Separate We Come, And Separate We Go,

Music I Heard With You Was More Than Music, And Bread I Broke With You Was More Than Bread. Now That I Am Without You, All Is Desolate, All That Was Once So Beautiful Is Dead. Your Hands Once Touched This Table And This Silver,and I Have Seen Your Fingers Hold This Glass. These Things Do Not Remember You, Beloved: And Yet Your Touch Upon Them Will Not Pass. For It Was In My Heart You Moved Among Them,and Blessed Them With Your Hands And With Your Eyes.and In My Heart They Will Remember Always: They Knew You Once, O Beautiful And Wise!

I Think That What's Happening Today, With All The Young Poets Rushing From One College To Another, Lecturing At The Drop Of A Hat And So On, Is Not Too Good; I Think It Might Have A Bad Effect On A Great Many Of The Young Poets. They - To Quote Mark Twain - "swap Juices" A Little Too Much, So That They Are In Danger Of Losing Their Own Identity And Don't Give Themselves Time Enough In Which To Work Out What's Really Of Importance To Them - They're Too Busy.

I Compelled Myself All Through To Write An Exercise In Verse, In A Different Form, Every Day Of The Year. I Turned Out My Page Every Day, Of Some Sort - I Mean I Didn't Give A Damn About The Meaning, I Just Wanted To Master The Form - All The Way From Free Verse, Walt Whitman, To The Most Elaborate Of Villanelles And Ballad Forms. Very Good Training. I've Always Told Everybody Who Has Ever Come To Me That I Thought That Was The First Thing To Do.

The Wandering One, The Inquisitive Dreamer Of Dreams, The Eternal Asker Of Answers, Stands In The Street, And Lifts His Palms For The First Cold Ghost Of Rain.

For In This Walk, This Voyage, It Is Yourself, The Profound History Of Your 'self,' That Now As Always You Encounter.