The Train To The End of The World

Why is the train running?

Why is the train running?

Why is the train running?

Why are the rails screeching?

Why are the rails screeching?

Why are the rails screeching?

Why is my head pounding?

Why is my head pounding?

Why is my head pounding?

When I come to

I know three things

My head is open & broken

The train that I built is running too fast

And that no-one is driving it

My hands

Covered in blood

My clothes too

My head is splitting

The train is screeching

I do all the checks

The engine is stoked and full

The train is gathering speed

The brake is broken

I peer out the window

See the jungle racing by

I know where this train is going

The point where the track ends

The cliff edge falls away

And The Amazon spreads out below

A drop of hundreds of feet

The end of the line

The edge of the world

All that waits there

Is the endless jungle

They told me we were here

To build greatness

To bring progress to The Amazon

I came to the edge of civilisation

To build a train that could survive here

“The Train to The End of the World”

Is about to fly off it

The line is unfinished

I wonder who has killed me

A rival company

The crew

The foreman

Someone that I fired

An angry relative

A bereaved wife

A friend who wants revenge

The best thing about engineering

Is what you can build

The worst part

Is all the things you must destroy

To create anything

We pass the rainforest wreckage

All those trees hundreds of years old

That we cleared for sleepers

The mountains we blasted

For the tunnels we dug

All the scars in the landscape we made

To lay this line

All the damage I’ve done

I see the men that died

The malaria and dengue

The ones that went mad through booze

Or loneliness

The fights in the camps

The snakebites

I think of all those bribes

The men who dragged this carriage

Up a hill in the mud and pouring rain

All the men I killed

For my dream

I can’t remember their names

But I still see their faces

I survived to build this line

The train was ready to run

We were missing just a few final miles of track

The miles that would have saved my life

The ones that took it away from the cliff edge

To the great hole in the earth

Towards the mine

For them it was about the gold

Anything they could rip from the earth

The people it could buy

But it wasn’t for me

I dreamed of the moment

When the train first ran

The stories in the papers back home

The applause for the man of progress

When they saw what I had achieved

I dreamt of a new world out here

New cities and new lives

That the train would bring here

But it was all just a dream

I was never about the train at all

Once it was finished,

I would have built another

And another

No matter the cost

We build the things we can build

We fix the things we are able to fix

Whilst we stay broken

None of it matters now

I built this train

This track

These rails and wheels

I made them

Now they will end me

There is one stretch before the end

Where I might save my life

The bridge over a river

There will be a few moments

Where I might leap free

Let the water save me

It is just a mile away

I have two choices

Die with the train

Or find a way to get off

And see what I spent years building

Break in a few moments

The forest is beautiful

I see it coming to life alongside me

Hear the throb of the wild world

See nature raw and running past me

Like a dream I’ve woken up in

I have just half a mile left

But the train is flying

It is running smoothly

The jungle is alive

The world is fresh and real

When else

Will I have this moment again

When else

Are the start and end of things

So clear?

When will I ever know again

That I am a passenger with no control

Like we all are?

I don’t want this journey to end

It can go on forever

To the edge of the world

And beyond

I watch the water pass

Without jumping to safety

The captain goes down with his ship

The engineer doesn’t leap off the train he built

I will ride it to the end

Its first and last journey

The train to the end of the world

Perhaps the jungle will catch us

Swallow a tonne of metal

And one human engineer

Like we never existed

Maybe in years to come

Someone will find us

The shattered hulk

The hollowed-out body

The rusting wreckage of my life

There is nothing now

Just this train rushing down the mountain

Towards the end

I built this train to fly

The cliff edge approaches

With the jungle below ready for us

There is a screech as the rails end

And as the train leaves the line

Lurches over the edge

I feel that we are ready to fly

I built this train to the end of the world

And we have reached it

And now we fly off it

And together take off into the blue