I wonder if I know enough to know what it’s really like to have been here: have I seen sights enough to give seeing over: the clouds, I’ve waited with white October clouds like these this afternoon often before and
taken them in, but white clouds shade other white ones gray, had I noticed that: and though I’ve followed the leaves of many falls, have I spent time with the wire vines left when frost’s red dyes strip the leaves
My desk is cleared of the litter of ages; Before me glitter the fair white pages; My fountain pen is clean and filled, And the noise of the office has long been stilled. Roget’s Thesaurus is at my hand, And I’m ready to do some work that’s grand, Dignified, eminent, great, momentous, Memorable, worthy of note, portentous, Beautiful, paramount, vital, prime, Stirring, eventful, august, sublime. For this is the way, I have read and heard, That authors look for the fitting word. All of the proud ingredients mine To build, like Marlowe, the mighty line. But never a line from my new-filled pen
We thought it would come, we thought the Germans would come, were almost certain they would. I was thirty-two, the youngest assistant curator in the country. I had some good ideas in those days.
Well, what we did was this. We had boxes precisely built to every size of canvas. We put the boxes in the basement and waited.
I had just won $115 from the headshakers and was naked upon my bed listening to an opera by one of the Italians and had just gotten rid of a very loose lady when there was a knock upon the wood, and since the cops had just raided a month or so ago, I screamed out rather on edge— who the hell is it? what you want, man?
That day I hired a private detective to follow me, and could not read his notes. In a tangled grove, I hid behind white pines, compressed my body, then watched him write, left-handed and myopic, under an Irish cap, when I asked for help from strangers who spoke Slavic languages. Wary, moving ahead, I found a depot, watched an immense train churn, haloed in steam,
Comment form: