In a Car Speeding Out Route 40

I'm going to the Midwest
to be closer to the night;
The rusted pipes and tired bridges
of Pittsburgh,
The angelic lamplights hovering over
empty spaces in parking lots,
Indiana, the great Old West
before the great New West,
Cincinnati on its muddy river,
Cleveland on its infected lake,
Bellefontaine, Mt. Vernon, Marysville,
The poisoned land, the Midwest;
I am wrapped in its vast night.
Route 40 is a vanished road
lined by silent oaks,
I walk through its darkness
across the blasts of Broadway
I walk through its darkness
as the drifting clods of memory
fall through my sleep