we migrants, traveling with galaxy, sun, slogging sphere, geological budge of continent, movement of races, American transportation, feet, we on our journey-forever in time-space are sure as hell, unmistakably, definitely--as the saying goes-- en route. Hence, I deem the status quo of ego unimaginative. Is this a sin? A sin to hunger for more Light? Or is it goodness to reject the surrounding brilliance--call it The Dark--in order to make personal hay with the pewee flashlight of Episcopalianism. Judge not that ye be not judged, Wylie, He said. Then shall I sit like a Buchmanite on the john waiting for guidance? And there shall be laughter in heaven They omit that chapter. Anger is their meat: Gabriel's pinfeathers, torn out by handfuls. Pluck yourself a quill, pal. Make yourself a pen from a seraphim. Remind them they should enjoy it. Nature, that's all, simply telling us to fall In love. And that's why Chinks do it-- Japs do it-- I got out of the tub, scattering water, and turned the radio loud. Let me communicate again in the idiom of man-- my conceit has suddenly tired me out. I lay forlornly in the water, the water browned off by rust in the Astolat's pipes, the waters of life, but not much left. Sadness encompassed me. The sadness of little children dying by merely growing up of mature men turning childish again of American trees of the disinherited the stood-up the disappointed the deserted the uncomprehended of the walking wounded I hate to see that evening sun go down The love songs of the world are sad. The old English ballads quaintly drone--murder and rue. Gypsy violins have wet the eyes of European centuries. Italians shake their opera houses with love's grief. Don Juan dies young--and Romeo grows old. The Hindu on his fetid riverbank throbs to the guillotine moon. The damsel in Xanadu may be different--it doesn't go on to say. But-- Frankie shot Johnny. We Americans have had to borrow rue from our slaves; they have enough, and to spare We call it blues--and the origin's appropriate to us. The child in his cradle listens to locomotives talking themselves up the long grades, bidding the counties farewell in the night. Ours is a civilization of pistons, motors turning, electrons peppering filaments into light. We are a racy people. We got rhythm. The tempo of our love and the momentum of our woe are one. Our exultation soars with edifices that scrape the sky--then falters underground where we have iron rivers to carry the people home--and there is no home when they get there but only the percussant streets again, the shooting tabernacles, the radiance, the tumult in time. We sleep. Morning comes. In the mammoth sunshine of our cities we remember our blues the way the slaves remember. No heart, no intellect, but we got rhythm! Look at the towers! Look at the sky--that's blue, too, baby!