The conviction closes in on me that I was cast for gloom as the sparks fly upward, I was about to say: I am of deep shadow all compact like onion within onion and the savor of me is oil of tears. I have heard laughter by daylight when I thought it was my own because at that moment when it broke I had parted my lips to take food. Just so I have been afraid of myself and caught at my throat when I thought I was making some terrible din of a mill whistle that happened to come on the same instant with the opening of my mouth to yawn. But I have not laughed. No man can tell you the sound or the way of my laughter. I have neighed at night in the woods behind a house like vampires. But there are no vampires there are no ghouls there are no demons, there is no nothing but me.

“There is no nothing but me” at the crossroads, where a mouth opens without a reliable connection to the “I” that should govern it, and where the mind turns to the rise of the dead and the monstrous. It’s the kind of place where one would need a guide, though if he is Robert Frost, he will “only [have] at heart your getting lost,” as he writes in “Directive.”