I Will Go To The Garden. I

What A Great Thing! To Be A Writer! Words Are Something You Can Carry In Your Head. You Can Really 'travel Light.'

Still, No One Finally Knows What A Poet Is Supposed Either To Be Or To Do. Especially In This Country, One Takes On The Job—because All That One Does In America Is Considered A "job"—with No Clear Sense As To What Is Required Or Where One Will Ultimately Be Led. In That Respect, It Is As Particular An Instance Of A "calling" As One Might Point To. For Years I've Kept In Mind, "many Are Called But Few Are Chosen." Even So "called," There Were No Assurances That One Would Be Answered.

I Did However Used To Think, You Know, In The Woods Walking, And As A Kid Playing In The Woods, That There Was A Kind Of Immanence There — That Woods, And Places Of That Order, Had A Sense, A Kind Of Presence, That You Could Feel; That There Was Something Peculiarly, Physically Present, A Feeling Of Place Almost Conscious ... Like God. It Evoked That.

My Wife And I Lived All Alone, Contention Was Our Only Bone. I Fought With Her, She Fought With Me, And Things Went On Right Merrily. But Now I Live Here By Myself With Hardly A Damn Thing On The Shelf, And Pass My Days With Little Cheer Since I Have Parted From My Dear.

No Matter How Wild Reality Was Obviously Often Being, It Was An Absolutely Secure Place, As A Tone And Intelligence, And A Thing Happening.