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Abraham Lincoln his hand and pen he will be good but god knows When

on the first day you were beautiful and good on the second you grew a horn on the third a lead-gray wing budded from your shoulder on the fourth a claw sprouted from your shoe on the fifth you flew right into my armpit built a nest and then lost interest on the sixth you were a host of leeches having their way with my veins on the seventh I heard you trotting above me with hollow hoof beats on the eighth you went to moses to ask for advice winged horned buraq the prophet’s steed returned as a lamb on the ninth to graze on my belly fur on the tenth you died for isaac the angel decided in favor of animal testing on the eleventh I had forgotten the color of your eyes on the twelfth day you were poor and naked on the thirteenth you were lying on the bottom of the sea a millions of eons old whispering mussel on the fourteenth they called you into the field duldul, ali’s tireless gray mule on the fifteenth you stood still welded on the lip of a kettle the sweat of the holy brew had oxidized your copper neck on the sixteenth you were the primordial ox zarathustra sang of your suffering on the seventeenth day when I came home you were once again the one human being

Je vois les effroyables espaces de l’Univers qui m’enferment, et je me trouve attaché à un coin de cette vaste étendue, sans savoir pourquoi je suis plutôt en ce lieu qu’en un autre, ni pourquoi ce peu de temps qui m’est donné à vivre m’est assigné à ce point plutôt qu'à un autre de toute l’éternité qui m’a précédé, et de toute qui me suit. —Pascal, Pensées sur la religion The approach of a man’s life out of the past is history, and the approach of time out of the future is mystery. Their meeting is the present, and it is consciousness, the only time life is alive. The endless wonder of this meeting is what causes the mind, in its inward liberty of a frozen morning, to turn back and question and remember. The world is full of places. Why is it that I am here? —Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House Spared by a car or airplane crash or cured of malignancy, people look around with new eyes at a newly praiseworthy world, blinking eyes like these. For I’ve been brought back again from the fine silt, the mud where our atoms lie down for long naps. And I’ve also been pardoned miraculously for years by the lava of chance which runs down the world’s gullies, silting us back. Here I am, brought back, set up, not yet happened away. But it’s not this random life only, throwing its sensual astonishments upside down on the bloody membranes behind my eyeballs, not just me being here again, old needer, looking for someone to need, but you, up from the clay yourself, as luck would have it, and inching over the same little segment of earth- ball, in the same little eon, to meet in a room, alive in our skins, and the whole galaxy gaping there and the centuries whining like gnats— you, to teach me to see it, to see it with you, and to offer somebody uncomprehending, impudent thanks.

Cold nights outside the taverns in Wyoming pickups and big semis lounge idling, letting their haunches twitch now and then in gusts of powder snow, their owners inside for hours, forgetting as well as they can the miles, the circling plains, the still town that connects to nothing but cold and space and a few stray ribbons of pavement, icy guides to nothing but bigger towns and other taverns that glitter and wait: Denver, Cheyenne. Hibernating in the library of the school on the hill a few pieces by Thomas Aquinas or Saint Teresa and the fragmentary explorations of people like Alfred North Whitehead crouch and wait amid research folders on energy and military recruitment posters glimpsed by the hard stars. The school bus by the door, a yellow mound, clangs open and shut as the wind finds a loose door and worries it all night, letting the hollow students count off and break up and blow away over the frozen ground.

Do you remember when you began to travel? It lent you this astonishing lens and you kept a journal That rode in your breast pocket like a stone, There you wrote “Limoges — ” and “Altenkirchen”; And when you saw a peasant, kissed, or passed out — Died for twenty seconds — in the heat on the hill above Marseille you would rush out the notebook and make a note — Sometimes just an x in the top right corner — And ideally you would brood about that later. Which led slowly to the dark hot bar Where you enjoy a glass of beer across from the Winter Palace in summer. In the rose-and-blue windows of the basilica Today radiant burghers stood and learned Mercy in a circle Around Stephen, recognized By the pebble enthroned in his skull and the scarlet ooze. While in your system the amphetamines progress. The idea is they’ll give you heart to haul yourself up and cross The limestone plaza. And when at the gate of the place You pay you can enter the Palace.

