En Route to Bangladesh, Another Crisis of Faith

Tarfia Faizullah

We pass over heavy shadows
of large clouds pinned to traincars

lined up like unused blocks
of colored chalk—red then green,

blue then orange—until we are
propelled（推动，驱使） higher, and the trains

are swallowed by these jagged（锯齿状的）
strictures（狭窄，苛评） of land that are no longer

sand nor rock nor water, but a child's
drawing instead—until the distant ocean

is the only fabric that fills this punched-
out plastic hole of a window—that is

the blue that falls over everything, that is
everything—blue on blue on blue—like the one

strip of light left always on the airplane ceiling
that the pale, plastic shades cannot shut away—

until that narrow vein of light is the only
belief left, a cream-thick ribbon（缎带） across our eyes—