Now as the train bears west,
Its rhythm rocks the earth,
And from my Pullman berth
I stare into the night
While others take their rest.
Bridges of iron lace,
A suddenness of trees,
A lap of mountain mist
All cross my line of sight,
Then a bleak wasted place,
And a lake below my knees.
Full on my neck I feel
The straining at a curve;
My muscles move with steel,
I wake in every nerve.
I watch a beacon swing
From dark to blazing bright;
We thunder through ravines
And gullies washed with light.
Beyond the mountain pass
Mist deepens on the pane;
We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.
Wheels shake the roadbed stone,
The pistons **** and shove,
I stay up half the night
To see the land I love.

This was a road; an old map told me so.
A trail, I’d say, and sometimes less than that.
It’s hard to walk, and harder still to know.

It started as an even bed of chat.
A mile beyond the gate, it turned to clay,
And here the leaves have not been trampled flat.

I look between the trees to guess my way:
Among the oaks, a space one wagon wide.
Who drove here? Are their sons alive today?

And can I rightly say the old map lied?
The future’s not what maps are made to show.
Life’s like this road—it cannot be denied:

The way’s less clear the further in you go.
It’s hard to walk, and harder still to know.