Arbeit Macht Frei

The first weakening of night picks out telephone lines, black against sky. The eyelid of a garage door lurches laboriously up. A car coughs blue breath. With aerosols and plastic scrapers clandestine delights of frostwebs are raked to chemical sludge. Starter motors whine. Windscreens cloud with pain. Gears grind teeth. An electric train gingerly utters inarticulate from the sheds, groaning over cold joints. Thinking grimly of tunnels ahead, it flares with ill-humor crossing the points. On unworked land beside the track, a fox is heading home. Gliding through beneath the "keep out" sign, he grins at the engine, which just judders along, headlights trained on parallel lines which glint ahead, reflecting lurid signal red, extending out, but never meeting, towards the vanishing point.