"Fire".
"Clear smoke, a fire in the far-off haze of summer,
burning somewhere.
What is a lonely heart for if not for itself alone.
Do the questions answer themselves, all wonder
brought to a reckoning?
When you are done, I am done.
Then it seems that one by one, we can leave it all to go on."
Then the last of-- this is the so-called title "Phone"
was the last poem in the--
and I think I remember the last one I wrote before this book.
This book had a curious effect.
On the one hand, it was the satisfaction
of the wildest possible dreams I'd ever had.
But I remember when the news of it came,
we were living in Guatemala.
And there was no one, really, to impress with this great fact.
And I remember that when the book finally came out,
I had an awful feeling of summary.
I mean, somehow this book made formal or made final
in a way of what the poems had been for me.
It's as though they were curiously,
I think, even taken away from me.
Or they were so summarized by that book
that I had a very mixed feeling about it.
I was very, quote, "proud of it," unquote.
But at the same time, I was very--
I had a complete bewilderment as to what next was possible.
But this particular poem I'm thinking of now is of--
Williams had a great influence, again, on me.
And the line, the way I learned one
could say things by reading his work.
Particularly, I remember the poems in that collection--
the later "Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams,"
that things like--
"When you say I'm not profound, but where is profundity?
Aigeltinger dragged drunk from some cheap bar
to serve their petty purposes.
You, Aigeltinger, you were profound."
And so--
Poems of that order, or--
one of his, I remember, very--
they were called "The Act."
"There were roses in the rain.
Don't cut them, I pleaded.
We were all young once, she said, and cut them
and gave them to me in my hand."
I remember that one.
So this poem actually is a homage to him
among other things.