Who Will Know Us?By Gary Soto

It is cold, bitter as a penny.I’m on a train, rocking toward the cemeteryTo visit the dead who now

Breathe through the grass, through me

And ask, Where are you?

Cold.

The train with its cargo

Of icy coal, the conductor With his loose buttons like heads of crucified saints, His mad puncher biting zeros through tickets.

The window that looks onto the slate of the new snow.

Cows.

The barbed fences throat-deep in white. Farm houses dark, one wagon With a shivering horse.

This is my country, white with no words,

House of silence, horse that won’t budgeTo cast a new shadow.

Fence posts That are the people, spotted cows the machineryThat feed Officials.

I have nothing good to say.

I love P a ris

And write , “Long Live P a ris !”

I love Athe ns a nd write ,

“The great book is still in her lap.”

B a ts h a ve intrig ue d me ,The pink ve in in a lila c .

I’ve long e d to ope n a n umbre llaIn a n E ng lis h ra in,

S mokeAnd not g ive mys e lf a wa y,Drink a nd c a ll a frie nd a c ros s th e room,S tomp my fe e t a t th e s ma lle s t joke .

But this is my country.

I walk a lot, sleep.I eat in my room, read in my room,And make up women in my head—

Nostalgia, the cigarette lighter from before the war,Beauty, tears that flow inward to feed its roots.

The train. Red coal of evil. We are its passengers, the old and young alike.

Who will know us whe n we bre a the th roug h the g ra s s ?