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The poet whom I think is
the greatest living poet,

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Marianne Moore, who has
been so kind to me as a poet

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and a person, in correcting
the galleys of my last book

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of poem-- correcting,
I say, reading--

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took one of the
poems and wrote how

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she would have written a poem.

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The publisher gave
me this galley.

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I took it home, and
somebody stole it.

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So all I can give
to you is the poem

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as I wrote it,
although I'd also like

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to give to you what she said.

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So here is the poem she
also wrote, in her way.

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"Is the mountain death, despair,
unleaved, black-flowered, bare

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of goddesses, of blue
waterfalls, of mystic tears?

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Is it a stone cloud
innocent of motion?

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Listen, he sings,
the mountaineer.

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The lamb kneels, and
the livid wildcat.

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The lost bird waits, like
we wait, on naked rocks

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as the echo across seven
times seven hills ascends,

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descends, in eternal fountains.

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O living, live!

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And dying, die!

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Yet die not on despair.

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Let fly your song,
your myth so strange.

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What triumph is so
simple as a song?

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What gift so pure as
singing mountaineers?"

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