I Remember Every Road

​I remember every road, also 
Every stone, everything 
I could and couldn’t understand,
And see, or think I see, the beginning--

Or the ending?—topographic-
Ally speaking. And the bones
Themselves become the flesh, the stal-
Actites become the sky, groans

Themselves become more than a song.
Every road is a pilgrim’s road
When you are traveling on the pilgrim’s
Road, whose adjoining fields are fallowed,

That faces a height that we do or do not
See. And the more we walk, sometimes
Catch a lift, we value the Syrian
Thistle, the gray lizard that climbs

The gray pine, on the way to the streets
Of the capital, which stretch
From Montezuma to Betelgeuse.
The wind is so soft, so steady, the ketch

Barely slides but it slides,
It is a wind that contains,
If you bend your ear, every
Murmur, the roar of airplanes,

Ants skritching across terrains,
Atoms that make no sound, foul
Conversations, mirrors of hope
And pain, until the stern Owl

Nebula, until the crown 
Of the tree that makes its own space,
Everything looped together,
Stumbling to its own place,

Nothing is missing, not even a rotten
Tooth, an imaginary number, a hurt
Too deep to feel, a forgotten blue-
Berry, a revelation, a concert,

A try at a mustache. Look at
The toil of man, the Outerborough
Bridge, every urge that wipes
Away the mind, every thorough

Dedication, the viciousness,
The foolishness, the petty anger
Or the mix of fury and self-pity,
Or in the midst of danger, languor,

From the Mongolian plain to the shaded street,
When the government cracks, when bitter water
Spills, what is the cause of this terrible
Spin? Every color, the tauter

Nerves, the solace, the texts, the times
Of insight with disgrace, they lead
Our little bodies to proceed
Beyond the truths of Ganymede.