I Feel That I Am

In Middle America Men Are Awakening. Like Awkward And Untrained Boys We Begin To Turn Toward Maturity And With Our Awakening We Hunger For Song. But In Our Towns And Fields There Are Few Memory Haunted Places. Here We Stand In Roaring City Streets, On Steaming Coal Heaps, In The Shadow Of Factories From Which Come Only The Grinding Roar Of Machines. We Do Not Sing But Mutter In The Darkness. Our Lips Are Cracked With Dust And With The Heat Of Furnaces. We But Mutter And Feel Our Way Toward The Promise Of Song.

All Of The People Of My Time Were Bound With Chains. They Had Forgotten The Long Fields And The Standing Corn. They Had Forgotten The West Winds.

It Might Be That Women Who Have Beennurses Should Not Marry Physicians. They Have Too Much Respect For Physicians, Are Taughtto Have Too Much Respect

You Must Try To Forget All You Have Learned,” Said The Old Man. “you Must Begin To Dream. From This Time On You Must Shut Your Ears To The Roaring Of The Voices.

From The Place By The Railing At The Edge Of The Tracks On The Summer Evening I Return Across The City To My Own Room. I Am Vividly Aware Of My Own Life That Escaped The Winter On The Boat. How Many Such Lives I Have Lived. Then I Only Made A Dollar And A Half A Day And Now I Sometimes Make More Than That In A Few Minutes. How Wonderful To Be Able To Write Words. ... Again I Begin The Endless Game Of Reconstructing My Own Life, Jerking It Out Of The Shell That Dies, Striving To Breathe Into It Beauty And Meaning. ... I Wonder Why My Life, Why All Lives, Are Not More Beautiful.