091.365 - walking as metaphor

how strange to have lived
in a little town the last year of childhood
in a little city the last years of adolescence
in a huge city the last years of adulthood
in my little town I could walk alone and did
from one side to the other
knowing the shops and what men did there
the bars where they sat drinking and waiting
hoping, I suppose, for anything new
anything not understood, anything wonderful
although it had been years and decades
since the last wonder struck
and so seemed childhood's end
a known thing, its curiosity exhausted
in my little city I could walk alone and did
across a chunk huge to me but small to the city
and there were many shops in it, many bars I understood
where men worked, what they did there, and where they waited
drinking, pretending they meant something
and something, anything, new might come into being
but many more that were mystery where men and women
entered and left most days, but no one, including maybe they
knew what went on inside, what was produced
how it was used, who valued it and for what
like adolescence, little pockets known, but everywhere one wandered
surrounded by the unknown one had to be tough against
pitiless and hungry, waiting for the careless wanderer
now I have lived forty years almost
in a city so huge I could not have walked all of it
had I spent the whole time here walking
nor had I spent the whole time here asking and being answered
might I understand but a small glimmer of what goes on here
who makes what or how, who wants it and pays for it
how does the city grind so many of us together
and what is made eventually from all that grinding
and adulthood may be like that too
one knows enough to walk the lines one stays on
but even there mostly one survives in ignorance
knowing death and misery surround him
but hardly how he escapes them when he does
one welcomes horror stories from one's childhood
the horrors in them so small and so explicable
at night one sleeps with eyes shut tight, ears stoppered
wanting to know nothing more of what happens in the dark
and wanting to forget the threats of daylight