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 You flew down to New Orleans, then drove south Into a trembling prairie, sea and land Unstilled by any maker’s word or hand So near the Mississippi’s silent mouth. And there you shared your poems one final time Unaided though when stage-light beams would blind Your one unblinded eye you spoke your mind— “Hopeless! Hopeless!”—yet then read on in rhyme. Later, at that plantation where you stayed, Night thickened with your whiskey-tales that strayed From rooms Jim Bowie owned to where a knifeSharp wit cut sheer through dank moth-hours still rife With bearded oaks that once more made you feel “After Louisiana nothing seemed real.” Warren in Thibodaux the Southern Literary Festival and Fletcher Lecture Series, April 1985, Nicholls State University, Thibodaux, Louisiana ...

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