Tunnels

I like poems in which a single voice speaks at night, in a city.  Viz. section II of "Little Gidding," wherein the poet meets the "ghost of some dead master," the last pages of The Waves, which I did as a monologue, wherein Bernard faces death.  I like the nighttime loneliness of certain parts of Zarathustra (even dogs are afraid of ghosts....singing is for the convalescent), though it lacks...modernity, which fits the combination of desolation, humility, lowness and openness that I love.  If the "Sky" is one place I feel at home, the smelly entrance to a subway station in the middle of the night is another.

But there is a twist, or a tunnel.  It's only in this kind of "place" that I feel completely open; if it is possible for one's sense of self to expand, this is where it must begin.  (Not that this isn't a spiritual cliche; but it's something I need to remind myself of.)  I wrote a poem about this in 9th grade, and it worried my teacher, while I thought it was optimistic.

So it feels natural to be "outside" of the waking-conventional-respectable world; it's reassuring.  I often wonder (less than I did when I first left home, but occasionally) how to be in that other world.  I still haven't found a model, or a map.