if i were a weatherworndowntowner, i would know my way around these streets, and i could show you passages between the pedwalk and the place my local murder meets: “mark the X, then turn left-face and pace a score of leg-lengths,” i might say. “the wall you want’s the one unpainted, grey among the green and brown.” oh, these old haunts, they thread our town with threnodies and taunts.
and if i were a newcomehitherider, i would see each face so fresh, and each leaf on each tree would hold my gaze a moment more than graves can do for those who mourn, whose braves and babes have worn the shroud and slept–and as their constancy and care are kept in lingering eyes, so would my ardor show, and sunrise find me naked in the nature i should know.
but i, i am a halfwayhouseboundfounder, and my fate is fitted with this watch: to will not aught, but wait. i neither know nor show myself to any day to day; a night’s a better measure of the part[icle] i play, for in between the dusk and dawn is when my substance shines, when silk is raw as sackcloth and the straight goes out of lines, when echoes sound before the speech and words mean less than moans–that is when i wander from the borders of my bones.