How terrible is homecoming!
Our ship, fearing some phantom Germans, fled up to Halifax
And it is five in the morning when the sleepers pull in at Grand Central Terminal.

New York is August-shabby … it seems a dirty and ugly city …
Even Washington Square is dust and dirt . .
I long for the great clean ocean and the white ship,—
And the dream of beauty that is France …

Yet there are compensations …
I come into my first fame as a poet, I find myself
One in a new birth of American art,
And the life-work comes clearer to me.

But I go bury myself in Chicago, writing motion-pictures,
Merchandizing my talents, as I have to do,
And loathing America.

I write songs:
It is a time of groping: I try this, I try that:
The war has broken open the hideous secrets of life:
And now I think love of a woman is the way,
And now laughter,
And now the fashioning of a new god, …

And now the searching analysis of the soul,
“Save yourself, you cannot save others”—
And I gather all my writings into two volumes,
War and Laughter, and the Book of Self.