In the middle of nowhere, a crossroads,
          a few straggly oaks on a barren heath --
               overhead a raven, but nothing more ---
         there is dust in my eye, grit in my teeth
              from this wind that harrows me to the core,
                         for nothing bodes
          well in this place: from a tortuous oak,
               a disquieting object: an unearthed bone
               with curious markings, dangling alone
          on a knotted cord like a twist of smoke.


     Sign of the devil's spawn, if you credit
          what villagers swear underneath their breath
               (for crossroads indeed are the devil's haunt),
          but this is no rosary hung by wraith,
               no unholy relic to tempt or taunt --
                         no demon tied it --
          this bundled-up bone is a gipsy sign,,
               nothing more than a Gretel's crumb to show
               to which far-off horizon one should go,
          in pursuit of the wagons' winding line.


     But when were they here? The wind has so scoured
          the marks of their passage no traces remain.
               I peer across miles of emptiness where
          ephemeral swallows like sunlit rain
               intrigue the horizon and disappear.
                         Slowly the hour
          concedes to evening . . . I shoulder my pack
               and set out to westward, pursuing the sun
               where it moltens to rosy oblivion --
          once begun, there can be no turning back.


     Well into autumn, the evening is cool
          and shadows are closing from every side --
               I feel like an old and broken knight-errant
          without so much as a star for my guide,
               venturing blindly forth on an errand
                         fit for a fool.
          In silence the night coalesces -- soon,
               from behind a cluster of tree trees, a vague,
               apparition of woe, a god of plague,
          summoning tides of contagion --- the moon.


     Such a barren, cold, indifferent place
          with nowhere to shelter -- how many times
               have I been in places like this before,
          without an end or a friend or a dime,
               with only a shirt and not a lot more?
                         With rain in my face,
          I'd huddle beneath the brim of my hat
               and try to remember a cheerful song --
               the cars barrelled by me all night long
          without ever slowing --- leaving me flat.


     But this is a wierder region by far
          than any through which I have ever crossed --
               a hostile, uninhabited heath
          that leaves me as disembodied and lost
               as a spirit who, bewildered by death
                         and seeking a star
          in an old familiar part of the sky,
               discovers the constellations have changed --
               I wonder if I am dead or deranged
          or if I am only about to die?


     For suddenly scenes from out of my past
          perform a procession before my eyes
               as in the proverbial final flash
          in the very moment a person dies --
               the whole of one's life distilled to an ash,
                         heedlessly cast
          upon the wind and entirely lost . . .
               that this is my fortune I cannot doubt --
               my cup ranneth over -- I poured it out --
          I threw away all to become a ghost.


     Now it's come to this -- on this road alone:
          this terminal stretch of a journey begun
               in my seventeenth year in a mental ward
          when a voice of angelic desolation
               bespoke in my ear the unholy word,
                         a howling moan
          that echoed through pages of ravaged verse
               and awakened such a disturbance in me
               that I have wandered unceasingly
          from that hour onward, bearing its curse.


     From that singer of garret and gutter whose
          refrain I would hearken the following year
               on the streets of Chicago, to others less
          notorious, less flamboyantly queer,
               from the hermit-monk in the wilderness
                         to the little blues
          itinerant hobo and troubador
               whose lays lay open the soul of an age --
               from these I would turn to the musty page,
          to the buried minstrels and bards of yore . . .


     A sabre of wind shears right to the bone.
          I huddle more deeply within my coat
               and trudge ahead grimly, hunching my head
          and drawing my collar about my throat.
               Perhaps even now I am lying dead
                         underneath a stone
          in some vandalized graveyard half-destroyed,
               with all of this lying before me only
               the dream of a corpse, a long and lonely
          highway diminishing into the void . . .