The second typescript
[Page 10]
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| It is! Much bigger and faster than anyone told you. | ||
| A bewhiskered student in an old baggy overcoat is waiting to take it. | ||
| "Why do you want to go there," they all say. "It is better in the other direction." | ||
| And so it is. There people are free, at any rate. But where you are going no one is. |
| Still there are parks and libraries to be visited, "la Bibliotheque Municipale," | ||
| Hotel reservations and all that rot. Old American films dubbed into the foreign language, | ||
| Coffee and whiskey and cigar buXX stubs. Nobody minds. And rain on the bristly wool of your topcoat. |  | |
| I realize that I never knew why I wanted to come. |
| Yet I shall never return to the past, that attic, | ||
| Its sailboats are perhaps more beautiful than these, these I am leaning against, | ||
| Spangled with diamonds and orange and purple stains, | ||
| Bearing me once again in quest of the unknown. These sails are life itself to me. |
| I heard a girl say this once, and cried, and brought her fresh fruit and fishes, | ||
| Olives and golden baked loaves. She dried her tears and thanked me. | ||
| Now we are both setting sail into the purplish evening. | ||
| I love it! This cruise can never last long enough for me. |
| But once more, office desks, radiators--No! That is behind me. | ||
| No more dullness, only movies and love and laughter, sex and fun. | ||
| The ticket seller is blowing his little horn--hurry before the window slams down. | ||
| The train we are getting onto is a boat train, and the boats are really boats this time. | |
| But I heard the heavens say--Is it right? This continual changing back and forth? | ||
| Laughter and tears and so on? Mightn't just plain sadness be sufficient for him? | ||
| No! I'll not accept that any more, you bewhiskered old caverns of blue! | ||
| This is just right for me. I am cosily ensconced in the balcony of my face |
| Looking out over the whole darn countryside, a beacon of satisfaction | ||
| I am. I'll not trade places with a king. Here I am then, continuing but ever beginning | ||
| My perennial voyage, into new memories, new hope and flowers | ||
| The way the coasts glide past you. I shall never forget this moment |
| Because it consists of purest ecstasy. I am happier now than I ever dared believe | ||
| Anyone could be. And we finger down the dog-eared coasts... | ||
| It is all passing! It is past! No, I am here, | ||
| Bellow the coasts, and even the heavens roar their assent |
