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The river combs out our anger our tenderness. Our silent tenderness not my or mine or yours. Your unspeaking mouth shining. Shining lifesnake drinking at my lips milky with life. The One You Wanted to Be Is the One You Are She saying, You don’t have to do anything, you don’t even have to be, you Only who are, you nobody from nowhere, without one sin or one good quality, without one book, without one word, without even a comb, you! The one you wanted to be is the one you are. Come play . . . And he saying, Look at me! I don’t know how . . . Their breath like a tree’s breath. Their silence like a deer’s silence. Tolstoy wrote about this: all misunderstanding. Ironwood November 17th Dear Michael, I had gotten Ironwood, The Final Issue, in the mail; I put it on the table, and lay down to sleep, and dreamed I was talking to you. You said, “You’re much younger than my mother, of course, but you look 188 door in the mountain like her.” You said, “I’m going to kill myself.” And I said, “How does your mother feel about that?” You said, “She’s without feelings, very factual; she says, There’s only a fifty-fifty chance you’ll pull it off with this method, they’re so good these days at reviving people with money.” “What method, Michael?” And you said, “The broth method.” Then you said, “Did you imagine, when you were a youngster, that in 30 or 40 years you would be my mother, and having this conversation?” I said, “That’s right, it is 30, no, 40 years. I don’t want to be in your mother’s shoes right now.” Waking up, I thought: No, this is the other Michael. Bud Christmas night, my father said, “Jean, you are so disloyal.” But Bud said, “No. Ethereal. Ethereal, but my friend. And I, I got my prayer answered: I died with my life around me.” To a Young Poet This January night at ten below I wish you true desire, like a rose: to stand in your chest. Veined. Bloom. Let you be. Reflected in the train window, inside a thousand circles of public darkness, desire, a round red star. And desire again, a foliating wand, and you the Jack of Wands. the river at wolf 189 ...

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