Veni, Vidi, Vici

Rail cars pulled along the tracks by the roaring coal engine that fills the endless blue sky black with smog like squid’s ink in the light shallows as the train rattles across the silent plains. Crossed endlessly by track and post and wire the West falls quiet and becomes loud again as the yells from horseback and the shuffle of bison each halt under the fire of rifles and the whistle of steam as rail begets the plough and the plough more rail in a headlong conquest for the sea and reaching the rocky shores of the Pacific we turn back to the cool Eastern coast and the red-soaked agrarian dream and weep in our knowledge of finite gains and infinite cruelty and mourn the ignorance of an empty world.