A queer thing about those waters: there are no Birds there, or hardly any. I did not miss them, I do not remember Missing them, or thinking it uncanny. The beach so-called was a blinding splinter of limestone, A quarry outraged by hulls. We took pleasure in that: the emptiness, the hardness Of the light, the silence, and the water’s stillness. But this was the setting for one of our murderous scenes. This hurt, and goes on hurting: The venomous soft jelly, the undersides. We could stand the world if it were hard all over.

And with great fear I inhabit the middle of the night What wrecks of the mind await me, what drugs to dull the senses, what little I have left, what more can be taken away? The fear of travelling, of the future without hope or buoy. I must get away from this place and see that there is no fear without me: that it is within unless it be some sudden act or calamity to land me in the hospital, a total wreck, without memory again; or worse still, behind bars. If I could just get out of the country. Some place where one can eat the lotus in peace. For in this country it is terror, poverty awaits; or am I a marked man, my life to be a lesson or experience to those young who would trod the same path, without God unless he be one of justice, to wreak vengeance on the acts committed while young under un- due influence or circumstance. Oh I have always seen my life as drama, patterned after those who met with disaster or doom. Is my mind being taken away me. I have been over the abyss before. What is that ringing in my ears that tells me all is nigh, is naught but the roaring of the winter wind. Woe to those homeless who are out on this night. Woe to those crimes committed from which we can walk away unharmed. So I turn on the light And smoke rings rise in the air. Do not think of the future; there is none. But the formula all great art is made of. Pain and suffering. Give me the strength to bear it, to enter those places where the great animals are caged. And we can live at peace by their side. A bride to the burden that no god imposes but knows we have the means to sustain its force unto the end of our days. For that is what we are made for; for that we are created. Until the dark hours are done. And we rise again in the dawn. Infinite particles of the divine sun, now worshipped in the pitches of the night.

I wish we could control this revolting want of control: these people with their spongy eyes, their mouths of trembling shoehorns, billhooks for penises and bear traps for vulvas. One taste of sunlight and at once they can’t do without it. Water, the same, and food, and air, and a dozen other squalid habits. Some—like their copulation, a rusting carnation in a cut-glass neck— are not physically compulsive but the partners can’t stop wanting them to be: so we desire to be raped by love, who would fill us, they say, with an oil from the lit braziers of stars. What if, doing it every day, we resemble pistons, and the slow poison cuts our lives off at 70: it’s the grim determination of our passion. And beyond this, even I— defended in childhood by my strong father the piano and my mother the virtuoso from knuckles among warehouses—even I am addicted to the mild light of words.

