I Ascend From Darkness And Depart On

We Were All Born Of Flesh, In A Flare Of Pain. We Do Not Remember The Red Roots Whence We Rose, But We Know That We Rose And Walked, That After A While We Shall Lie Down Again.

I Think We've Come To A Kind Of Splinter Period In Poetry. These Tiny Little Bright Fragments Of Observation - And Not Produced Under Sufficient Pressure - Some Of It's Very Skillful, But I Don't Think There's Anywhere A Discernible Major Poet In The Process Of Emerging; Or If He Is, I Ain't Seen Him.

Schoolchildren All Over America Are Told To Write To Authors-often To Authors Whom They Have Never Before Heard Of, Whose Work They Are To Young To Understand In The Least, And Often In Letters Which Are Almost Illiterate. If Children Are To Be Taught To Respect The Work Of American Poets I Think Some Better Way Might Be Found To Do So- Some Way Which Would Not Make Such An Inconsiderate Demand On The Author's Time.

For In This Walk, This Voyage, It Is Yourself, The Profound History Of Your 'self,' That Now As Always You Encounter.

Death Is Never An Ending, Death Is A Change; Death Is Beautiful, For Death Is Strange; Death Is One Dream Out Of Another Flowing.