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The sudden lapse of desire for your poems made out
Anamnesis and katharsis. It is all right to conceive of life
In terms of a vast nostalgia as long as it has artistic purpose,
But the world won’t permit it unless it is self-supporting.
It’s a luxury that even the rich, now, can scarcely afford.
We — we consumptives, mistaken people, workers, die-ers,
We must live, not at your expense, God knows,
But in spite of you, open to life’s tragic introspection,
Full of the enormous happiness of people who are
Dying a complete, unmystical death; of people
Who know that they are the only petals that
Have opened, somehow, from being into
The beautiful nonbeing of life.
And again, so close to the summer we met each other
It makes me sad, to think of the woman who was between
Us, and who I never knew. But it is a lovely landscape
And I think of your book and it haunts me.
So beautiful a book. Black tree formations, aspiring
Or despairing. Anyway, that is the way I am.
