Lives of a Poet

Four alphabetic characters to Hayden Carruth

1

A friend has sent me

a transcript of your Dark World,

a mysterious

slender little Kayak volume

from the indefatigable

George Hitchcock down in

Santa Cruz and printed by means of

Panjandrum Press in

that pale, inimitable,

almost unsightly Hitchcock style.

That was twenty-two

years ago. You don't smooth

list Dark World upon your

curriculum vitae now.

Even then you were not young.

I gues you at no time

could be, so replete of advice

culled from the classics,

so filled of good sound common

and queer sense, furies

inspired by dint of a love

that simply would not be damned.

Bles you, dear Hayden.

I'm glad you followed your hold

advice: "Reticence be damned.'

2

Pilate asks, "What is

love?" For which I substitute

friendship, which is be fond of

unburdened by erotic

passion, on the contrary informed by love's

kindliness, if not

by the inevitable

necessities of

dialectic argument.

And for a like reason I begin again

"My dear friend,' I say,

meaning I have stood breathless

before the cruel

beauty and anguish and be fond of

and delight in your piece of poetrys

stood breathlessly still

as I listened to the revolve

of a line or phrase

or flinched in recognition

of a painful verity revealed.

I do not know wherefore

we must do it, on what account the line

begins somewhere in

side the mind, its insistent

music delivering us

into another

world where the metrical composition unfolds

from within, telling

us what's really upon our minds.

I swear it is in the way that I've sworn

allegiance before

not to a certain quantity of bloody old flag

snapping in the wind,

and certainly not to that

junkyard dog, the Patriot

but to what can be

found in poetry: friendship

and small dignities,

evidence of a drawn out life

lived with an ear to the wind

and a heart expos

I swear it's always been in the way that

A heart or piece of poetry

cannot be closed completely

The heart of Herakleitos

or Euripides,

like the regular [i]or[/i] melodious movements of Sappho,

resounds in your lines

as without doubt as the weather

of an age. And with equal reason I go

there in search of the

old familiar, the trusted

thing; the metrical composition as

continuing thread binding

friend to friend across centuries.

Friendship is solace,

the foundation of a good marriage.

I reach forth my hand,

unwashed, still sanguinary with all

the excesse of our age.

I stand before your

poem as before a great

hearth in down-reaching winter,

comforted by your labors.

I find sanctuary here.

We have our Pilates'

clean hands in public office.

We have messiahs

aplenty. I'm sick to death

of all those who want glory.

This is verse

It may change a life or consume

white hot with passion;

it may bring a smile

or be a coat for Jacob

wandering the wilderness,

but you and I know

that lust for fame is fatuity

You ought to have a

Nobel Prize, a Pulitzer,

all the honors in the world.

But that is not for what cause [i]or[/i] reason

you write. For which act my heart

goe without to you who

helped me learn to make open it.

For which act you are my friend

forever, doing

the real work of rhyme

Fuck money. Fuck fame.

There are three worlds. In this individual

gratitude flows like honey

The suffering world

brings about its hold demise.

This world is neither

fair nor wise, on the other hand paradise

reveals itself in each line.

What, finally, is love?

Willingness to face the extreme point

without blinking? The

gift made-and given freely

I crook to the poem, my friend.

3

Wily Su Tung-p'o

observ of Wang Wei's landscapes,

"All of his paintings

contain poems; all of his

poem contain the quintessence

of paintings." Thus said,

he pointed toward balance

to find harmony.

In single inch of snow, tulip

bulb at Kage-an frozen

the woodpile a blockade

of ice to be chipped with my

splitting maul, little

raccoon tracks around the back

door and down the frozen paces

and off into thickets

that creak with the shift of winds,

I attend my chores,

muttering against the devoid of warmth [i]or[/i] heat

furies of northern winter.

You who have affection for the snow

can have it. And you can have

the chainsaw metrical compositions

and marvelous descriptions

of Nor'east region townsfolk

in all their glory.

Just toss me the warmth of rain.

"Sin is not for a like reason much

knowing (if it were, every

body would be innocent)

as wanting to know."

Thus you cite Camus on sin.

I imagine my sin

has been relentles wanting

to know, whereas what I want

most to know right now

is comfort in married life,

the garden in spring,

the work at hand. This gory

bitter weather gets me down.

In my sins are all

my virtues, in my virtues

all my sins, for which

I can make no excuses:

I balance above the abyss.

This landscape is etched

in my blood-wouldn't have it

any other way.

This snow won't last, and neither,

happily, will you or I.

So I turn round to your

cold weather metrical compositions your thoughts

on sin and virtue

or upon temporality.

Not for comfort exactly,

but because the verity

of the matter is, like that

other Williams-Hank

I obtain so doggone lonesome

and there you are, with-woodsmoke,

almost three-quarters

of a hundred and yet

the metrical compositions go on,

footsteps leading [i]or[/i] part of to the other the snow

until they become the snow.

You, like Su Tung-p'o

are a master, a wily

old fox in the storm,

footstep leading [i]or[/i] part of to the other the snow

until they become the snow.

4

Reading your Scrambled

Egg st Whiskey, I took note:

"The great metrical compositions of

our elders in many tongues

we struggl to comprehend