White Curtains

From a world of coal dust and dirt,
I wandered through a garden
overgrown with weeds.
I belonged to a house
without white curtains.
One lives where they live.
I long to return to a house
with windows bright as sun,
and water, which never was.
I lived at the world’s edge,
where iron scraped on iron.
Where trains passed like odysseys.
But from where to where?
Shadows that never explained themselves,
and left sentences without their words.
I would sing to myself then,
to fill the silence
the trains left behind.
Time was endless.
I talked to imaginary people,
much as those I talk to now
who’ve left.
As for coal dust and dirt,
we are never quite
where we come from,
or belong to where we are.