Border

By Kate McLoughlin

At midnight, at the border, the train,

Which had roared through birch forests,

Stopped.

Movement drained from it.

Implacability in iron.

A quiet fortress.

Around it scurried tiny figures –

Guards, police.

A flurry of nationalities

Weightless as scraps of paper.

But the train was still.

Massive.

Immutable.

KATE McLOUGHLIN is writing a literary history of silence. Don't tell anyone.

Art by Alice Penrose