There is a gradual emergence of verbs describing mental processes in 'Poland Train'. Towards the middle we find the train is a 'comet' with a black tail; near the end we encounter the engine-driver's glib comments on his own conclusions with words like 'thought', 'what I cannot understand', and 'knew', so very different from the opening stanzas with their physical emphasis ('The stench', on the train's movement and on the striking contrasts;'needles' of the dials, 'fire,'shake' and 'shiver'. Also the worn out valves and poor coal reflect the moral debasement of the society in allowing such horrors. The development provides the poem with its ironic bite, its vatic stance about the difficult topic of the transportation. I think abstractions need to be prepared before the reader encounters them and you achieve it here. Contrasts of the physical and mental kind help a great deal, lending a control, so keenly required, in a poem about the Holocaust.


Notice, too, the juxtaposititions of huge and tiny- the tidy footplates and the fire; the tear of condensation and the huge train; the universe of the night and a man's spit into the firebox. Along with sudden patterns of language like the repeated ls in ' the load, the line's end or how long...' they alert the reader to the unexpected, man;s insignificant place in the scheme of it all and in the end, to the 'ramp beyond the arch' which means death.

The poem conveys throughout the easy glibness in the engine-driver; the age-old attribution of guilt to the execution of Christ 'Jews! I hear my father's voice again...' and with references like , 'sinless son' and ironic twist of 'his Lord'. Also, the appalling 'give more speed and help them on their way'. (I thought the Nazies made use to Luther's Satanic preachings about the Jews, too. Could this have been touched on?)

'that time and debt had lent a false respect'- a fine iambic beat to support the abstractions ' time', false respect'.

A well-wrought poem, John, and on such a tricky subject. It deserves a wider audience.