749
1963–1966: England, or The Attempt to Settle Down
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terms
3
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768
12/18/63
The taste of death is sometimes in my mouth, these solitary evenings.
Each day I live means one day less to live.
That’s evident!
Before I die, I’d spend some time with her,
Just living.
Mornings are frantic, like all mornings,
The too fresh mind incapable
Of the maniacal decisions that produce art.
Exhausted by afternoon, I have completed my chores,
And am faced with myself and my hot-self again.
Then I work. I work like a worm in the earth,
I work like a termite fashioning a tunnel, a bridge.
I work for a future I can no longer see.
That’s my life.
Will I in five years, two years, one,
Gnash my teeth again (teeth long ago gnashed to bits)
And curse what I hesitate to call my fate, my pattern?
Or should I call it my stupidity?
Who but an imbecile would have chosen such a hard way?
Or shall I in five years or one,
Grow like an oak dressed in evergreen.
Happiness having swollen in me, become me,
Because of the devotion which she swears?
This I argue with myself on paper.
That is what I feel like sometimes,
Paper.
12/18/63
The taste of death is sometimes in my mouth, these solitary evenings.
Each day I live means one day less to live.
That’s evident!
Before I die, I’d spend some time with her,
Just living.
Mornings are frantic, like all mornings,
The too fresh mind incapable
Of the maniacal decisions that produce art.
Exhausted by afternoon, I have completed my chores,
And am faced with myself and my hot-self again.
Then I work. I work like a worm in the earth,
I work like a termite fashioning a tunnel, a bridge.
I work for a future I can no longer see.
That’s my life.
Will I in five years, two years, one,
Gnash my teeth again (teeth long ago gnashed to bits)
And curse what I hesitate to call my fate, my pattern?
Or should I call it my stupidity?
Who but an imbecile would have chosen such a hard way?
Or shall I in five years or one,
Grow like an oak dressed in evergreen.
Happiness having swollen in me, become me,
Because of the devotion which she swears?
This I argue with myself on paper.
That is what I feel like sometimes,
Paper.
781
8/9/65
With the new acquaintance: that moment in the conversation when I realize he has a different morality, weltanschauung from mine, like a sudden canyon between us. We can change direction and find some bridge across somewhere else. But the knowledge lurks. It will turn up again years from now to part us, in every way, though we remain friends.
8/9/65
With the new acquaintance: that moment in the conversation when I realize he has a different morality, weltanschauung from mine, like a sudden canyon between us. We can change direction and find some bridge across somewhere else. But the knowledge lurks. It will turn up again years from now to part us, in every way, though we remain friends.
788
11/3/66
In the most terrible and terrifying moments of my life (ten, perhaps, in a lifetime) Mozart, not a sedative, is the hope—though not the healing power. There is no healing power. But Mozart knew all that. I, or we, suffer here and now, and he often wrote his music during the worst. It is this that I admire, and only this spirit that gives me courage to go on also. It is (apparently!) impossible for me to convey the joy I felt one miserable Saturday morning, listening to the 24th piano concerto on a transistor radio in the bathroom. I had been wretched a moment before. But with Mozart’s courage, I could face lions. Bach for minor crises. Mozart for major ones.
11/3/66
In the most terrible and terrifying moments of my life (ten, perhaps, in a lifetime) Mozart, not a sedative, is the hope—though not the healing power. There is no healing power. But Mozart knew all that. I, or we, suffer here and now, and he often wrote his music during the worst. It is this that I admire, and only this spirit that gives me courage to go on also. It is (apparently!) impossible for me to convey the joy I felt one miserable Saturday morning, listening to the 24th piano concerto on a transistor radio in the bathroom. I had been wretched a moment before. But with Mozart’s courage, I could face lions. Bach for minor crises. Mozart for major ones.