Promise Your Hand

Promise your hand, the dawn is yet slow

And I am spun through ten years'

Seas and cities. Uncertain trees

Pursue the road; and though I take

The next train, draw the shade,

Names not in my language

Beat at the window, cold enemies

Sit opposite, masked

In the local headlines, their wine and bread

Not for my asking. They

Lurch and wind among the dark

Mountains. I am searched at the frontier,

Walled in grey uniforms, I am flung

To the high unwanted room to count

My foreign coins like minutes, with the bent

Concierge watching from the hall

Wishing me neither good nor harm,

Wishing me nothing. Look, the vague trees

Clutch even here, not yet so tall

But clutching. Promise your hand,

I will speed these rails again, leap

By these lights, hide between cars,

But be, only be the patient and sure

Miracle of yourself at the last far station,

Implausible point on the wild map

Suddenly real and from what great arc

Marvelously catching my flight; containing me.

Henry Raco