Shirley

          I think we said it.
                                   And I still don't know that we should have
You should remember that we're two different people       And moreover
there are no cheering hordes around me     Still:

                                    ____

Your self was in the poem about a daughter     (The Eye)       Poems
describing parents rarely successful.

          Full fathom five thy father lies

                                 ________

(Kisses neat as little ribbons          --- neither the child's flesh nor
the mother's flesh in this line, it seems to me the sub-novelistic
never-never world

                                ____

A tree or a chair appears vividly in a poem to mean it's part of
this           the world          "the more sharply a thing is delineated the
more clearly it is connected to all other things"     (I forget who
said that but I think someone did)                    The edges of the thing

                                 ______

Signs           within a book, a collection -- I think it might
shine like a small jewel, almost 'oriental' elegance.

                              No cheering hordes around me, but       to come
full circle -- if one wants a poem to mean what Whitman has meant
to you --- something you didn't know, didn't have, hadn't seen
couldn't have imagined           till he told you           Well, then - - -

                            well then I might be giving partially good
advice       But my only real talent is failure       (provided there is
such a thing) and you should remember that

                                                  George