The article was by Jim Coates. To Jim
Forthwith I wrote. Got her address from him.
Drove west three hundred miles to talk to her.
770Arrived. Was met by an impassioned purr.
Saw that blue hair, those freckled hands, that rapt
Orchideous air - and knew that I was trapped.
"Who'd miss the opportunity to meet
A poet so distinguished?" It was sweet
Of me to come! I desperately tried
To ask my questions. They were brushed aside:
"Perhaps some other time." The journalist
Still had her scribblings. I should not insist.
She plied me with fruit cake, turning it all
780Into an idiotic social call.
"I can't believe," she said, "that it is you!
I loved your poem in the Blue Review.
That one about Mon Blon. I have a niece
Who's climbed the Matterhorn. The other piece
I could not understand. I mean the sense.
Because, of course, the sound - But I'm so dense!"
She was. I might have persevered. I might
Have made her tell me more about the white
Fountain we both had seen "beyond the veil"
790But if (I thought) I mentioned that detail
She'd pounce upon it, as upon a fond
Affinity, a sacramental bond,
Uniting mystically her and me,
And in a jiffy our two souls would be
Brother and sister trembling on the brink
Of tender incest. "Well," I said, "I think
It's getting late..."
I also called on Coates.
He was afraid he had mislaid her notes.
He took his article from a steel file:
800"It's accurate. I have not changed her style.
There's one misprint - not that it matters much:
Mountain, not fountain. The majestic touch."
Life Everlasting - based on a misprint!
I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint,
And stop investigating my abyss?
But all at once it dawned on me that this
Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme;
Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream
But a topsy-turvical coincidence,
810Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.
Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find
Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind
Of correlated pattern in the game,
Plexed artistry, and something of the same