September 1961

This is the year the old ones, the old great ones leave us alone on the road. The road leads to the sea. We have the words in our pockets, obscure directions. The old ones have taken away the light of their presence, we see it moving away over a hill off to one side. They are not dying, they are withdrawn into a painful privacy learning to live without words. E. P. "It looks like dying"-Williams: "I can't describe to you what has been happening to me"- H. D. "unable to speak." The darkness twists itself in the wind, the stars are small, the horizon ringed with confused urban light-haze. They have told us the road leads to the sea, and given the language into our hands. We hear our footsteps each time a truck has dazzled past us and gone leaving us new silence. Ine can't reach the sea on this endless road to the sea unless one turns aside at the end, it seems, follows the owl that silently glides above it aslant, back and forth, and away into deep woods. But for usthe road unfurls itself, we count the words in our pockets, we wonder how it will be without them, we don't stop walking, we know there is far to go, sometimes we think the night wind carries a smell of the sea...