It Is A Grief Over

At The Museum A Troubled Woman Destroys A Sand Painting Meticulously Created Over Days By Tibetan Monks. The Monks Are Not Disturbed. The Work Is A Meditation. They Simply Begin Again.

Is It A Coincidence That Stories From The Private Life Became More Popular Just As The Grand Hope For Public Redemption Through Revolution Was Beginning To Sour? I Witnessed A Similar Shift In Taste In My Own Time. In The 1960s, While A Hopeful Vision Of A Just Society Arose Again, Countless Poems And Plays Concerning Politics And Public Life Were Written, Read, And Performed. But After The Hope Diminished And Public Life Seemed Less And Less Trustworthy, This Subject Was Less In Style.

Each Time I Write, Each Time The Authentic Words Break Through, I Am Changed. The Older Order That I Was Collapses And Dies. I Lose Control. I Do Not Know Exactly What Words Will Appear On The Page. I Follow Language. I Follow The Sound Of The Words, And I Am Surprised And Transformed By What I Record.

We Keep Secrets From Ourselves That All Along We Know.

But Still, The Other Voice, The Intuitive, Returns, Like Grass Forcing Its Way Through Concrete.