Ghost Train

Exercise with ghost train

by Catharina Gripenberg (b. 1977, Jakobstad, Finland) [my tr.]


The ideal goodbye is the ghost train journey. One person
takes a seat in the carriage. The other waits on the small wooden platform.
For letters there’s no time. And getting away there is none. There are
no spontaneous stations. Only a very single ticket. Whoever
travels away along the rails will not escape.
If you stand on the platform you can look up at the trees and close your eyes
for a little. Eat a cone with something in it. A short time passes, and
then the departee pops up again. The platform: is just the same.
The carriage, likewise. But the face? Wide open? So say:
Imagine if it had been real. Don’t go leaving again.

If the carriage is empty upon its return, ask yourself the question:
Is the amusement park director a coward?
If he’s not a coward, he’ll take a midnight stroll along the ghost train track
and find the lost one at the foot of a stuffed bear:
The traveller had thrown himself from the carriage in the dark
intending to reappear on the small platform in a few years’ time,
with a cloud and a piece of the latitude on his backside.

The ghost train’s crucial point: Before setting off one doesn’t say
goodbye to anyone. One doesn’t grieve. One doesn’t turn
one’s head and wave. One doesn’t turn one’s head.


from Ödemjuka belles lettres från en till en (Humble belles lettres from one to one), Schildts, 2002.