SEPT OCT 2019 86A
FEW moments
stick. The truth
is that my friend-
ship with these
poets is an ocean
wide but a puddle
deep; some have become last-
ing friends, but a great many
were fleeting occasions of a few
minutes. We’d say hello, discuss
the weather. I’d give them a rain-
ing umbrella or, if they were very
lucky, hang them upside down,
and we’d go on with our lives.
Some took ten minutes, and
some took what seemed like
forever. Poor Mark Doty, in the
Paumanok woods, watched pa-
tiently as three people dug his
grave and then made him wait
for what must have seemed like
a premature eternity, contem-
plating his mortality, as we kept
him trapped in the soil. One can
imagine the poem he wrote in
his mind as my assistants wiped
away the nonexistent bugs he
was sure he could feel crawling
up his neck. That poem cannot be
charitable. If Thoreau was right,
and most men lead lives of quiet
desperation, what artist would
ever volunteer to be so willingly
buried before he is dead?Mark Doty