Well, everybody I know is a part of it, so how could they tell me what to
do outside of it? I've been wondering about that for a year. Before then,
when I was just a boy, the world seemed full of everything, but now it
seems to have only one thing. That or nothing. Then one day I saw a
photograph somebody had cut out of a Sunday paper, and I thought to myself
there's a man who seems outside, entirely outside, and yet he has
something. It wasn't all or nothing for him ... and I wondered who it was.
Then I found your book, with the same picture in it. You bet I read it
right off! It was the first time in my life I had ever felt power as great
as skyscrapers and railroads and yet apart from them. Outside of all they
mean. Like the Old Testament. Those poems!

THE MAN

You liked them?

THE BOY

It was more than that. How can a fellow _like_ the ocean, or a snow storm?

THE MAN

Is that what you thought they were like?

THE BOY

Why, they went off like a fourteen inch gun! Not a whine about life in
them--not a single regret for anything. They were wonderful! They seemed
to pick up mountains and cities and toss them all about like toys. They
made me feel that what I was looking for was able to conquer what I