"If I write for anyone, I wrote for you;
So whisper, when I die, We was too few . . ."
—Randall Jarrell, "A Conversation with the Devil"
They were too few, but that was not the trouble;
Even two would have sufficed!
Ah, Randall, Randall, you of all men knew,
The trouble is the words that can't be said,
For kindness' sake;
And poets are of all things kind
—even Rochester was, and Ezra Pound.
We cannot tell them what we've found,
It would be cruel, the World near dead
And all our hopes now just a bubble.
Postscript
"IMPOSSIBLE TO COME, LIE FOLLOWS"*
—Proust's duc de Guermantes, telegram refusing an invitation
The world that fails of course is mine
And those hopes vain not of your time!
*"IMPOSSIBLE VENIR, MENSONGE SUIT"
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