Raintree County, pp. 232-3.
Train doesn't know the earth
it passes over. Train thunders daily down the stretch behind
the Old Home Place. Train is a tumult passing. Hoarse voice of
train wails in the valley of Danwebster.
Sleepers in the earth, do you hear the train
passing? Do you any longer hear the sound of its diurnal course,
beloved sleepers in the earth of Raintree County?
Listen to the voice of train. The way for it
is straight and far across the land. It rushes far and fast across
the Nation, passing westward, passing through Raintree County.
(O, blithe days, o, early agrarian days on
the breast of the land! O, Eden of bland repose!)
Listen! There is a voice of thunder on the
land. It is the voice of years and fates, crying at intersections;
it is the bullhead beast, who runs on a Cretan maze of iron roads
and chases the naked sacrifices hither and thither. The bullgod
comes up fast out of the east, under the churning of his round
rear haunches. Smell of a blackened ash, odor of hot metal, the
frictioning iron parts, blows across the earth of memories.
(O, sweet young days of the aching but unripped
seedpurse. O, tall endeavors. O, innocent, fragrant time.)
Listen! What voice is calling now, voice of
the grooved wheels on the roads of the hurrying days! It is the
thunder of the big events. They are coming, full of malice and
arrogance, they are coming on hooves of iron, wounding the earth
of Raintree County. They will travel straight and far, through
the light barriers of the corngold days. Lo! they will drive
the young gods, the beautiful young gods, from the river's reedy
marge.
The day becomes brighter and hotter. In court
house squares, the streets of the Nation, the people gather.
The train bears its streamer of black smoke, a banner of progress
fast and far across the land. Lo! we must keep our appointments.
The clock on the Court House Tower is telling the time of day.
We have a rendezvous in a train station, there where the thundering
express stops a moment in the bright day and lets down out of
its smoky womb a procession of remembered faces.
Listen! great voice of thunder and urgency,
voice of titan yesterdays and of still more titanic tomorrows!
Do you still bring me tidings, have you still a bundle of headlines
to throw down for me, will the face of the most beautiful of
women look unexpectedly from a window of the trembling coaches
for me? Or do you bring again, as so often before, a somber freight
for me, who hearken the voice of your passing here on the breast
of the land?
He walked back through the tangled grass of
the Danwebster Graveyard, trying not to step on graves.
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