Marvin Bell: On the Light Rail

Jürgen Brodwolf: Bandagierung; Figurenfragment (1992)

On the Light Rail

The soused husband leans to take

her knees in his hands,

narrating a night he was lost and what was

there to do

in the dark but feel his way home, he

says this and she,

in her wheelchair, swigs water, repeatedly, as if

his sorrowful happy ending,

when he reached home, makes her thirsty.

When the tram doors open, he

pushes her gently and steadily across the threshold,

onto stable land, and if it is only

the sidewalk where the homeless linger,

and if it is only the collection point

for brown bags that have gathered all morning

from under trestles and out of doorways

when the wind came round

heralding rain, so that the last swallow

of whiskey could not be withheld,

if it was only survival by the day,

there was still, on the railway,

where a wheelchair has priority,

a few blocks’ worth of ordinary trouble,

a man thankful to have a mate,

and something in the offing,

his hands on her unfeeling knees.

Marvin Bell