1.

Then to go there in the dusky
heavy air of that place yet always
carrying in the shielding
palm of your hand lamp of a flame
establishing the decisive center which is
indeed light. Now you can see
what you had lived and lived by, what they
whom you had known, had lived and
lived by, now glimpse a little
what those who would come after you would
live and live by, and again in them
the visualization of your own passage which
only now you begin to realize wherefrom
and whereto. They, all of them,
are about you now, vaguely visible but not
speaking and what blood can you offer them
except your own that there be
any speaking of this, any moment of
exchange of astonishment that there was
what there was, had been what there had been? 'you
speak to them: they do not answer and now
it does not matter as you begin to understand
this and the why of this. Yon carry the lamp’s flame
along the dark galleries, up and down
stairways, through silent rooms which
give on to other rooms. The light is very small
but sufficient and casts you in many shadows
about yourself which are never you but which indicate
that there is a you. Once you had a thread
which you unrolled as you went so that it could
lead you back. Now it is gone: it ran
out. Nor does that matter.