The Great Days of the Railway

Beneath the black scar of this cinder track

The earth is cancerous with disused mines,

Diseased with emptiness where once the lines

Of coal-trucks, pulled by blinkered ponies, clacked

Unheard by those who could not sleep without

The constant sound of coal-trains clunking by –

The miners who all thought that they would die

In darkness, with their ponies kicking out …

Now horses gallop where the sleepers lay,

Their riders squinting through the rattling rain

Of hoof-flung coal that lands upon their caps,

Competing with imaginary trains …

And miners, men who saw their world collapse,

Recall the great days of the railway.

By Jonathan Steffen

First published in The Good Society Review Nos. 7-8, 1994; republished in St. Francis in the Slaughter-House and other poems, Falcon Editions, 2006