Etching

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Writing on the subway feels like etching 
an intaglio on horseback. The train 
writhes and bucks beneath me, making 

a miniature jackhammer of my pen, a seismographic
stylus registering the imprecision of my jolting hand.
Fingertips blanch as I bear down trying to carve 

testimony into a fifty-cent notebook. Letters shake
into ciphers instead of words, a cuneiform landscape, unknown—
hidden, perhaps, by the Lord, to be revealed in His time. 

At home I open my PowerBook and set about the task
of translation. In quiet revision, I bury my head in my hat
and strain to distill the spirit behind these scratchings. 

On the train, we are all translators. Every few minutes we
study out gargled declarations: 168th Street, Columbia
Presbyterian Hospital, transfer here for the Number One 

train on the lower level. I turn to the notebook, 
intent on recording something worthy of posterity or
my beloved brethren, on bestowing some small degree 

of knowledge concerning us. We would write more
if it were not for the difficulty we have in engraving.