Waiting in the railway station – youngsters
laughing, train controllers ushering passengers
to their trains while I waited for thrice cancelled
trains, waited, as the death of some stags
was announced at a level crossing, stags
shorn from the forest, their flesh smeared,
the rail’s air-pumps blown out.

Time was indispensable to clean the tracks.

In the day’s sun-bereft disorientation, the stags
were, perhaps, sacrificed to the biting night,
to the magnet-reel between the earth
and the sky or to poachers or a forest fire
while the ticket inspector anticipated the pleasure
of her tabooed venison excitedly.