74 Friendship poems

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

Would but indulgent Fortune send To me a kind, and faithful Friend, One who to Virtue’s Laws is true, And does her nicest Rules pursue; One Pious, Lib’ral, Just and Brave, And to his Passions not a Slave; Who full of Honour, void of Pride, Will freely praise, and freely chide; But not indulge the smallest Fault, Nor entertain one slighting Thought: Who still the same will ever prove, Will still instruct and still will love: In whom I safely may confide, And with him all my Cares divide: Who has a large capacious Mind, Join’d with a Knowledge unconfin’d: A Reason bright, a Judgement true, A Wit both quick, and solid too: Who can of all things talk with Ease, And whose Converse will ever please: Who charm’d with Wit, and inward Graces, Despises Fools with tempting Faces; And still a beauteous Mind does prize Above the most enchanting Eyes: I would not envy Queens their State, Nor once desire a happier Fate.

Yet to die. Unalone still. For now your pauper-friend is with you. Together you delight in the grandeur of the plains, And the dark, the cold, the storms of snow. Live quiet and consoled In gaudy poverty, in powerful destitution. Blessed are those days and nights. The work of this sweet voice is without sin. Misery is he whom, like a shadow, A dog’s barking frightens, the wind cuts down. Poor is he who, half-alive himself Begs his shade for pittance. January 15-16, 1937

Pitiful brother—the dreadful nights I owed him! "I've got no real involvement in the business. I toyed with his weakness, so—it was my fault—we wound up back in exile and enslavement." He saw me as a loser, a weird child; he added his own prods. I answered my satanic doctor, jeering, and made it out the window. All down a landscape crossed by unheard-of music, I spun my dreams of a nighttime wealth to come. After that more or less healthy pastime, I'd stretch out on a pallet. And almost every night, soon as I slept, my poor brother would rise—dry mouth and bulging eyes (the way he'd dreamt himself!)—and haul me into the room, howling his stupid dream. Truly convinced, I'd vowed to take him back to his primal state—child of the sun—and so we wandered, fed on wine from the caves and gypsy bread, me bound to find the place itself and the code.

I leave you in your garden. In the yard Behind it, run the Airedales you have reared With boxer’s vigilance and poet’s rigour: Dog-generations you have trained the vigour That few can breed to train and fewer still Control with the deliberate human will. And in the house there rest, piled shelf on shelf, The accumulations that compose the self— Poem and history: for if we use Words to maintain the actions that we choose, Our words, with slow defining influence, Stay to mark out our chosen lineaments. Continual temptation waits on each To renounce his empire over thought and speech, Till he submit his passive faculties To evening, come where no resistance is; The unmotivated sadness of the air Filling the human with his own despair. Where now lies power to hold the evening back? Implicit in the grey is total black: Denial of the discriminating brain Brings the neurotic vision, and the vein Of necromancy. All as relative For mind as for the sense, we have to live In a half-world, not ours nor history’s, And learn the false from half-true premisses. But sitting in the dusk—though shapes combine, Vague mass replacing edge and flickering line, You keep both Rule and Energy in view, Much power in each, most in the balanced two: Ferocity existing in the fence Built by an exercised intelligence. Though night is always close, complete negation Ready to drop on wisdom and emotion, Night from the air or the carnivorous breath, Still it is right to know the force of death, And, as you do, persistent, tough in will, Raise from the excellent the better still.

Illimitable happiness, But grief for our white heads. We love the long watches of the night, the red candle. It would be difficult to have too much of meeting, Let us not be in hurry to talk of separation. But because the Heaven River will sink, We had better empty the wine-cups. To-morrow, at bright dawn, the world’s business will entangle us. We brush away our tears, We go—East and West.

We trekked into a far country, My friend and I. Our deeper content was never spoken, But each knew all the other said. He told me how calm his soul was laid By the lack of anvil and strife. “The wooing kestrel,” I said, “mutes his mating-note To please the harmony of this sweet silence.” And when at the day’s end We laid tired bodies ’gainst The loose warm sands, And the air fleeced its particles for a coverlet; When star after star came out To guard their lovers in oblivion— My soul so leapt that my evening prayer Stole my morning song!

Now all the truth is out, Be secret and take defeat From any brazen throat, For how can you compete, Being honor bred, with one Who were it proved he lies Were neither shamed in his own Nor in his neighbors' eyes; Bred to a harder thing Than Triumph, turn away And like a laughing string Whereon mad fingers play Amid a place of stone, Be secret and exult, Because of all things known That is most difficult.

Because I to my brethern wrote and to my sisters two: Good sister Anne, you this might wote, if so I should not do To you, or ere I parted hence, You vainly had bestowed expence. Yet is it not for that I write, for nature did you bind To do me good, and to requite hath nature me inclined: Wherefore good sister take in gree These simple lines that come from me. Wherein I wish you Nestor's days, in happy health to rest: With such success in all assays as those which God hath blest: Your husband with your pretty boys, God keep them free from all annoys. And grant if that my luck it be to linger here so long Till they be men, that I may see for learning them so strong That they may march amongst the best Of them which learning have possest. By that time will my aged years perhaps a staff require: And quakingly as still in fears my limbs draw to the fire: Yet joy I shall them so to see, If any joy in age there be. Good sister so I you commend to him that made us all: I know you huswifery intend, though I to writing fall: Wherefore no lenger shall you stay From business that profit may. Had I a husband, or a house, and all that longs thereto, My self could frame about to rouse, as other women do: But till some household cares me tie, My books and pen I will apply.

As we went walking far and wide Through silent fields and countryside, We watched together star signs brim And rise above the ocean’s rim, And planets too, that fret with light The icy caverns of the Night. These constellations we now mark, When we were not, in formless dark, A poet, centuries before, Would watch from the Italian shore Drop in the sea, and mindful Earth Had made him mortal from his birth, He set on high his music’s bars Among the everlasting stars, To those to come, clear warning sign To place no faith in the divine; For sacred to the pole unfurled Above, and compassing the world, These songs yet suffered sad disgrace And almost sank without a trace: Though to our strand this wreckage came, It scarcely owned its author’s name. Mine not to exhort the gods Or stars that vex our mortal odds, But love of virtue quick to fade Makes me seek fame with human aid. A man, I chose a man to stand At this front page and my right hand— Who thrive or perish in my pages, Brief friend, your name should last the ages. I send these lines to you who went Where stars rise in the Orient, From here where constellations sink Below the ocean’s western brink. Take them: for that day will come To add us to the canceled sum And give our bones to earth to rot (For we have no immortal lot, And souls that will not last forever) And the chain of comrades sever.