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LETTERS TO YESENIN: 11; TO DIANE W., by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: No tranquil pills this year wanting to live peeled as they
Last Line: From want of her, cut off well past our prime.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Introspection; Memory; Poetry & Poets; Yesenin, Sergei (1895-1925)


No tranquil pills this year wanting to live peeled as they described the nine
throats of Cerberus. Those old greek names keep popping up. You can tell we
went to college and our sleep is troubled. There are geographical equivalents
for exotic tropes of mind; living peeled was the Desert Inn in Tucson talking
with D.W. about love and art with so much pain my ears rung and the breath came
short. And outside the fine desert air wasn't fine anymore: the indians became
kachina dolls and a girl was tortured daily for particular reasons. This other
is our Akhmatova and often we want to hide from her -- seasoned as she is in so
many hells. But why paint her for one of the dead who knew her pungency of
love, the unforgivable low-tide smell of it, how few of us bear it for long
before reducing it to a civil act. You were odd for a poet attaching yourself
to a woman no less a poet than yourself. It still starts with the dance. In
the end she probably strangled you and maybe back in Ryazan there was a far
better bird with less extravagant plumage. But to say I'm going to spend the day
thinking wisely about women is to say I'm going to write an indomitably great
poem before lunch or maybe rule the world by tomorrow dawn. And I couldn't love
one of those great SHES -- it's far too late and they are far too few to find
anyway though that's a driveling excuse. I saw one in a tree and on a roof. I
saw one in a hammock and thigh-deep in a pond. I saw one out in the desert and
sitting under a willow by the river. All past tense you notice and past
haunting but not past caring. What did she do to you and did you think of her
when your terrible shadow fell down the wall. I see that creature sitting on
the lawn in Louveciennes, the mistress of a superior secret. We have both died
from want of her, cut off well past our prime.





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