The Ditch


I too was almost digested by the city:
All my purposes had ended there
But a few necessary simple ones.
I rose up;
Having no other choice,

Since even the road behind me
If I turned
Would stand ahead,
I went along the road for many miles
With the taste of the past in my mouth.

The stars came out,
The moon turned in,
And I endured the sun, the stars again,
The populated sky, the emptying
Of dusk over and over as I walked.

At last
I came to the place past failure
Where anyone can rest,
And slept a long time
To empty myself of dreams.

The last dream was this:
That I had come
For many miles along a barren ditch,
Past help or faith in help,
Where disappointment led me; to myself.

Morning was cool and hard.
I saw there was no road, nor had there been.
I stood in an enormous wilderness,
Blistered and dumb and empty, and I looked
On all the nothing I have ever known.

That was no place at all;
It had no boundaries, but was a kind
Of nothing between nothings, where I stood
Considering nothing;
Nothing mattered much;

Nothing fell like manna from the sky,
Nothing tempted me with stony loaves
And nothing struck a serpent from the sticks;
Nothing oppressed me; nothing let me go;
I could have lived on nothing all my life,

But I was low, and hungrier than that.
The day was hard and hot.
Because I had no choice,
I squatted there, and dug
In the ditch of belief.