if i could sleep

Lakes of light, portages of darkness. The concrete facing of the tunnel has given way to whitewash over chunky fault-surfaces, phony-looking as the inside of an amusement-park cave. Entrances to cross-tunnels slip by like tuned pipes with an airflow at their mouths... once upon a time lathes did screech, playful machinists had shootouts with little brass squirt cans of cutting oil... knuckles were bloodied against grinding wheels, pores, creases and quicks were stabbed by the fine splinters of steel... tubeworks of alloy and glass contracted tinkling in air that felt like the dead of winter, and amber light raced in phalanx among the small neon bulbs. Once, all this did happen. It is hard down here in the Mittelwerke to live in the present for very long. The nostalgia you feel is not your own, but it's potent. All the objects have grown still, drowned, enfeebled with evening, terminal evening. Tough skins of oxide, some only a molecule thick, shroud the metal surfaces, fade out human reflection.