A year or more later, I wrote another poem on the same theme.
This poem really started out to be
a poem against a certain kind of biography,
which I very much dislike.
Gossipy scandalous biography that
doesn't tell one anything necessary about the art
or any other accomplishment of the subject,
but only faith on the prurient curiosity
which is latent in all of us, but which is not something
that anybody should be encouraging
in themselves or others.
Well, the poem started off that way,
but it didn't turn into a didactic form about biography,
actually, and you probably would never
know that that's what started it off
because it became a poem about a mountain.
It's called
"Against Intrusion."
"When my friend drove up the mountain,
it changed itself into a big lump of land
with lots of snow on it and slopes of arid scree.
Another friend climbed it the hard way, exciting to stay
the course, get to the top.
But no sense of heights there, nothing
to see but generic mist and snow.
As for me, when my photos come back developed,
there's just the lake, the south shore of the lake,
the middle distance, no mountain.
How clearly it speaks respect, perspective, privacy,
it teaches.
Indulgence of curiosity increases
ignorance of the essential.
What does it serve to insist on knowing
more than that a mountain forbearing
so far from volcanic rage blesses
the city it is poised above.
Angelic guardian at rest on sustaining air
and that its furnishings are needful as silence
is to music."