This road, just newly opened, goes
Straight to the city, I suppose.
   Dark melancholy day.
I stand at a new crossing where
A new horizon like a tear
   Runs lonelily away.  

The sun above a straggling row
Of huddled roof-tops huddles low...
   How thin, how shorn of shade,
Stand the few trees in that sparse wood
That once so greedily sturdy stood
   Before the road was made.

Such bleakness feeds my blemished mood
Of anger and incertitude
   As black sorts well with black.
How, how can I re-fangle me?
How be what once I used to be?
   Where does the road run back?
Oh where’s that leafy road I seek
That runs to boyhood from the bleak
   Horizon of the town?
For this new road, which I reject
And will not travel, more was wrecked
   Than all those trees hacked down.