Below this poem, lines from Denise Levertov’s poem “Merritt Parkway”.

I like to say

That after I discovered girls . . .

I think in fact

I ran away.

I can see in memory

A girl—11?—who lived next door

In the dim of the hallway

She was eager, we both intrigued!

Another girl – too good for me?

Kissing on a basement couch

On the Web now, divorced

A volunteer, her children, their families . . .

The lovely unraveling as I hold tight

In that hallway and down below

A sort of gray, with underwear

Curiosities wetting appetite.

And all the things that we’ve since done

My books, my drawings, poetry

And all the other boys and men

The other women to whom I’ve run . . .

Supposing back then we’d stopped and breathed

Then gone slowly all the way

Losing our little edgy selves

(Ah M—, ah S—, too briefly, wondrously!)

Moving on’s the main event

To nothing better, needing escape

Call it depravity breathless discovery

Of what we humans are all about.

— Poem (English only this time) and drawing by William Eaton. Our perpetual motion brings me back to these

Lines from Denise Levertov’s 1954 “Merritt Parkway”:

And the people – ourselves!

the humans from inside the

cars, apparent

only at gasoline stops

unsure,

eyeing each other

drink coffee hastily at the

slot machines and hurry

back to the cars

vanish

into them forever, to

keep moving –