Lines To Nowhere …..2102-2012 Poem by saadat tahir

Dedication for SAL on his birthday)
(A historic train ride from Istanbul to Makkah, via Petra* and Madain Saleh*-The Hijaz Rail*)

Chug chug tracks along varied hut
Shovel up coal and clank it shut
Crank it up and build up steam
Polish up mirrors for far out beam
well healed served caviar creams
In lesser coach but distant dreams

Far off puff of incoming clang
Clickety click and muffled bang
Clarion shriek along many a scapes
That Lawrence* wrecked with his apes

Chug chug tracks along varied hut
Shovel up coal and clank it shut
winding through the human crib*
the land of Prophets* without a fib
rivers and seas that swallow or float*
by pastures green and bleating goat

Whistling over the sandy dune
towering cliffs that're craggy hewn
megaliths alone, clustered rocks
puffing away with her steamy frocks

Chug chug tracks along varied hut
Shovel up coal and clank it shut
Historic cost of blown up line
Rusting hulks once mirrored shine
Rotting planks on mangled rails
Held together by crumbling nails

jut Pared lines in gaping holes
Shade and shelter to desert voles
An eerie calm in blowing sand
distant pomp of military band

Chug chug tracks along varied hut
Shovel up coal and clank it shut
Soiled in strife a marvel fades
Felled prey of marauding raids
pleasing rides to shuttered coach
breezy days to cloistered roach

How hush and death now scattered lie
to glorious days a painful bye
Paneled walls are blown out holes
As time cavorts like tender foals

original
saadat tahir
2102 - 2012
Islamabad.

Also an epitaph to the Ottoman 'Hijaz Rail' laid from Damascus to the holy Muslim sites 1900-1908…the First World War truncated the effort and the rail ended in Medina Munawwara, where the loco-sheds/railway station (walled off from the world) and a Turkish mosque still stand in mute testimony to the monumental effort. For a century now a huge swath of Muslims undergo countless suffering, grapple with buses and ferries to reach the holy sites for Umra and Hajj.
There is now earnest talk of work starting on a parallel project.
*
http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hejaz_Railway
http: //www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/news/europe/2699-turkey-begins-work-on-a-project-to-link-istanbul-and-mecca-by-express-train
http: //www.youtube.com/watch? v=IDF0at7sC0M
http: //olbigjimsplace.blogspot.com/2011/10/jordan-hejaz-railway.html