Beast

My father would sleep all day before 

a night shift & leave just when 

the dark would singe the edges

of our town. He’d measure his life

in lengths of unfiltered cigarettes

while parting the dense, iced air 

with his coarse woollen coat.

The stairs to his office were unsteady 

& below him, corroded trains halted 

& men with hands gloved in iron 

dust fixed them & twisted spanners 

around heart-sized bolts as their lungs 

filtered diesel fumes & flux smoke.

The whirring of  locomotives & the clangor

of hammers reshaping rusted wheels 

got inside my father’s head & stayed. 

He used to say that he’d become a beast 

who couldn’t think & that he couldn’t tell 

if  he’d lost the meaning of the words 

he had to write in neat rows after each shift. 

Plainclothes militiamen followed him,

so when he did his rounds, he took 

the darkest path among trains freighting 

the cement & soil of cemeteries, though 

he could still hear them crunching the hard snow 

behind him. & when he turned, he saw 

them watching him as though they knew 

what could break him.