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[TURNING PAGES]

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This year, for the first
time in quite a while,

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I've lived in the
South, and I thought

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I would write a long sequence
of poems about the South.

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But I found I really didn't have
that much to say about this now

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that I--

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and I found myself wishing
others hadn't had quite so

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much to say either, frankly.

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But I did write a couple
of sonnets, of all things,

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about the South that seemed--
if the South is a little old

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fashioned as-- let's face
it, it still tries to be--

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then I felt it was
appropriate enough

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to use a somewhat old
fashioned form to say something

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about the South.

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I like the South,
with reservations,

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and I hope these
poems show that.

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The first is, at
least, tentatively--

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I'm still thinking about
these poems-- is still,

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it's called, right
now, "Reverence

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for the Grandfather."

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It's hard for me to read all
the little revisions written,

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and that's why--

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"Reverence for the Grandfather."

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"There used to be a way the
sunlight caught the webs

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of caterpillars and the pecans.

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The boy's shadow would
lengthen to a man's, out

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towards the tree rows then.

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And if he thought some sleepy
god had dreamed it all up,

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well, there was the grandfather
Lincoln, tall and solemn,

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tapping his pipe out on a white,
flaked column, all broodingly,

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as the pipe stars
flared and fell.

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And this with the air
of someone at his job.

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The quiet would hold then,
till some far train broke it,

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and the great silver watch
rose from his pocket.

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Almost on time, he
nodded, and from his fob,

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the watch hung, gleaming
like a little moon.

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It would be evening
soon then, very soon."

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The second begins with a long
epigraph, a long quotation

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from Henry James' notebooks,
which he scribbled down

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in Canada--

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Coronado Beach, California--
in the same hotel,

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I understand that The Stunt
Man was mostly filmed at.

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Did you see that movie?

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Imagine that scene.

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He's just come from Cambridge,
Massachusetts, where

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he saw for the first time
the monument dedicated

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by his brother William to
their dead sister Alice,

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where he was very
much moved, and he

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writes this in his notebooks.

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"But why do I write
of the all unutterable

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and the all abysmal?

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Why does my pen not
drop from my hand

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on approaching the infinite pity
and tragedy of all the past?

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It does-- poor, helpless pen--

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with what it meets
of the ineffable,

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what it meets the cold
Medusa-face of life,

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of all the life lived,
underlined on every side--

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Basta, Basta.