As A Poet, One Lives

The Blood Of Love Welled Up In My Heart With A Slow Pain.

But I Am I Now; And So Many Other Millions Are So Irretrievably Their Own Special Variety Of 'i' That I Can Hardly Bear To Think Of It. I: How Firm A Letter; How Reassuring The Three Strokes: One Vertical, Proud And Assertive, And Then The Two Short Horizontal Lines In Quick, Smug Succession. The Pen Scratching On The Paper…i…i…i…i…i…i.

I Wanted To Crawl In Between Those Black Lines Of Print, The Way You Crawl Through A Fence, And Go To Sleep Under That Beautiful Big Green Fig-tree.

I Thought It Sounded Just Like The Sort Of Drug A Man Would Invent. Here Was A Woman In Terrible Pain, Obviously Feeling Every Bit Of It Or She Wouldn't Groan Like That, And She Would Go Straight Home And Start Another Baby, Because The Drug Would Make Her Forget How Bad The Pain Had Been, When All The Time, In Some Secret Part Of Her, That Long, Blind, Doorless And Windowless Corridor Or Pain Was Waiting To Open Up And Shut Her In Again.

There Is Something Demoralizing About Watching Two People Get More And More Crazy About Each Other, Especially When You Are The Only Extra Person In The Room.