Zea Mexican Diary: 7 September 1926—7 September 1986

VI. Ayama's Letter

AWAMA .~ AETTEP Monday Mins After 5 I 15 September Outside Plona Chapel Todal' Is thflY Lal' the day. When And her ta rest. may her saul qest In PSACS. Par she Campleted a Cl'c1e . [But she did not, my love. The circle knew its curve, was coming ro und wI verve & confidence & the 'completion' was it seemed another thirty years away. The tragedy for me & if you will allow what some people will call 'arrogance' - 'what right have you to arrogate such high importance to yr work? - is that I was on the verge - indeed into a new pathway - of new work - I cd feel it going welllthi ngs happening This 1986 alone Savacou published four titles & I wrote & revisited ~/Self put together my Early Poems and an l..llikx. of them (but no publisher!), finished (but never forwarded!) the Great Riyer VaHey Rebellion mono graph for Barry Higman, edited th (e) Tony Bland poems for Savacou (we got it out the day he died/so he never saw what he wanted to so much ); there was the pub in Belgium (Leuven/Liege) of The visibility trigger wI Fr trans by Christine Pagnoulle (Le detonateur de visib Hite) won the Casa Prize for Root 129 (s) - not to mention the Penlyne Coffee Operation now practically fallen into the sere into the dry rot! Her own wonderful work at the To urist Board Library & the offers coming in from other Special Libraries +of course my 24-mile-anhour day at Mona (how long will I be able esp now Aya, to keep on teaching all-time like this & still keep on w/ the poems of the other life which is really the same life & the whole life the real life /but not allowed so by ho (w) people here see things/ As you kn ow we went up to IT to create like a Ma roon community/independent &~b!i!t­ ent likethat/with enough land & space & shall we say SPIRIT POWER for people to work/to 'find'! develop ourselves & from/to where I cd eventually resign from the University [HOW GOD DISPOSES , eh?] & devote all/the rest of my blk puddin & souse to that worldpool of writing etc since I find that it takes more & more time & more & more ener gy & more & more LOVE so that it hurt when people don't seem to understand this, the grapple w/ the loa, they seeing the writing as a 'hobby '/my 'hobby' as one of our ViceChancellors once told me! & call me un-lor anti-/social because as things stann now I find I must defend the wh at-happens-when-we-say-writing - th at kind of 'catness' in a way - when others are out visiting or laughing or drinking or debunking or partying or just ST/ing - which is what I'd like to be doin too- why not! - but you can't do everything, since this loving in the spirit', as you put it, comes first first first/ the thousand hour days or years you have to spend upon the pound or poem of the flesh to make it into LlG HT) 130 & all this time Death there aroun Cd) the corner, in the shadows, sit ing down w/ us at supper or our birthday dinner, slipping in our very cup So that me can't even s p eak Aya of cycle completed 0 n ly of circle mash up & circle destroyed in the very middle of our fortune] . . . caming aD earth in a ph)"sical farm fram her mather 's womb aD 7 September aDd leaving 7 September It is aften [anly) after ph)"sical death that we appreciate a aDe mare Far whUe she suff ered )"au suffered ADd her • • pam was )"aur pam [But my pain continues, Aya, for the very reason that I just tellin you A circle has been broken & I & what was once the friends & people of the cycle/circle have so disintegrated/ centre gonelthings fall a/part/ things fall a/part I know there is some ritual I've not performed/ which I don't even kn owl & no one that I know/knows how to bring itt help mel with it to/wards it Which the Africans know Which the Greeks knew It's 131 there in Odale & in Eliot's Co c k tail Party & at the end of 0 I e Story Time But is missing in me/with me, Myaya. I have not even...