[the reader is respectfully asked to read the notation at the bottom of part 1]
Sipping her water, she hears, beyond sound,
a poet's voice that says, "The college seems
"a tomb to some, a porch where spirits quail,
"a grave of chaos, inescapable,
"a solitude without light of the sun,
"an isolation and dependency.
"But where and when this Muse shall be, by day
"and night, her shoeless footsteps will trace paths
"where poems will ripen like sweet berries in
"a perfect garden past all wilderness.
"And from her very presence, poetry
"will swirl around us, between earth and sky.
"Her eager feet, bare, or ensheathed in socks,
"will sponsor such inspired verses and lines
"that soar in splendor on extended wings."
Starward
[jlc]
Author's Notes/Comments:
Thus concludes September Sunday, 1976: PostScript. It is a homage, mingling some of his words with my own, to the Poet I first read at college, in October, 1978, Wallace Stevens, whose poems have been one of the great pleasures of my life since that time; and to the woman I first saw on a Sunday (either the 19th or the 26th) of September, 1976, in the dining hall at college; a woman who was, by common consent, the most Beautiful Woman on campus; and who became, for me, the very summary and epitome of the Muses of inspiration. Her path and mine crossed at three important junctures in my life at college, and the third changed the midsdirected course my life had taken (after breaking up with F.L.L. on January 9, 1978). She has not yet seen these poems, to the best of my knowledge. But the poems are now the completion of an ambition I had from that September Sunday---to write of her effect upon me in words that none can doubt or question.
