Muriel Rukeyser - "The Road" (from The Book of the Dead) lyrics

These are roads to take when you think of your country and interested bring down the maps again, phoning the statistician, asking the dear friend, reading the papers with morning inquiry. Or when you sit at the wheel and your small light chooses gas gauge and clock; and the headlights indicate future of road, your wish pursuing past the junction, the fork, the suburban station, well-travelled six-land highway planned for safety. Past your tall central city's influence, outside its body: traffic, penumbral crowds, are centers removed and strong, fighting for good reason. These roads will take you into your own country. Select the mountains, follow rivers back, travel the pa**es Touch West Virginia where the Midland Trail leave the Virginia furnace, iron Clifton Forge, Covington iron, goes down into wealthy valley, resorts, the chalk hotel. Pillars and fairway; spa; White Sulphur Springs. Airport. Gay blank rich faces wishing to add history to ballrooms, tradition to the first tee. The simple mountains, sheer, dark-graded with pine in the sudden weather, wet outbreak of spring, crosscut by snow, wind at the hill's shoulder. The land is fierce here, steep, braced against snow, rivers and spring. KING COAL HOTEL, Lookout, and swinging the vicious bend, New River Gorge. Now the photographer unpacks camera and case, surveying the deep country, follows discovery viewing on ground gla** an inverted image. John Marshall named the rock (steep pines, a drop he reckoned in 1812, called) Marshall's Pillar, but later, Hawk's Nest: Here is your road, tying you to its meanings: gorge, boulder, precipice. Telescoped down, the hard and stone-green river cutting fast and direct into town.