The Look of Consciousness  

When we wait on the morning platform

of the drowsy station in our business chic,

our breath rises like the smoke over the engines.

To get our keenness warmed up we check

the day’s schedule on our mobile:

minutes accumulate into meetings,

hours get jammed in blizzards of talks

where everyone secretly looks for the exit

beyond which, swimming like carp

in a fish pond, are words for personal use,

the ones that we will scarf down in the corridor,

so work gets easier to take. There is no entry

for the moments when face and soul will tiredly look

at each other through the window of the day—

in a moment tables and graphs will add up to a zero

in which the heart swims like an egg yolk.

At last a loudspeaker announces our train. Bitterly

cold we step from the shelter to the platform edge,

and when I look at the rails I get dizzy,

somebody in the depths of consciousness

makes for the surface, somebody within me

suddenly grabs my wrist, somebody who at the same

time both is and is not whispers:

even without Vronsky we may be Anna.