What do we do? Intelligence is worry. Must my lover worry the whole night through? I chose her because her sensitivity was a spell. Her beauty demanded intelligence. She was intelligent. I could tell. This morning she looks different. "I didn't sleep," she avers. "And it's your fault. You're a creep." The worst thing about the courtship was I was always in a hurry. Late for work because I was dreaming of her. When she gave in, she was a flower. Things are different this hour. Something seems strange. I study her face. My blood cools. Intelligence is worry--- there's nothing I can do. I say goodbye. Not looking back, I hurry.
Who is convinced there is life after death? Not I. I am like the rest: the thought of death at midnight causes me to cry. Sleep alone causes me to sleep. We get no poems except poets are sleepless and weep, doubtful in youth, doubtful in their old age--- though Socrates has proven the soul is immortal! I can show you the book, the chapter and the page. But that's just it. In the poem you find only more poem. You need to discover the line, the poem convinces the poem, you need to drink the wine which tastes like all the others and lie down and dream happily (I'm glad you taste my poetry) but in that intoxicated sleep of dreaming joy, it is not for happiness you weep but for plain, child-like sorrow: everything will change, everything will be new and strange tomorrow. Encircling dream! Will I be immortal and always see the familiar life in my immortality? But truthfully I love the quiet and the strange. I can't tell you anything. And this poem will change.
What does it mean to see former beauty in the face of one you loved? It will not be any longer in the poetry, even as what we see expands downward into the past, making our view a mountain-view at last, a thousand regrets to stand on, lifting us into the light, as all that was former darkens into light. New! New! All that we knew--- now no longer beautiful. It will no longer fight. The dropping of the rain from what had been a beautiful cloud, the shape of a woman moving, sanctimonious, careful, indifferent beside the crowd--- now less jealous and possessed. You desired her only in private, and she was almost there, the privacy interrupted, unfortunately, by your care, you, almost as bad as the crowd milling and pretending---your mercy, your stare. But the crowd has lost interest; my imagination must now supply the war. If you wish, curiosity can be loud, like the young actor who says his lines badly, too dramatically, the way intimacy sometimes confines. She will have no part of me now. Acting is always troubling, pop songs repetitive, love, little more than etiquette. Your relatives. The stupid trips to Connecticut. There's pleasure. But less beauty now. Large clouds are closer. My poetry is leaving. Exit this way. Here. The world will show you how.
Silent in the face of stupid is all we can really do. Stupid has friends. You want stupid messing with you? Then keep quiet. Stupid goes deep. It loves. Of course it loves. You'll weep. Stupid has thrived for generations, molding itself to error in the profitable institutions. In simple intimacy--- where not even secrecy is there--- (nothing stupid about intimacy and its overhanging hair) we can discuss stupidity gladly and laugh at each other. We saw stupidity forsake love---terrified to lay down the law. You and I can explain our silence--- then sighing, be silent, after saying what we saw.
I forgot what was wrong. In an act of pure evil, I no longer thought about the world. Evil is able to sleep. Good cannot. Torture is lack of sleep. Sleepless hurts a lot. The good are wakeful, alive and grateful. But I'm going to bed early, a wretch seeking comfort and dreams. Good's reality is only what evil, sleeping, seems. Everything has already happened, not only because it's happened, but how can what's happened not determine what will happen? It's profound to know this and relax. The profound is mostly found in books. But this is truly profound. Quiet breathing. Bach in the distance. How my dream looks.
The pinnacle of literary expression is the short story. It is the novel boiled down to a poem--- a poem with longer hair, an essay's curls. People are clouds which get tired. Instead of changing, instead of shifting with the wind, we slow down on the first flight of stairs, preferring to take the elevator. Even a basketball star breathes heavily after a minute. We remember novels. Everyone who remembers is a novelist, writing and remembering as easy as breathing; literary skill depicts the embarrassments of others and this happens when we lose at basketball because we got tired. We couldn't keep loving someone--- not because we got physically tired. We were a cloud and the wind, which blew us, made us disappear forever.
