A delicate border. A nonexistent country.
The train obligingly dissolves in smoke.
The G.I. next to me is talking war.
I don't 'know the Asian mind,' he says.

Moving through old arguments.

At Potsdam (a globe-shaped dome,
a pink canal reflecting sepia trees)
we pull next to a broken-down old train
with REICHSBAHN lettered on its flank.

Thirty years sheer away leaving bare cliff.

This is a country I don't recognize.
Bone-pale girls who have nothing to do with home.
Everyone's taller than me, everyone naked.
'Life's cheap there,' he says.

But why are we screaming over a track
which runs between a barbed wire corridor?
And why has it grown so dark outside,
so bright in here

that even the pared moon is invisible?
In the window we can only see ourselves,
America we carry with us,
two scared people talking death
on a train which can't stop.