"Station"

Two months ago, I listened to poet Li-Young Lee read a strange and wondrous poem called "Station." It would've been nice if it were a live reading, but it's a recorded one. Still, this makes it possible for repeated listenings.

Usually, I like reading poems more than listening to them, because I like to read at my own pace, stopping at a particular image or speeding up towards the end of a line to leap into the next, remembering and hearing echoes of metaphors from elsewhere, bringing my own memories or thoughts to the poem. Listening to a poem doesn't always give me time to digest and appreciate it fully so I tend to listen to poems only after I've read them first or am already well acquainted with every motif and metaphor. It's then that I'll let the poet's or reader's voice sweep me away.

"Station" was the first poem that I listened to before reading it. And I fell in love with it right away. It's so rich and full with images that I got lost in them, but it was a good kind of lost. There were strange names of trains and unexpected words completing phrases and images I thought were familiar but weren't - these make the poem seem as if it'd fallen out of the Mad Hatter's journal, if the Mad Hatter wrote poems, if the Mad Hatter were able to keep still and put a pen to paper. The poem makes little sense at first, but if you take the time to listen to it again, to read it again, it does. Among other things, what I took away from it was an elegiac musing on life and death approaching and departing, like trains pulling in and out of a station.

Station
by Li-Young Lee

Your attention please.
Train number 9, The Northern Zephyr,
destined for River’s End, is now boarding.
All ticketed passengers
please proceed to the gate marked Evening

Your attention please. Train number 7,
Leaves Blown By, bound for The Color of Thinking
and Renovated Time, is now departing.
All ticketed passengers may board
behind my eyes.

Your attention please. Train number 4, The Twentieth Century,
has joined The Wind Undisguised to become The Written Word.

Those who never heard their names
may inquire at the uneven margin of the story
or else consult the ivy
lying awake under our open window.

Your attention please, The Music,
arriving out of hidden ground
and endlessly beginning, is now the flower,
now the fruit, now our cup and cheer
under branches more ancient
than our grandmother’s hair.

Passengers with memories of the sea
may board leisurely at any unmarked gate.

Fateful members of the foam may proceed to azalea.

Your attention please.
Under falling petals, never think about home.
Seeing begins in the dark.
Listening stills us.
Yesterday has gone
ahead to meet you.

And the place in a book a man stops reading
is the place a girl escaped
through her mother’s garden.

And between paired notes of the owl,
a boy disappeared. Search for him
goes on in the growing shadow of the clock.

And the face behind the clock’s face
is not his father’s face.

And the hands behind the clock’s hands
are not his mother’s hands.

All light-bearing tears may be exchanged
for the accomplished wine.

Your attention please. Train number 66,
Unbidden Song, soon to be
the full heart’s quiet, takes no passengers.

Please leave your baggage with the attendant
at the window marked Your Name Sprung from Hiding.

An intrepid perfume is waging our rescue.

You may board at either end of Childhood.

Posted by Monoceros at May 27, 2008 9:15 AM