the other way about

STARTING FROM SAN FRANCISCO

Here I go again
crossing the country in coach trains
(back to my old
lone wandering)
All night Eastward... Upward
over the Great Divide and on
into Utah
over Great Salt Plain
and onward, rocking,
the white dawn burst
across mesas,
table-lands,
all flat, all laid away.
Great glary sun-
wood bridge over water...
Later in still light, we still reel onward-
Onward?
Back and forth, across the Continent,
bang bang
by any wheel or horse,
any rail,
by car
by buggy
by stagecoach,
walking,
riding,
hooves pounding the Great Plains,
caravans into the night. Forever.
Into Wyoming.
All that day and night, rocking through it,
snow steppes and plains of November,
roads lost in it -or never existent-
back in the beginning again, no People yet,
no ruts Westward yer
under the snow...
Still more huge spaces we bowl through,
still untouched dark land-
Indomitable.
Horizons of mesas
like plains of Spain high up
in Don Quixote country-
sharp eroded towers of bluffs
like windmills tilted,
"los molinos" of earth, abandoned-
Great long rectangular stone islands
sticking up on far plains, like forts
or immense light cargo ships
high on plains of water,
becalmed and rudderless,
props thrashing wheat,
stranded forever,

no one on those bridges...

Later again, much later,

one small halfass town,

followed by one telephone wire

and one single iron road

hung to the tracks as by magnets

attached to a single endless fence,

past solitary pumping stations,

each with a tank, a car, a small house, a dog,

no people anywhere-

All hiding?

White man gone home?

Must be a cowboy someplace...
Birds flap from fences, trestles,
caw and caw their nothingness.
Stone church sticks up
quote Out of Nowhere unquote
This must be Interzone
between Heaven and Brooklyn.
Do they have a Classified Section
as in phonebooks
in the back of the Bibles here?
Otherwise they'd never find Anything.
Try Instant Zen...
Still later again,
sunset and starnge clouds like udders
rayed with light from below-
some God's hand sticks through,
black trees stand out.
The world is a winter farm-
Cradle we rocked out of-
prairie schooners into Pullmans-
their bright saloons sheeted in oblivion-
Wagon-lits - bedwagon over the prairies,
bodies nested in them,
hurtled through night,
inscrutable...
Onward still... or Backward...
huge snow fields still, on and on,
still no one,
Indians all gone to Florida
or Cuba!
Train hoots at something
in the nowhere we still rock through,
Dingding crossroads flicker by,
Mining towns, once roaring,
now shrunk to the railhead,
streetlights stoned with loneliness
or lit with leftover sun
they drank too much of during the day...
And at long last
this world shrunk
to one lone brakeman´s face
stuck out of darkness-
long white forehead
like bleached skull of cow-
huge black sad eyes-
high.peaked cloth cap, grey-striped-
swings his railroad lantern high, close up,
as our window whizzes by-
his figure splashed upon it,
slanted, muezzin-like,
very grave, very tall,
strange skeleton-
Who stole America?

Myself I saw in the window reflected.

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

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