Malena Mörling: "Gone"

          The world
is gone
      like the exact
shape of a cloud
          or the exact shape

of a hand waving
      in the sunlight
from across
          a crowded
train-station
      parking-lot
to another hand
          that waves back.

Come to think of it,
      everything up to now
is gone.
          And I have also
already left
      even though
I still ride
          the train
through the outskirts
      of the city.

And I still sit
          by the window,
the filthy
      train-window
while what is left
          of the demolished
buildings
      go past
and the empty
          billboards
and the transitory
      architecture.

It's amazing
          we're not
more amazed.
      The world
is here
          but then it's gone
like a wave
      traveling toward
other waves.

          Or like
the delicate white
      spaceships
of the Dogwood
          that float
as if there were
      no gravity,
as if there were
          no moments
isolated from
      any other
moments
          anywhere.

"Gone" by Malena Mörling, from Astoria: Poems. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006.

Photography credit: Detail from "Left-behind children say goodbye to their migrant-working parents," by Xinhua/Ju Huanzong, 2010 (originally color).