Slack Action

Jeffery Donaldson

It goes through my mind like a train at night, 

 the train my father rode in the night, his mind 

 a train of thought far from where he rode. 

When I pull into the seniors' home I like to feel 

 the car drift in abeyance（悬而未决） round the last corner, 

 another touch to come nearer, the braking slide 

into parking easements and an end. Forty-two 

 years he leapt among the tracks, nights, to cobble（修） 

 things together, shuffling boxcars and flat cars, 

dealing their lengths part way into sidings -- join 

 and hinge（铰链，枢纽）, muster and release -- climbing the ladders 

 free of his uncouplings. It took some sorting out. 

He listened hard for the word come down 

 from the Dispatcher. Too heavy now for the staff, 

 he has to wait for the machine that will hoist him, 

strapped, over to his chair or back to bed again. 

 A sandbag, his sullen mass slumps into the lift 

 and rises sloppy and unresisting. He goes with it 

staring in disbelief. I am borne here. For us, 

 mother and wife are let go, the love-ties 

 grappled loose in unbroken entanglements, 

our new solitudes gathering and fanning out. 

 When the sliding door whispers open for me 

 -- in hand his double-double and an apple fritter, 

unlooked-forward-to, like a pill that you take --

 I enter with purpose but am halfway off again. 

 Our family is convergence and divergence（收敛与发散） both. 

I have a photograph of him in mind, a man 

 in his prime leaning out from the boxcar's ladder, 

 signalling ahead the slow recessions, the gaps 

and clearances, the thrown switches and coupler 

 knuckles ... ten feet and closing, five feet, good. 

 His grief looks poor on him. Plan was he'd be 

the first to go -- with drinks and smokes, half by 

 his own wishing -- and Mum's years would ease 

 ahead of him by whole decades. But after 

Alzheimer's and a kidney ache, her body still shining 

 with something fifty about it went off and left him 

 cajoling his clogged arteries past eighty and beyond. 

We never spoke of this, but I always imagined 

 those seemingly endless trains he assembled 

 in the night, a hundred cars and counting, 

how, when the engine pulls up a little 

 and the cars buckle forward in succession 

 but have not yet stopped before the hogger guns it, 

it must be that all the fastenings along 

 let up in turn and spread fresh gaps throughout. 

 Cars and clusters of cars at once go 

clutching and unclutching down their length. 

 And I try to picture how, the jolting instress 

 unravelling, their reciprocal momentums 

would meet and intermingle, the forward push 

 backing into slows, and the slows pulling off 

 pulling forward ahead of their kickbacks and jostles, 

and you would hear the whole thing down the line 

 at once parting and gathering, the entire train 

 getting on, undecided. But how too, if you really 

listened for it, there would be single cars hidden 

 in the midst, scudding alone, neither pushed 

 nor pulled, left gentled into hiatus（裂缝）, coasting free 

an instant in the long line's accordion folds' 

 uneasy breathing. A hovering out of waiting, 

 the glide getting on in the inertia（惯性，惰性）, itself still moving. 

He comes to with a jolt. I take in my stride 

 his pantomimed 'Look who it is!' and we embrace, 

 our private journeys sallying up behind us 

in opposite directions, gently coupling. Not 

 a greeting or farewell, but a staying that is 

 neither between us. He keeps me close, and not 

to come undone, I tell him what I've been 

 thinking about the train. 'Slack action, it's called,' 

 he says, and lets his arms fall open around me.