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Asheville
What and from where this quickening of eye and mind:
That I've come away from my beloved Lowcountry
For horizons more distant than those I might find
Where gulls fly their circles and palms line the sea;
Come away to this city where misshapen streets
Lay on heaving land like the web of a spider;
Where's something of those years in its tatty retreats,
Those years of our trouble, though now we're the wiser;
Come away where the ridges flow under the sky,
To a mountainous ocean of waves green and blue.
In chalk on a wall write that thing before I die,
That one thing most of all I would do or undo.
And see these young people spawned by revolution;
They are truly our children and our rightful heirs,
And all that we have is to them by reversion,
But in that time to come, what's the worth of their shares?
What else in their faces do we see there but loss?
O lost go these causalities of our war of choice,
Fallen down battlements of stone covered in moss,
O lost go these wounded and I hear not a voice.
But I see a young woman who smiles on the world,
A fixed and faint smile of surprise and of wonder —
As if the streets were gold inlaid, as if the walks were pearled.
O lost it is that upon this earth we wander!
O lost it is that through this city I wander —
A boardinghouse where Wolfe lived all those years before,
And find my heart for his words has grown but fonder,
As I search these streets for A Stone...A Leaf...A Door.
Wolfe House.JPG
The Thomas Wolfe Memorial, Asheville, NC
This was Wolfe's mother's boardinghouse in which he lived, on and off, growing up.
What and from where this quickening of eye and mind:
That I've come away from my beloved Lowcountry
For horizons more distant than those I might find
Where gulls fly their circles and palms line the sea;
Come away to this city where misshapen streets
Lay on heaving land like the web of a spider;
Where's something of those years in its tatty retreats,
Those years of our trouble, though now we're the wiser;
Come away where the ridges flow under the sky,
To a mountainous ocean of waves green and blue.
In chalk on a wall write that thing before I die,
That one thing most of all I would do or undo.
And see these young people spawned by revolution;
They are truly our children and our rightful heirs,
And all that we have is to them by reversion,
But in that time to come, what's the worth of their shares?
What else in their faces do we see there but loss?
O lost go these causalities of our war of choice,
Fallen down battlements of stone covered in moss,
O lost go these wounded and I hear not a voice.
But I see a young woman who smiles on the world,
A fixed and faint smile of surprise and of wonder —
As if the streets were gold inlaid, as if the walks were pearled.
O lost it is that upon this earth we wander!
O lost it is that through this city I wander —
A boardinghouse where Wolfe lived all those years before,
And find my heart for his words has grown but fonder,
As I search these streets for A Stone...A Leaf...A Door.
Wolfe House.JPG
The Thomas Wolfe Memorial, Asheville, NC
This was Wolfe's mother's boardinghouse in which he lived, on and off, growing up.
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