Who is convinced there is life after death? Not I. I am like the rest: the thought of death at midnight causes me to cry. Sleep alone causes me to sleep. We get no poems except poets are sleepless and weep, doubtful in youth, doubtful in their old age--- though Socrates has proven the soul is immortal! I can show you the book, the chapter and the page. But that's just it. In the poem you find only more poem. You need to discover the line, the poem convinces the poem, you need to drink the wine which tastes like all the others and lie down and dream happily (I'm glad you taste my poetry) but in that intoxicated sleep of dreaming joy, it is not for happiness you weep but for plain, child-like sorrow: everything will change, everything will be new and strange tomorrow. Encircling dream! Will I be immortal and always see the familiar life in my immortality? But truthfully I love the quiet and the strange. I can't tell you anything. And this poem will change.