Thomas West Graves 1930-2024 William Arthur Graves 1957-1959
Hi dad, it's me, William--- the little guy who went away. You'll never forget that April day--- when the world that was small took the world away. Andy and Tommy were too young to remember, but you were in your twenties. You could not look away. Hi dad, it's me, William, the little boy who caused you pain. Pain causes more pain. How do we stop tragedy from happening again? I was the darling who said goodbye and a whole life followed in which you couldn't cry and had to be responsible. Sarah came, and Ed. I was the good child. I was dead. Who could forget that April day when normalcy ended? In the days that followed, days happy and calm, normalcy, to live, was delicately defended, pain, comfort, knowing, forgetting, by mourning delicately blended. Eternal, those records of my little death, records stored in a room, in your mind, until now as I welcome you into heaven which, to them, is your death. Who knows where we go from breath to breath? Who knows what occurred until now? You lived. I kept living--- only the mourners know how. Only sadness understands my life. Sadness, my mother, my sister, my wife. Shadow of the cypress! The long, appalling cloud my comfortable shroud. My life was mostly a shroud. Muffled. Never loud. Every day a sunny April day, neither cold nor warm. Flowers and birds of the yellow kind Yell inside my quiet mind. I kept living. Now you know how. This memory wraps me in a crimson cloth, this poem wraps me in a cloth that's white as Maryland meets Vermont tonight. Hello, dad. William, here. You tried to forget, and now you can forget, the tear. Miraculous distance. And now we are near. Do I have more to say About what happened after that April day? After I said goodbye, fearfully and alone? Does life live beneath the stone? The dead are awkward and unknown. You stared into the darkness as all mourners do. Death doesn't provide much of a view. Even imagination found it impossible! The poets didn't know what to do! Poetry falters when one dies at two. I came down with a cough. I took some time off. The world I missed is full of intricate sorrow, some for today, and more for tomorrow. So much I escaped, though I never intended to. I didn't say goodbye to you. Your family looked into the darkness, too (the family you loved) And you wondered (o wonder of wonders!) if I saw you. You don't recognize me--- I grew. My meals were few. I thought, for many, many hours, pleasant thoughts. I fed on heaven and poetry. See how tall these made me! They made me handsome and tall. The roots and tendrils of poetry made garlands for me in heaven. See how tall poetry made me! The memory of me is not all. I saw you trying to be good. I saw you chopping wood. I saw you fixing cars and reading. I saw you trying to be good. I waited. Waiting was poetry. Yes, I'm the one who caused you pain--- and mom (who is here) was at your side. There are sadnesses which won't go away despite a universe of tears; there are sadnesses which move upon the movement of the years. There are many things that go away. To many, this thought is poetry But we can forget that now. Here is a new poetry. Let a new poetry show you how. Once again, dad, you can move towards me. Heaven is a yellow April day. Time to be. Hi dad. It's William. It's me.
So that science can exist, someone must examine, from at least one remove every single thing you see--- didn't you experience their love oddly and distantly? Theirs is the scientific impulse, a perfectionism we can never reach, though we kiss them and hold them, discuss life with them and walk hand in hand inside the narrow beach. The sand is not sand to them--- they resist every name--- by which we assume things are different, somewhat similar, or the same. He trips up your thinking by pointing out a fact so self-evident it puts what you knew in doubt. It is your thinking you finally love the most. Your thinking, the thinking of your friends. You need your thinking more than anything. You've never loved anyone like this. But the love ends.
Poets don't like books or information. They hate writing. They don't care for speech, either. Or what the professor said. Your memory is what they want, not theirs. They need to put a poem inside your head. That's their immortality. It sings its poetry between your ears. When Joseph Obvious died, they boxed up his things. His attempt at notoriety was defeated by the years. Poets existed before books and writing. Music was not forgotten. Reluctantly, poets---wrote. Reluctantly, poets took up books. A muse was the world. But she forgot. The poets hate information and the places it is put, too. They want the nation to be memorization. They want a lovely poem to live inside of lovely you.
If I can ignore those annoying me, why destroy the world? The world has good things in it, including me. The sky was tall and blue in my childhood--- the sky once made me cry just for being up there, just for being the sky. I am the most sensitive. It isn't right that I should die. I write for the censors, for the small group with power to take our speech away. I pretend concern every hour. That's why ordinary folk are delighted by what I say. The secret of my mind is my audience--- the secret censors. They have the right to be kind; their kindness matters. They could destroy the world--- and they might do it, too. They are like me. Complicated. If you only knew.
Scarriet 