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AND TO EACH SEASON |
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The Japanese poet Takubuku said,
"Every man keeps a prisoner groaning in his heart..." "And To Each
Season" is a book I wrote in an attempt to free such a prisoner - or more than one -
from mine. I am not sure if it succeeds. No one of us, I think, can name, let alone free,
those demons - friendly or otherwise - that keep us from being the kind of men we’d
like to be.
My childhood, before eleven, remains elusive. I’ve yet to get it down on paper the
way it was. New York is easier to write about and San Francisco writes itself, but Elko,
Alamo, Ely and Caliente hardly come at all. Even when my memory has a favored day, some
prisoners refuse escape.
My mother, though her death was recent, is hardest of all to fit into words, though
she’s crowded my head and heart more than anything or anyone this past year.
Physically, in later years she got heavier, mentally, she became - even at the end - more
alert. Emotionally, we touched bases without admitting there were bases to be touched. I
could paint her, but I cannot yet frame the way she was or is for me in words.
I believe, increasingly, that man is now essentially alone. Irrevocably so. Whether that
is good or bad, or can indeed be categorized other than for each case individually,
I’m not prepared to say.
For myself, I am grateful for the transients in my life, whether they be Sundays when the
phone’s not ringing or the odd stranger who happens by and leaves behind more
pleasure than my concentration on my own needs quite deserves.
Some of the lines in the book were written nearly twenty years ago and never published;
that I loose them now means I find them true today. I am more and more concerned with
truth, having lied my share within my life, and lately having been a good deal lied about.
I am not convinced the truth can make men free, but I believe it a beginning and a final
resting place. Tomorrow, though, I might believe in lies. What I want is not to be held
accountable for what I said today, or yesterday, so that my tomorrows can stay open.
Poetry is fact, even in its imagery. This is a work of fact. Any disguise is a defense not
known to me as yet. Clouds where clarity should be were not intended. I have not written
for every man but I want to write for Everyman, because I wish to be one and the same with
all my brothers, yet remain an individual.
That I write so much on love must mean that it is paramount to me. It is. I have come back
from a long tour just now, having loved nobody and everybody. This is for me a new
beginning, or at least an end. -
from the Author's introduction to "And To Each Season", 1972 |
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Steve Boros o
Eileen Brennan o Kitty Carlisle o Tompall Glasier o Wayne Green o Anne Jackson o Al Jardine o Alan Ladd o Irene Papas o Valerie Perrine o Ferdinand Porsche o Dixie Lee Ray o
Charlie Sheen o Hank Thompson |
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The guarantee for
finding sanity is finding love again.
The truth requires no defense.
Love is the answer. . . never mind the question.
Every line's a highway from the past in the faces of the old. |
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LILLIAN AT FIFTY |
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Snow has now begun to comb her
hair,
soft patch of winter at each temple
where only summer grew before.
Her voice thick-throated,
a murmured whisper in the pines.
And there are lines
. . . about the corners of her eyes
more beautiful than love words written down
and sent away, Browning to Browning.
Her breasts no longer point immodestly -
they bend and curve
and fit into her body curve,
the way a lover's arm was meant
to cradle that so-perfect head just found.
From bath to bedroom and to bed.
She is not just that perfect woman
. . . in my life
but premier woman of the world,
created wholly by herself,
made up to make a mold for womanhood.
And I, mortal lover of immortality,
what man could dream up heaven better
than she who lets the snow begin
. . . to softly comb her hair?
- from Intervals, 1986 |
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