Call you up in the middle of the night Like a firefly without a light You were there like a blowtorch burning I was a key that could use a little turning

So tired that I couldn’t even sleep So many secrets I couldn’t keep Promised myself I wouldn’t weep One more promise I couldn’t keep

It seems no one can help me now I’m in too deep; there’s no way out This time I have really led my self astray

Runaway train, never going back Wrong way on a one-way track Seems like I should be getting somewhere Somehow I’m neither here nor there

Can you help me remember how to smile? Make it somehow all seem worthwile? How on earth did I get so jaded? Life’s mystery seems so faded

I can go where no one else can go I know what no one else knows Here I am just a-drownin’ in the rain With a ticket for a runaway train

And everything seems cut-and-dried Day and night, earth and sky Somehow I just don’t believe it

Runaway train, never going back Wrong way on a one-way track Seems like I should be getting somewhere Somehow I’m neither here nor there

Bought a ticket for a runaway train Like a madman laughing at the rain A little out of touch, a little insane It’s just easier than dealing with the pain

Runaway train, never going back Wrong way on a one-way track Seems like I should be getting somewhere Somehow I’m neither here nor there

Runaway train, never coming back Runaway train, tearing up the track Runaway train, burning in my veins I run away, but it always seems the same

So ran away another Friday night rocking before the altar of music.

On a Runaway Train. Music report on Soul Asylum's concert coming up!

Another evening of separation, don’t ask me now, How she had come and how she had left.

This you see clutched in my hand, is just a heart, A plaything, it can be easily distracted by something else And this, which is standing before you, is just another life That will somehow get lived.

At the gatherings I fill the lamps with oil of memory Of such rapture, of such beauty! For the stricken moon has set somewhere somehow And this night of exile has to be light somehow.

When I had invoked her all my mornings became fragrant, And now when I invoke the pain she gave me, all my nights trash like so many silvers of fish dying on a grassy bank!

Wiping clean the slate of my heart, I thought I could plunge forward But when I begin to tell these lies to myself, those words change without my changing!

And then when did the travelers of the night leave, O Faiz? Where did the breeze disembark and where did the morning go?

Again listening to Abida rip the evening with her haunting voice giving shape to these words of Faiz, written more than 50 years ago in a hospital in Karachi, I couldn't but help to write them along in English.

Here is another version of the same ghazal.

This is the Night Mail crossing the border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order, Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, The shop at the corner and the girl next door. Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb: The gradient's against her, but she's on time. Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder Shovelling white steam over her shoulder, Snorting noisily as she passes Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches, Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches. Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course; They slumber on with paws across. In the farm she passes no one wakes, But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, the climb is done. Down towards Glasgow she descends Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes, Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen. All Scotland waits for her: In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks, Letters of joy from the girl and the boy, Receipted bills and invitations To inspect new stock or visit relations, And applications for situations And timid lovers' declarations And gossip, gossip from all the nations, News circumstantial, news financial, Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in, Letters with faces scrawled in the margin, Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts, Letters to Scotland from the South of France, Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands Notes from overseas to Hebrides Written on paper of every hue, The pink, the violet, the white and the blue, The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring, The cold and official and the heart's outpouring, Clever, stupid, short and long, The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep Dreaming of terrifying monsters, Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's: Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh, Asleep in granite Aberdeen, They continue their dreams, And shall wake soon and long for letters, And none will hear the postman's knock Without a quickening of the heart, For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

Keeping on track with the recent railway theme.