Failure Would Only Be If You Had

The Ambience Here Is Order And Beauty. That Is What Frightens Me When I Am First Alone Again. I Feel Inadequate. I Have Made An Open Place, A Place For Meditation. What If I Cannot Find Myself Inside It?

I Have Sometimes Wondered Also Whether In People Like Me Who Come To The Boil Fast (soupe Au Lait, The French Call This Trait, Like A Milk Soup That Boils Over) The Tantrum Is Not A Built-in Safety Valve Against Madness Or Illness. ... The Fierce Tension In Me, When It Is Properly Channeled, Creates The Good Tension For Work. But When It Becomes Unbalanced I Am Destructive. How To Isolate That Good Tension Is My Problem These Days. Or, Put In Another Way, How To Turn The Heat Down Fast Enough So The Soup Won't Boil Over!

I Live Alone, Perhaps For No Good Reason, For The Reason That I Am An Impossible Creature, Set Apart By A Temperament I Have Never Learned To Use As It Could Be Used, Thrown Off By A Word, A Glance, A Rainy Day, Or One Drink Too Many. My Need To Be Alone Is Balanced Against My Fear Of What Will Happen When Suddenly I Enter The Huge Empty Silence If I Cannot Find Support There. I Go Up To Heaven And Down To Hell In An Hour, And Keep Alive Only By Imposing Upon Myself Inexorable Routines. I Write Too Many Letters And Too Few Poems.

It Is, I Assume, Quite Easy To Wither Into Old Age, And Hard To Grow Into It.

A Poet Never Feels Useful.