When I asked Wallace
Stevens permission to reprint poems
he published in the Advocate,
he acceded with a note
that set me thinking: “Some
of one’s early things give one the creeps.”

Later I went up to him
at a brunch before The Game, where
he stood with friends
I deferred to the poet;
the businessman blushed and muttered.
I asked if he could stay
in town through Monday; the Advocate
was giving a party
for Mr. Eliot—“or maybe
for you both?” “Shit,” he said,
“fuck. Got to get back to the office.”

*

Mr. Eliot at
sixty-three—Nobel Laureate and Czar—
kindly suggested
that I drop by his office at Faber’s
in London on my way
to Oxford. In dazed preparation,
I daydreamed agendas
for our conversation. At his desk,
the old poet spoke
quietly of &ldquo ...

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