I boarded a train

by Jean Castorini / 4/8/2020

I boarded a train in Moscow

The rain had started to pour

The wind was cold.

As cold and austere

as the Russian capital seems at first sight.

The Moscow Yaroslavsky railway station,

And its grotesque spire,

was Shrinking,

shrinking...

The dance was to begin.

Just like Matisse’s bewitching painting

Contemplated the day before

At the Pushkin museum.

Nine thousand kilometres

Roamed in that train cabin

For five days.

Crossing a wreath of deindustrialised towns and cities:

Kirov, Perm, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk

And all of their peripheral towns

Gloomy for the most

But bathing in the summer sun.

It now all appears to me as a long

Elusive

Dream.

Rhythmed by the sparse reading of Chekhov, Pessoa, Kant,

and the like.

The scrolling landscapes,

appearing at the windows

as a

long

continuous

Poem

With its unchanged beat.

Cendrar’s century old prose

Echoing

In my mind

The constant rumbling sounds

of the snoring locomotive,

and the broun-roun-roun

of

the steel-wheels

On the rails,

Cradled me all along.

It was as

if

Time

Had ceased to exist.

A day

could feel like a month.

Or like an hour

Day and night

just made one.

Whether the sun was fully shining

or if it were

complete

Darkness,

The locomotive would obstinately pursue

its frantic race

Towards the east.

Desperately trying to catch

The rising sun.

In the carriage

Most of us seemed

to have resigned

In front of nature’s majesty.

Staring endlessly

At the ample windows

of the corridor.

Those were the mirrors of

my personal

Memories.

Surging from my past

as the kilometres rolled

And as the cities loomed

And faded

Smooth unconscious

Flow

Spanning from

the Volga river

to Perm.

Then,

We dived

into the dense

Tundra

And the coniferous forests

Loosing ourselves sometimes

In the morning haze

The vast lake Baikal as

My only

Destination

5185km travelled

The Neva is now far behind

Just like my memories of it

And the memories of my walks,

at Dusk

Along its banks

Now muffled

By the forest wildfires

raging throughout Siberia

and their thick smoke

The Hermitage

and its countless

Canvasses bursting

in my

Mind.

Its figures

Populating my fantasies

The Dom Kino far behind me,

And all of Saint-Petersburg’s sublime architecture

Occasionally resembling some of Milan’s late 19th century palazzi

The Stalinist buildings and

Its glorious Soviet sculptures

Now

Missing.

All the socialist ideals and utopias that go along with it,

Lost in the Baikal.

Beijing is nearing

I am on my way

Now addicted

to the speed.

The distance.

…And the uproar of it all.

The moon above my head

Is still the same

The stars, scattered in the sky

The same.

5642km

Now arrived in the Republic of Buryatia

All of this distance

To find myself on the Square of the Soviets.

Facing a colossal seven meter tall

Bronze bust of Lenin.

Two workers

Ardently polishing the soviet leader’s head.

One more

Pompous

Remnant

of iron-fisted communism.

Just like the monument to Lenin in Moscow,

On Kaluga square

Now a popular spot for the city’s skaters

In Ulan-Ude,

More than halfway on my way to the Forbidden city,

My head is spinning

Like the earth on its rotation around the Sun.

From the hangover of the train and the scrolling landscape

The border now crossed

Ulan-Bator’s Peace Avenue unveils itself to me

Marco Polo

Under the beating heat,

Overlooking

The business district high-rises’ glass-facades

Dirty with dust.

On Genghis Khan’s square

A statue of Damdin Sükhbaatar riding his horse

A brief rest from communist relics, perhaps.

Before boarding the Trans-Mongolian

Crossing the Gobi Desert

And its endless expanses of sand,

The cold rainy nights

On Dostoevsky steps

Part of another realm.