Interlude — The Railroad at Southville

Lyrics

Before the iron, there was the road.
Dust in summer, mud in spring.
Then, a new sound from the east. A rumor on the air.

They came with shovels and accents I did not recognize.
Men from Cork and County Clare, cutting a line, straight and strange, across the curve of my hills.
They tried granite for the sleepers, but it cracked under the new weight.
So it became steel on wood on gravel.
A scar that would become a vein.

July sixth, eighteen thirty-four.
The first engine passed through, smelling of coal smoke and hot metal.
A new clock for the day.
The whistle at dawn from the crossing at Southville Road.
The low rumble of freight cars for the Cordaville Mill.
The sharp, metallic clang of coupling.
The world arrived on a schedule now.

That rumble became my new pulse.
A long, mournful sound in the evening, headed for Worcester. Or Boston.
And I was no longer just a place between.
I was a stop along the way.