O Prince, O chief of many throned pow'rs! That led th' embattled seraphim to war! (Milton, Paradise Lost ) O thou! whatever title suit thee,— Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie! Wha in yon cavern, grim an' sootie, Clos'd under hatches, Spairges about the brunstane cootie To scaud poor wretches! Hear me, Auld Hangie, for a wee, An' let poor damned bodies be; I'm sure sma' pleasure it can gie, E'en to a deil, To skelp an' scaud poor dogs like me, An' hear us squeel! Great is thy pow'r, an' great thy fame; Far ken'd an' noted is thy name; An' tho' yon lowin heugh's thy hame, Thou travels far; An' faith! thou's neither lag nor lame, Nor blate nor scaur. Whyles, ranging like a roarin lion, For prey a' holes an' corners tryin; Whyles, on the strong-wing'd tempest flyin, Tirlin' the kirks; Whyles, in the human bosom pryin, Unseen thou lurks. I've heard my rev'rend graunie say, In lanely glens ye like to stray; Or whare auld ruin'd castles gray Nod to the moon, Ye fright the nightly wand'rer's way Wi' eldritch croon. When twilight did my graunie summon To say her pray'rs, douce honest woman! Aft yont the dike she's heard you bummin, Wi' eerie drone; Or, rustlin thro' the boortrees comin, Wi' heavy groan. Ae dreary, windy, winter night, The stars shot down wi' sklentin light, Wi' you mysel I gat a fright, Ayont the lough; Ye like a rash-buss stood in sight, Wi' waving sugh. The cudgel in my nieve did shake, Each bristl'd hair stood like a stake, When wi' an eldritch, stoor "Quaick, quaick," Amang the springs, Awa ye squatter'd like a drake, On whistling wings. Let warlocks grim an' wither'd hags Tell how wi' you on ragweed nags They skim the muirs an' dizzy crags Wi' wicked speed; And in kirk-yards renew their leagues, Owre howket dead. Thence, countra wives wi' toil an' pain May plunge an' plunge the kirn in vain; For oh! the yellow treasure's taen By witchin skill; An' dawtet, twal-pint hawkie's gaen As yell's the bill. Thence, mystic knots mak great abuse, On young guidmen, fond, keen, an' croose; When the best wark-lume i' the house, By cantraip wit, Is instant made no worth a louse, Just at the bit. When thowes dissolve the snawy hoord, An' float the jinglin icy-boord, Then water-kelpies haunt the foord By your direction, An' nighted trav'lers are allur'd To their destruction. And aft your moss-traversing spunkies Decoy the wight that late an drunk is: The bleezin, curst, mischievous monkeys Delude his eyes, Till in some miry slough he sunk is, Ne'er mair to rise. When Masons' mystic word an grip In storms an' tempests raise you up, Some cock or cat your rage maun stop, Or, strange to tell! The youngest brither ye wad whip Aff straught to hell! Lang syne, in Eden'd bonie yard, When youthfu' lovers first were pair'd, An all the soul of love they shar'd, The raptur'd hour, Sweet on the fragrant flow'ry swaird, In shady bow'r; Then you, ye auld snick-drawin dog! Ye cam to Paradise incog, And play'd on man a cursed brogue, (Black be your fa'!) An gied the infant warld a shog, Maist ruin'd a'. D'ye mind that day, when in a bizz, Wi' reeket duds an reestet gizz, Ye did present your smoutie phiz Mang better folk, An' sklented on the man of Uz Your spitefu' joke? An' how ye gat him i' your thrall, An' brak him out o' house and hal', While scabs and blotches did him gall, Wi' bitter claw, An' lows'd his ill-tongued, wicked scaul, Was warst ava? But a' your doings to rehearse, Your wily snares an' fechtin fierce, Sin' that day Michael did you pierce, Down to this time, Wad ding a Lallan tongue, or Erse, In prose or rhyme. An' now, Auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin, A certain Bardie's rantin, drinkin, Some luckless hour will send him linkin, To your black pit; But faith! he'll turn a corner jinkin, An' cheat you yet. But fare you weel, Auld Nickie-ben! O wad ye tak a thought an' men'! Ye aiblins might—I dinna ken— Still hae a stake: I'm wae to think upo' yon den, Ev'n for your sake!

It is 12:10 in New York and I am wondering if I will finish this in time to meet Norman for lunch ah lunch! I think I am going crazy what with my terrible hangover and the weekend coming up at excitement-prone Kenneth Koch's I wish I were staying in town and working on my poems at Joan's studio for a new book by Grove Press which they will probably not print but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not and the only decision you can make is that you did it yesterday I looked up the rue Frémicourt on a map and was happy to find it like a bird flying over Paris et ses environs which unfortunately did not include Seine-et-Oise which I don't know as well as a number of other things and Allen is back talking about god a lot and Peter is back not talking very much and Joe has a cold and is not coming to Kenneth's although he is coming to lunch with Norman I suspect he is making a distinction well, who isn't I wish I were reeling around Paris instead of reeling around New York I wish I weren't reeling at all it is Spring the ice has melted the Ricard is being poured we are all happy and young and toothless it is the same as old age the only thing to do is simply continue is that simple yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do can you do it yes, you can because it is the only thing to do blue light over the Bois de Boulogne it continues the Seine continues the Louvre stays open it continues it hardly closes at all the Bar Américain continues to be French de Gaulle continues to be Algerian as does Camus Shirley Goldfarb continues to be Shirley Goldfarb and Jane Hazan continues to be Jane Freilicher (I think!) and Irving Sandler continues to be the balayeur des artistes and so do I (sometimes I think I'm "in love" with painting) and surely the Piscine Deligny continues to have water in it and the Flore continues to have tables and newspapers and people under them and surely we shall not continue to be unhappy we shall be happy but we shall continue to be ourselves everything continues to be possible René Char, Pierre Reverdy, Samuel Beckett it is possible isn't it I love Reverdy for saying yes, though I don't believe it