There is a train inside this iris:

You think I'm crazy, and like to say boyish
and outrageous things. No, there is

A train inside this iris.

It's a child's finger bearded in black banners.
A single window like a child's nail,

A darkened porthole lit by the white, angular face

Of an old woman, or perhaps the boy beside her in the stuffy,
Hot compartment. Her hair is silver, and sweeps

Back off her forehead, onto her cold and bruised shoulders.

The prairies fail along Chicago. Past the five
Lakes. Into the black woods of her New York; and as I bend

Close above the iris, I see the train

Drive deep into the damp heart of its stem, and the gravel
Of the garden path

Cracks under my feet as I walk this long corridor

Of elms, arched
Like the ceiling of a French railway pier where a boy

With pale curls holding

A fresh iris is waving goodbye to a grandmother, gazing
A long time

Into the flower, as if he were looking some great

Distance, or down an empty garden path and he believes a man
Is walking toward him, working

Dull shears in one hand; and now believe me: The train

Is gone. The old woman is dead, and the boy. The iris curls,
On its stalk, in the shade

Of those elms: Where something like the icy and bitter fragrance

In the wake of a woman who's just swept past you on her way
Home

and you remain.