Rails across the void,
this is what we came to see:
land as empty as space.
In the lounge car, we play cribbage.
A folk singer does Johny Cash
as we drink beer and hard cider.
Outside, space-empty land rolls by
dust and salt grass, gravel and flies.
A passenger yells, “Rock!” and we turn
to see emptiness turned scenic through
the wondrous magic of strangeness.
And would this be like voyaging in space,
the emptiness of vacuum going by
and, in the darkness, someone might yell, “Rock!”
and we would see an asteroid fly by.
Would we sing songs and play games fit for space
and celebrate with a spaceman’s libation
to the great black void made scenic
through the strange magic of wonder?
How much this train is like a spaceship,
for we now seem a planet of our own:
Perth, Sidney, Adelaide, all of human kind
separated from us by the gulf we journey through,
this gulf as empty as some wide galactic void,
as devoid of features as the deep vacuum of space.
And, like the endless dark between the stars,
this is the grand emptiness we’ve come to see.
Land like outer space,
land that we have come to see
on void-crossing rails.
