Experience

Experience

By  Carl Sandburg

This morning I looked at the map of the day

And said to myself, “This is the way! This is the way I will go;

Thus shall I range on the roads of achievement,

The way is so clear—it shall all be a joy on the lines marked out.”

And then as I went came a place that was strange,—

’Twas a place not down on the map!

And I stumbled and fell and lay in the weeds,

And looked on the day with rue.

 

I am learning a little—never to be sure—

To be positive only with what is past,

And to peer sometimes at the things to come

As a wanderer treading the night

When the mazy stars neither point nor beckon,

And of all the roads, no road is sure.

 

I see those men with maps and talk

Who tell how to go and where and why;

I hear with my ears the words of their mouths,

As they finger with ease the marks on the maps;

And only as one looks robust, lonely, and querulous,

As if he had gone to a country far

And made for himself a map,

Do I cry to him, “I would see your map!

I would heed that map you have!”