Classic Poem

What station we started from
no one remembers.
Only, through a strange land where it's always midday on the right
and midnight on the left
the train goes on running.
Each time it gets to a station, invariably
a red lamp looks in the window
and along with dirty wooden legs and worn-out boots
coal-black lumps
are thrown in.
They are all alive,
and even while the train runs,
they all remain alive,
but in the train nevertheless
odors of corpses pervade every corner.
To be sure, I am there among them.
They are each already half-wraiths,
they lean on one another,
they snuggle to one another,
they still eat and drink,
a little at a time,
but some are already transparent around their asses,
about to fade.
Ah to be sure, I am there among them.
Leaning ruefully against the window,
sometimes one of us
begins to chew on a rotten apple,
myself, my wraith—
so all the time
we overlap with our own wraiths,
separate ourselves from them,
waiting for the train to get to
the unbearable, remote future.
Who is in the locomotive?
Each time we cross a huge black iron bridge,
the girders rumble ponderously,
many wraiths, for a moment,
stop their eating hands
and try to remember
what station they started from.