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A year or more later, I wrote
another poem on the same theme.

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This poem really
started out to be

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a poem against a certain
kind of biography,

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which I very much dislike.

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Gossipy scandalous
biography that

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doesn't tell one anything
necessary about the art

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or any other accomplishment
of the subject,

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but only faith on the
prurient curiosity

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which is latent in all of us,
but which is not something

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that anybody should
be encouraging

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in themselves or others.

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Well, the poem
started off that way,

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but it didn't turn into a
didactic form about biography,

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actually, and you
probably would never

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know that that's
what started it off

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because it became a
poem about a mountain.

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It's called

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"Against Intrusion."

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"When my friend drove
up the mountain,

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it changed itself into
a big lump of land

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with lots of snow on it
and slopes of arid scree.

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Another friend climbed it the
hard way, exciting to stay

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the course, get to the top.

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But no sense of
heights there, nothing

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to see but generic
mist and snow.

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As for me, when my photos
come back developed,

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there's just the lake, the
south shore of the lake,

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the middle distance,
no mountain.

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How clearly it speaks
respect, perspective, privacy,

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it teaches.

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Indulgence of
curiosity increases

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ignorance of the essential.

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What does it serve
to insist on knowing

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more than that a
mountain forbearing

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so far from volcanic
rage blesses

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the city it is poised above.

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Angelic guardian at
rest on sustaining air

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and that its furnishings
are needful as silence

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is to music."

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