Gloucester, Massachusetts I. I’m sorry you were not my favorite. Probably your dark substratum was too much for me. I don’t believe in Hell; therefore, I don’t fear it. I’m no possum playing dead to conceal myself. Reading in your boyhood room, I feel like a counterpart to nature and the animals, and I still prefer Marianne Moore, who created a marvelous new idiom. But I love bicycling along your grey granite shoreline, from the boatyards to the port. And I love watching the pea fog burn off the icy water. Certainly, I fear death by water more than Hell. Yesterday, a fingerless man was selling cod. A child peered into a rock-pool at a sea anemone. The fir trees looked thirsty and seagulls screamed in the air. A schooner with a mermaid bowsprit sailed toward open sea. I was wearing my trousers with the cuffs rolled up like a knockabout sailor. Church-goers emerged into the marine light, but I felt no ancestor worship. Home and Mother were faraway. Still, the blue sea and birdsong beckoned to a place deep inside me. II. At night, the wind howls and black waves smash against the rocky coastline. There are visitations: a skunk in the corridor, pictures awry on walls, wet pillows, coyotes baying. I read all night and drink wine with pistachios. I love the bare-rock outcroppings from glaciation that surround the house like staunch comforting arms. Tom, I agree that genuineness (your word) is more important than greatness. Tom, I agree that our duty is to serve, extend, and improve the language. Tom, I agree that forms have to be broken to be remade. I don’t want to write only from my head and cling to youthful experiences. I don’t want to become a dignified man who says what is expected of him. I don’t want to lose myself in a larger context, like a bee in the foxglove. Clambering over rock, I study the pool’s frail seaweed and the hungry starfish. I hear the song of the fishermen’s dories lowered into the deadly sea. At dawn, the pure sweetness of the hermit thrush calls to me. For all I know, the rest of my life is taking flight.
There's nothing Artificial about our Intelligence