DRAFT 23

East, vast American flag Whitman sunrise; west, Jeffers’ roan searchlight scissoring the dusk;

between, squads platoons divisions of poets scribbling slashing revising correcting rejecting …

What scribble are we trying to do? What have we done? What imagine slash when we began this?

North, geometrical Frostian ice storms; south, Neruda-diamonds scorching the cordilleras.

The voice dulls balks desires only to give itself over as it once seemed to to the swells surges concussions;

not this compulsion to retune the unmalleable self-music even in bliss we’re condemned to.

That way, Roethke’s “washed-out interrupted raw places”; this, Eliot’s “fragments I have shored…”

Between we scribble and slash — are we trying to change the world by changing the words?

Delete malice oppression tyranny poverty cruelty by our rage our raging obsession to amend?

Innocent scribble innocent slash who more credulous than we who more rendingly harmless?

Are there songs of the soul yet unsung to calm our doubt and despair? Will we have to revise them?

“O cut the sweet apple and share it…” Sweet scribble sweet slash O write the poem sweetly and share it.