Way-Station

By Archibald MacLeish 1892–1982 Archibald MacLeish

The incoherent rushing of the train

Dulls like a drugged pain

Numbs

To an ether throbbing of inaudible drums

Unfolds

Hush within hush until the night withholds

Only its darkness.

From the deep

Dark a voice calls like a voice in sleep

Slowly a strange name in a strange tongue.

Among

The sleeping listeners a sound

As leaves stir faintly on the ground

When snow falls from a windless sky—

A stir A sigh

Archibald MacLeish, “Way-Station” from Collected Poems 1917-1982. Copyright © 1985 by The Estate of Archibald MacLeish. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Source: Collected Poems (1952)

Biography

A poet, playwright, lawyer, and statesman, Archibald MacLeish's roots were firmly planted in both the new and the old worlds. His father, the son of a poor shopkeeper in Glasgow, Scotland, was born in 1837—the year of Victoria's coronation as Queen of England—and ran away first to London and then, at the age of eighteen, to Chicago. His mother was a Hillard, a family that, as Dialogues of Archibald MacLeish and Mark Van Doren . . .

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