A bruising shuffle of knees
Opposed and parallel knees
Bone beating on bone
In last class passage–

On a slow train
The only train
Through the Sierra Madres
To Mexico City.

***
Two benches facing
The murmuring poor
In too close pews
Six people enjambed
Sun wrinkled face versus
Wind wrinkled face
And chickens and
Goats and the fruit
Of hard labor
Inde genus durum sumus experiensque laborum…

***
Fires burning beside the tracks
Signal the engineer
To stop for a few more
Souls wrapped in serapes
Clutching even
More chickens and
Goats and the fruits
Of hard labor.

***
The train is long;
The track’s curve
Reveals the arc
Of the signal fires–
Each one an interruption
Of an already long journey
Where no person, no chicken
No goat, nor any fruit
Of hard labor is left behind

***
The passageway
Filled with serape
Shrouded silent souls
Each bench three abreast
And knee to knee
The aisle alive with people
And chickens and
Goats and the fruit
Of hard labor.
In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane…

***
La Doña Vieja
Curled up in the aisle
Black shawled head
Asleep on my knee
The end of a long day
And tomorrow, to market.

***
85 degrees—windows down–
The mountain cold rushes in.
50 degrees—windows up
The human furnace ignites.
The windows go down
Then up, then down–
A syncopation
Repeated against
The rhythm of the wheels
Rolling over the tracks.

***
In this confusion
Of noise and weather,
With a black shawl
Covering her head,
The grandmother,
La Doña Vieja,
Slept silently, easily
On my borrowed knee.