Look Homeward Angel
“Where shall the weary rest? When shall the lonely of heart come home? What doors are open for the wanderer? And which of us shall find his father, know his face, and in what place, and in what time, and in what land? ” –Thomas Wolfe, from “Of Time and the River”


It took a while to find
And if you didn’t know where to look
You’d never know it was there.

The home I mean of Thomas Wolfe
—in the thirties—
The great Southern novelist.

I’d heard he lived in Brooklyn for a time
Same as me, rented an apartment, but where?
I finally found a
Reference in a book somewhere
With an address—the basement of number 40
Verandah Place.

It was my neighborhood, as it turns out
Just down the street
Somewhere below the Heights and the fabled
Brooklyn Bridge
But there was no marker, no monument
Nothing
To mark the history of this momentous place.
“Only the dead know Brooklyn, ” he wrote.

The building was owned by someone, so of course I
Couldn’t go in, but I wondered if the owner even
Knew the significance of this brick and plaster and
Wood.

All I could do was look on from outside:
A tiny window at ground level, not more than a foot of
Exposed glass above the back alley black tar pavement
Dry leaves and dust stuck in the cracked and peeling
Paint of its frame.

The blind, pale and yellowing, was drawn
Leaving a cold and lifeless sense of a space
No longer occupied.

There was no seeing in, and it was a wonder to me
How that young visionary writer managed at all
To see out.

How dark, how damp this tiny room
Must have been, and yet
Here
Somehow was the birthing, light blasting
Through that little window
To catch the world’s eye
A novel called, perhaps not without coincidence:
“Of Time and the River.”