"I can’t bear it" –
ak tells us that Gary Snyder wrote in his letter "on the road" in Istanbul in 1957 – to, or from, or in the City seem to be unimportant – the state is a present tense , a state of constantly reaching out with the eyes to see. ak agrees with GS. 
So do I:
"On the road", travelling in October through southern Serbia… there was the same flash of red peppers drying on the whitewashed walls, the peak hat and buttoned uniform of the station master standing on empty platforms of stations where the train was not slowing or stopping, and the blur of shadows from the slanting sun where minarets had once stood fifty years before.
mmj
Here two years before Gary Snyder wrote his letter – taken from Secrets on the Way – is Tomas Transtromer’s (Apologies! – Typepad is reluctant to give the letter ‘o’ its proper Swedish value) [tr. Robin Fulton]
The Journey’s Formulae (from the Balkans, 1955)
1.
A murmur of voices behind the plowman.
He doesn’t look around. The empty fields.
A murmur of voices behind the plowman.
One by one the shadows break loose
and plunge into the summer sky’s abyss.
2.
Four oxen come, under the sky.
Nothing proud about them. and the dust thick
as wool. The insects’ pens scrape.
–
A swirl of horses, lean as in
grey allegories of the plague.
Nothing gentle about them. And the sun raves.
3.
The stable-smelling village with thin dogs.
The party official in the market square
in the stable-smelling village with white houses.
–
His heaven accompanies him: it is high
and narrow like inside a minaret.
The wing-trailing village on the hillside.
4.
An old house has shot itself in the forehead.
Two boys kick a ball in the twilight.
A swarm of rapid echoes. – Suddenly, starlight.
5.
On the road in the long darkness. My wristwatch
gleams obstinately with time’s imprsoned insect.
–
The quiet in the crowded compartment is dense.
In the darkness the meadows stream past.
–
But the writer is halfway into his image, there
he travels, at the same time eagle and mole.