(For Jean and Nick)
You cannot imagine a more delightful visit. Writing to write, not so much to make
a living--which is social work if you can get it--but writing to make good on life,
can be lonesome, and the writer, all you know anyway, aches to share the writing
with others and in particular other writers since they know by the brow the brutal
labor it takes to sit still before a plain page in a plain room and face your
proprietor, your landlord of words who gives and takes, at times as if by whim, no
purpose, yet leaving you with the rent to pay, the duty to get something from
nothing and on a skillful day order from chaos, what Wallace Stevens still calls
the blessed rage for order in a poem that survives the loss of the giant.
Because of all this your visit with two writers in the neighborhood is unimaginable
delight for you and your single regret is letting your desire show. The writing
neighbors treat you to a tea ceremony of their own and welcome you with such
warmth you are at home from the start. Somehow they seem to abide your
passion for being there in that room that is not so much plain as lived in and
ordered, in the same glance. From just the right place where you sit
the sharing seems glorious and gleams of light make the room entire glisten,
or it may be the gold sun striking the walls at an angle never before seen by you,
this being your first visit.
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