The Outcome
Exasperatedly I hack and break Out through the bladed chains the briars make All round my grimed shoes. Cobweb-black I stand Beside where concrete broad as a runway Smooth as a mirror and as white as day Runs off to the skyline on either hand.
Red-eyed, I gasp for breath as best I may.
Just then, some affable bystander inquires Where's the arterial road that runs through briarg,.
I bluster. Yet why shouldn't he ask? Who knows'? Not me. For me, the landscape comes and goes Kaleidoscopically, bewilderingly.
The gap from man of Words to man of paper Or that from one of wind to one of vapour Is what my eyesight has been trained to see. In plain straight things, it peers with a mere taper Or match-head to light up a world with. Please Don't ask me to distinguish chalk and cheese.
Yet I must. And if need be, re-enact One thousand times the discovery of that fact, That break through briars out on a main road.
For one thing of all things I most refuse • To do. Live dead man in my live man's shoes. Sooner than that, I'll take up my abode Plumb in mid-traffic, where they cry the news. Race, swerve, and scream, all day: and in that roar,
That storm, that sea, stay quiet. Not lock for shore.
JOHN HOLLOWAY
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