As to Being Alone

Why did you hate to be by yourself,
And why were you sick of your own company?

Such the question, and this the answer:
I feared sublimity:
I was a little afraid of God:
Silence and space terrified me, bringing the thought of what an irritable clod I was and how soon death would gulp me down...

This fear has reared cities:
The cowards flock together by the millions lest they should be left alone for a half hour...
With church, theater and school,
With office, mill and motor,
With a thousand cunning devices, and clever calls to each other,
They escape from themselves to the crowd...

urbancarenginetechnology

Oh, I have loved it all:
Snug rooms, the talk, the pleasant feast, the pictures:
The warm bath of humanity in which I relaxed and soaked myself:
And never, I hope, shall I be without it—at times...

But now myself calls me...
The skies demand me, though it is but ten in the morning:
The earth has an appointment with me, not to be broken...
I must accustom myself to the gaunt face of the Sub-time...
I must see what I really am, and what I am for,
And what this city is for, and the Earth and the stars in their hurry...

To turn out typewriters,
To invent a new breakfast food,
To devise a dance that was never danced until now,
To urge a new sanitation, and a swifter automobile—
Have the life-surging heavens no business but this?

cartechnology