The poet whom I think is the greatest living poet,
Marianne Moore, who has been so kind to me as a poet
and a person, in correcting the galleys of my last book
of poem-- correcting, I say, reading--
took one of the poems and wrote how
she would have written a poem.
The publisher gave me this galley.
I took it home, and somebody stole it.
So all I can give to you is the poem
as I wrote it, although I'd also like
to give to you what she said.
So here is the poem she also wrote, in her way.
"Is the mountain death, despair, unleaved, black-flowered, bare
of goddesses, of blue waterfalls, of mystic tears?
Is it a stone cloud innocent of motion?
Listen, he sings, the mountaineer.
The lamb kneels, and the livid wildcat.
The lost bird waits, like we wait, on naked rocks
as the echo across seven times seven hills ascends,
descends, in eternal fountains.
O living, live!
And dying, die!
Yet die not on despair.
Let fly your song, your myth so strange.
What triumph is so simple as a song?
What gift so pure as singing mountaineers?"