The feeling I wanted to induce, I
can almost persuade myself that it's authentic
while I'm doing it.
There are many juggling things after and all sorts of things,
but the feeling I wanted to induce
is that of entering trustfully on a succession of just
trivial things that occur to you.
In this case, to me, but to any of us.
And what I'm looking for now is some way
to say as directly as possible, that the process is one of--
I don't think it's one of being original
or of being responsible, or intelligent or sensitive
or anything like that.
It's just of being trustful.
It's like accepting what occurs.
And the other day in class here, I
raked back a memory of what I've said before,
stolen from William Blake.
He said, I give you the end of a golden string.
Just roll it into a ball.
It will lead you in at heaven's gate,
built in Jerusalem's wall.
And this process is like getting that golden string.
If you feel that you already know where it's going,
you'll let it go and head for what that editor wants
or what your society is calling for,
or what someone you're a rival to tells you.
But if you trust that forward groping of your own,
then it leads.
It leads.
Well, today in class, I found myself
led by some kind of suicidal impulse,
to keep referring to poets from way back like Virgil.
And well, so I want to read the poem that
has the disquieting possibility of being
compared to an overwhelming classical poem by Catullus.
This is not Hail and Farewell, but it's called
"At the Grave of My Brother."
"The mirror cared less and less at the last,
but the tone of his voice roamed.
Had more to find, back to the year he was born.
And the world that saw him a while, again went blind.
Drawn backward along the street, he
disappeared by the cedars that faded a long time ago.
Near the grave where a mother's hair was a screen, but
she was crying.
I see a sparrow, chubby like him.
Full of promise, barely holding a branch and ready to fly.
In his house today, his children begin to recede from this year
and go their own way.
Brother, goodbye."