Encounter in Buffalo

By Mary Barnard 1909–2001 Mary Barnard

The country lies flat, expressionless as the face of a stranger.

Not one hillock shelters a buried bone. The city:

a scene thin as a theater backdrop, where no doors open,

no streets extend beyond the view from the corner.

Only the railroad embankment is high, shaggy with grass.

Only the freight, knuckling a red sun under its wheels,

drags familiar box-car shapes down long perspectives

of childhood meals and all crossings at sunset.

With a look deep as the continent, with the casual greeting

of those who will meet again, it bestrides the viaduct.

Its span is the span of trestles above mountain gorges,

its roar the echo of streams still wearing away stone.

Mary Barnard, “Encounter in Buffalo” from Collected Poems (Portland: Breitenbush, 1979). Used by permission of the Estate of Mary Barnard.

Source: The Collected Poems of Mary Barnard (Breitenbush, 1979)

Biography

Mary Barnard was born in Vancouver, Washington and attended Reed College where she received her bachelor’s degree in 1932. Her works include A Few Poems (1952), The Mythmakers (1966), Three Fables (1975) and Nantucket Genesis: The Tale of My Tribe (1988). She was awarded Poetry Magazine’s Levinson Award in 1935, the Elliston award for her book Collected Poems (1979), the Western States Book Award in 1986 for her book Time and . . .

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