#133

A good thesis, he was always telling them, begins with a question that you cannot answer. But a poem? That's a questions of questions entirely. Light in the spaces between buildings, Greek temples of the city's three train stations. Not efficiency or persuasion, but song. "Wait...So you're telling me," said Mike, "that things have more than one meaning?" What would Square say in response? thinks Stephen. To his students, rocked and buffeted by noise. "And they have more than one you-ning too" perhaps.

No no - think on your letters instead. Brush off blankets from the stiff of white beds. You are letting the dark back in slowly. So let it. There are seasons for what you must do. Believe. All this thinning and pacing at ends is for citizens. What remains yet remains to be seen.

#132

I am on track. Or what you call the line. Stephen in those harder days – what it was he knew at night. There are vistas past, lights on posts. I stop, or I might still, to watch the rain refill the river.

In Blake’s room, Adrian cuts along a square path the photographs he’s taken. A pile of picture-pieces heaped in the center of the table. #27, #156, #322: supplements. Blake’s 1000 stories folded thrice and stamped. Is it tea they drink or coffee as Adrian works? Translucent envelopes and sealing wax in the bag he’s brought (the bag Blake lent him). Lamplight. And Blake with camera rises, the snips of color in Adrian’s hand. From a chair, he snaps a picture, down. A portrait of an artful scholar.

So what say you Adrian, from your place in Van Pelt’s center? All the Modern times, their congregation. Your frame the frame that shines. Oh, I have seen you thin and silvered amongst my books and in my class. I have made your story mine.

The wind. It is a father’s hand. And what am I but wild? Kingly in my folly. Even Evan would laugh. So where are the haunts of muses? Bustle briskly by, they mutter. Bustle briskly by.

#131

Fraenum Linguea. Ah, ah, open for the nonce. And the night wind, and the zephyr stole. Beleaguer. The book is books. What says him, Stephen to the Stevens that surround? You are you, say, now in France. You are young, say, coal and grille. Or the bedroom, say, where Keith did lay, and speak that day of Cory. Square, his real name Simon. And John, my trusting Peter. Je ne crois pas that tongues are cut by crosses. Or so Rebecca’s seen. In vespers, slits: one’s got it, got it good.

And careful, author, that you do not lose with all these tongue-tied phrases what it is you’re after by them. What it is you’re after for.