The bus is late getting in to my home town.

I walk up the hill by the barracks,

Cutting through alleyways that jump at me.

They come bursting out of the walls

Just a minute before I began to feel them

Getting ready to arch and push. Here is the house.

Nobody who knows me knows where I am now.

I have a pocketful of gravel to wake my aunt sleeping

Behind the third dark window counting left over the bakery.

Here I will not be asked to repeat the story.

Between her and me and the hour of my birth

A broad stony stream is sliding

That changes its course with the floods of every spring.