THE DAY I FINALLY ABANDONED MYSELF

I thought it must be the worst thing in the world
Although the truth is most likely somewhere in-between
Nevertheless the silence depressed me
For it wasn't the silence of real silence.
It was the empty, vacant sound of my own silence,
The most hopeless sound of all.

For I have been one acquainted with the night,
I looked down from what appeared to be a great height
I saw my life branching out before me
Like the green fig tree in the story I recalled enjoying
But could no longer remember reading.

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I plummed down past the zigzaggers, the students, the experts,
The museum directors with ice cold eyes and shaking heads.
I have out walked the furthest city light
I have looked down the saddest city lane
Through year after year of doubleness and smiles
And compromise, into my own past.

I made out men and women,
And boys and girls who must be as young as I,
But there was a uniformity to their faces,
As if they had lain for a long time on a shelf, out of the sunlight,
Under siftings of pale, fine dust.
And I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain,
That if you choose to idle at the stop light
Then you’d better make sure you get the signal right.

When I remember all the friends,
I've seen around me fall
Like sodden shapeless leaves in wintry weather,
I feel like one who slowly treads alone.
Then something bent down and took hold of me
Shook me like the end of the world
Until
 I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done.

I felt dumb and subdued.
Every time I tried to concentrate, my mind glided off, like a skater,
Into a large empty space, and pirouetted there, absently
What would you have me say?
That we went out there preached the Word
Better endured in grief than left unheard.

And so, when all the heat and fear had purged itself,
I felt surprisingly at peace,
Open at last to the wild circulating air,
While our paths emerge for a while,
Then close as if within a dream.
As I sit here in silent solitude
Reflecting on the nothingness that has been my entire existence,
While at evening, casual flocks of starlings make
Ambiguous undulations as they slowly sink,
Downward to the darkness
On strangely extended wings,
While all I do is plummet
Through deep descending air
Towards who knows what,
And who knows where.