanza is very gracefully written, and as I pointed out before, it closes with an interesting reprise of an earlier line.

RPW

[Shekhar Aiyar]

Mr. Wilbur, it's an honour to have this poem critiqued by you, and I'm as grateful for your nits as your kind words.

You make a very good point about "careless" in S1; given what's to come I probably don't want to create the impression that the narrator is in a relaxed, happy frame of mind. I'll try to amend this without losing the "half" bit.

Re "sine-waving", this was dissed by many people on the board when I workshopped it, and I'm still casting around for an alternative.

As for "untouchable", I hadn't considered the social implications of the word in the Indian context. However, as somebody who has never believed in the caste system, I'm conflicted as to whether I should drop the word on those grounds. Should an American refrain from using the word "niggardly" because of its association (which has no etymological basis) with a racist epithet?

Once again, my sincere thanks for your time and judgement, and to Tim for making this possible.

Cheers,
Shekhar