Sound of the Ax: Aphorisms and Poems by William Stafford

Influential Writers

66 Influential Writers Some of them write too loud. Some write the mauve poem over and over. In our time a whole tribe have campaigned with noisy boots on— they look swashbuckling but all the syllables finally run and hide. Their swagger makes them feel good, but mobilizes opposition. Listen—after a torrent begins even big rocks have to get out of the way, but at the top of the divide you can change Mississippi to Columbia with one finger, and I did. But I didn’t want the Pacific this big. 67 The stream is always revising. All of us writers get up and report on which part of the elephant we touch. My voice apparently has a tone imperceptible for some people’s ears. I’m a dog sending off vibrations of the wrong frequency. Talk has many tunes. Praise is one of the tinniest. You had your wound—now the healing starts. The wounding is clean but the healing hurts. Mistakes you make are guides for where to go; snowflakes the storm brings are shelter from its cold. It wasn’t that we failed, but we didn’t succeed. 68 Playing the game: be careful to play by the real rules, not the ostensible rules—or be ready to lose. For happiness we need our sorrows. “Drink from your own well,” Kierkegaard says. I’d like to haunt the edges of our language, pretending to translate from languages not yet invented. Having said something makes it possible to say something else. After a verbal attack you turn to the attacker: “What other symptoms do you have?” Experience mourns, but even while doing so—plans. ...