#135

Some skyscraper lounge, in the off of time, eight years ago, in situ. Where Stephen sat observing. The stretch of shadows cross the carpet, mottled red. The sun, behind the windows, setting. What, oh what, did Stephen write, confronted by this grandeur? Not a thing did Stephen write that night: not a word, or mark, or figure.

Imagery, and reverie, and Gods and fighting men. Rifkin and Ryan’s Literary Theory. Perloff’s Poet among Painters. Closet, books, a plant or two, chocolate doughnuts on the desk. A coterie of stuffed beasts upon the future poet’s bed. And where, if we could search for it, would we find his writing pen? By the bridge, on the East, the third of Moloch’s hard-edged fingers. On the fourth floor, looking past.

There were, as there are still, thin voices in the white of winter heaters. There were, in men, the bare coherence of bone and muscle. Teachers taut, and minds still hollow. The last frail clutch of fathers, sons. Here we have our hero, not at birth, but prior: one of those bare paths that took him out and back behind the present, and left him, gray-eyed döppleganger to the cause.

#134

What say you, artist, to this long absence? Were the lines and limits drawn too close for you to find your way? It was a late autumn evening, if I remember well. With a moon no larger than the paring of a finger-nail. Tantum ergo Sacramentum. Hands at the door in prayer. You said, History, Magic, Alchemical. And your charges cocked their heads to listen.

The writes of the Father; mirths of the Mother. And the hearth between their stones and sibyls. Detournment and such, you showed them. Spells. Four minutes, thirty-three of robins’ song. “You’re ‘ere, my dear; appear. And tell me what you hear.” In the basement of Bennett Hall. In the hour before dinner and dark. Your poetries in human guise. Sufficient for the nonce, artist? And longer still in rhyme?

For now, there’s only thanks to letter. Your six long months behind you now. In the woods, by the stream, the house of doors has stood in preparation. I have kept it open, ready. And a visitor waits for your attention; a piece of crystal in his satchel that was found where things are still. It’s a piece, artist, belongs to you.