The One You Love Leans

Poetry Will Absorb And Transmute, As It Always Has Done, And Glorify, All That We Can Know.

Oh, I've Discarded A Great Many [poems]. And Occasionally I've Discarded And Then Resurrected. I Would Find A Crumpled Yellow Ball Of Paper In The Wastebasket, In The Morning, And Open It To See What The Hell I'd Been Up To; And Occasionally It Was Something That Needed Only A Very Slight Change To Be Brought Off, Which I'd Missed The Day Before.

Time In The Heart And Sequence In The Brain-- Such As Destroyed Rimbaud And Fooled Verlaine. And Let Us Then Take Godhead By The Neck-- And Strangle It, And With It, Rhetoric.

I Think That What's Happening Today, With All The Young Poets Rushing From One College To Another, Lecturing At The Drop Of A Hat And So On, Is Not Too Good; I Think It Might Have A Bad Effect On A Great Many Of The Young Poets. They - To Quote Mark Twain - "swap Juices" A Little Too Much, So That They Are In Danger Of Losing Their Own Identity And Don't Give Themselves Time Enough In Which To Work Out What's Really Of Importance To Them - They're Too Busy.

I Ascend From Darkness And Depart On The Winds Of Space For I Know Not Where; My Watch Is Wound, A Key Is In My Pocket, And The Sky Is Darkened As I Descend The Stair.