Again and again I make the intolerable journey: First three days in the locked train, passing my home On the stormy midnight when no light burns and all the houses Are shut: then pinesmell, rain, confusion, a cold camp; Again and again I make the winter voyage: first the narrow Sea-passage between the mountains where like frozen Smoke the waterfalls hang and the scenery becomes portentous, Dream-like and sullen, charged with a higher reality Than our own; then, shadowy As clouds in the roaring night-black ocean, islands Plunge, fog-bound, nameless; finally, driving Seaward, the headlands, and the crooked harbor: wreckage, Spume like spiders crawling, gun-metal water; Again and again I climb the hill: past the cemetery, the dead Fighter aircraft, past the shops where the great Machines rust in their beds and know it is Useless, useless, the night-journey inbound and cannot, Can not turn back -- What am I hunting? I cannot remember. Rain Slats like shot on the empty tents. The flaps Are all closed tight on nothing. On ghosts. The night Comes screaming down on the wind. Boredom. Loneliness. Again and again I return to the hunt for something long buried In Time, like the dead in the cliff-face cemetery. Loneliness, terror of death, splendor of living -- I rescued these wounded: but cannot reclaim my youth Nor those lost violent years whose casual ignorant lovers We were for a season. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FICTION by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON THE USES OF POETRY by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS MOTHER'S LOVE by THOMAS BURBIDGE ULYSSES AND THE SIREN by SAMUEL DANIEL THE WAKING YEAR by EMILY DICKINSON A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE HERITAGE by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL |