And I think that's enough of those, though.
You'd-- No, that's got too much Latin.
This is-- I rather like this poem
because I stole it absolutely completely
from Kenner's pages 451 and two of Kenner's book "The Pound
Era."
And every word in my poem is from Kenner, either,
whether it's in Latin or in English.
So that gives you an idea of the trouble--
Oh, here's one I'd like to read for sentimental reasons.
I lost a very dear friend last year.
Tennessee Williams, who was a wonderful friend
over the years, always a delightful, sweet, kind,
marvelous person to be with.
And his law struck me.
And I wrote bits of sentimental verse, but so what.
Tennessee called death, the sudden subway.
And now he has taken that train.
But there are so many good things to remember.
First, the young man in sloppy pants
and a torn gray sweater, whom I met at Lincoln Kirstein
cocktail party.
He was very shy and had hidden himself in a side room.
I too was shy, but we got talking.
He told me that he wrote plays and that he loved Hart Crane.
He carried the poems of Crane in his knapsack,
wherever he hitchhiked.
Then his first night of glory in Chicago,
when he and Laurette Taylor made a new American theater.
I remember happy days with him in London, and Italy, and Key
West, and how often friends and writers who
were down on their luck told me how generously
he had helped them.
But you would never hear that from him.
So many fine things to remember that I can live again
in my mind until it is my turn to join him
on the sudden subway.