A Stone Knife

December 26, 1969 Dear Kenward, What a pearl of a letter knife. It's just the thing I needed, something to rest my eyes on, and always wanted, which is to say it's that of which I felt the lack but didn't know of, of no real use and yet essential as a button box, or maps, green morning skies, islands and canals in oatmeal, the steam off oyster stew. Brown agate, veined as a woods by smoke that has to it the watery twist of eel grass in a quick, rust-discolored cove. Undulating lines of northern evening—a Munch without the angst—a hint of almost amber: to the nose, a resinous thought, to the eye, a lacquered needle green where no green is, a present after-image. Sleek as an ax, bare and elegant as a tarn, manly as a lingam, November weather petrified, it is just the thing to do what with? To open letters? No, it is just the thing, an object, dark, fierce and beautiful in which the surprise is that the surprise, once past, is always there: which to enjoy is not to consume. The un- recapturable returns in a brown world made out of wood, snow streaked, storm epi- center still in stone.