The Summer Storm
He said he’d done re-writes and over-dubs
In Rome in the fifties.
He’d bought a yacht and made out
With English girls
Between Brindisi and Patras
As the Ionian Sea slid alongside.
He’d lived in a bare-bulb basement in New York
And gave off essence of Corso,
Ferlinghetti, Baldwin, Miles,
And the Via Veneto.
He told us about women
And how a man could write
About a woman,
About finding a place to sit
Wherever you were
Whatever was happening
Everyday
Stacking up the script
Putting life into shape
About living that life.
Late at night he’d knock.
We’d question the oracle,
The Richard Wilhelm translation, Peking 1923,
And from the dark corners of the room
Came the hard resilient words
There is always a struggle
There is no blame anywhere
And a cloud of smoke from Baalbeck
Or further east - Chitral, Herat,
Mazar Sharif.
In the photograph Keith and I
Both twenty stare sleepily back,
Fred looks down
And to one side
With a smile,
A breeze has got into
His long white hair.
Behind us all a big
Dark summer storm builds
Above the estuary.
Page(s) 10-11
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