I looked over the edge of the civilized, explainable world,
And I saw that people were lonely, even here.
A prisoner in the Gulag, a vicious echoing steppe:
A human nightmare found in novels—fantasy.
Then I saw that people come so finite, so few
only so many on the planet at all.
And even less that really know.
That really know a face—it’s easy to come to the end of that number.
I saw over the edge of the mountain, where isolation levels the ground under a big, big sky.
After apologizing shamefacedly
To all those depressed poets
I had laughed at all those years,
I fled, terrified, from the dark mystery of loneliness.
On earth, not a soul under heaven?
To be man forsaken— I asked the dust, who couldn’t be bothered.
…and we’re sorry, we apologize under our breath,
That when you were sweating blood under a lonely heaven
And praying your tired prayer into your own ground
We were sleeping and dreaming, proudly, you should NEVER have nobody...
…my God, my God—
