The Train
a poem about women, men, power, and #metoo
“I was … wondering whether I would just be jumping in front of a train that was headed to where it was headed anyway and that I would just be personally annihilated.”
ㅤ— Dr. Christine Blasey Ford
“The train is very, very urgent. It is moving a man’s career forward. It is very difficult to get the train to stop. … We must not ask why.”
ㅤ — Alexandra Petri in The Washington Post
The train will continue, and you will be crushed:
A scream on the tracks, the talk of the town
For a time, an event, inevitably hushed,
For the train must go on. It has always gone on.
To try to stop it, you must throw yourself:
Your name, your face, your reputation,
Your family, your safety, your private hell
Onto the altar of a ravenous nation,
Your horrors laid bare in the public eye —
Irreversible, gut-wrenching endeavor —
To be eyed, handled, objectified
By men you do not know and never
Wanted to. Still, you jump. Though the price
Is too high, though men smother you still — quiet,
Your courage cuts like rivers, cries
Out like blood from a field soaked silent.
But the train does not stop. They say it intends
You no ill will; it does not hate you.
It even slows to show its concern at the end
Before it goes on to annihilate you.
I hate this train. I cringe at the screams
I can’t unhear since I learned that the sound
Has never been some benign machine’s
Bright whistle, but women’s lives pinned down
Beneath this terrifying engine.
I sit inside, study my son,
Think of my daughters with a father’s affection,
And know — we know — what must be done:
This train must stop. I look to the men
Who have stood to defy the reign of such currents
And wonder: What can I do? And when
Will I find the courage to do it? Courage
Like hers.
Originally published in Poets Reading the News.
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