Young man sits in the upstairs room.

Bed, bottle, and book.

Have you been out for the news today?

My coat hangs on the hook.

Man downstairs is here to ask

Would you care to talk a while.

It is not much he knows to say.

My style is my own style.

Night again and lights glare,

Downtown streets go everywhere.

Almost anything could come true.

I have been there.

Now on the mountain in the dark

The old spring runs new,

Sings, and a tree stirs in starlight.

I have been there, too.

What was a man made hard for

At the world 's beginning

If not to run, to go running?

He was made to keep running.

What, if not for the long street

Where the bricks lie straight

Across lights, gates, tracks?

But a ten-car freight.

What for if not for a word said

In the light where a man waits

In a doorway at a street's end?

But a thirty-car, ninety-car freight?

Who does a young man talk to?

What does the man know

Who talks back from the mirror?

Time to stop talking. Time now to go.