[I Walk Through the Rain]

k: dear,
it doesn’t sound like you’re having the best of days. i’m glad, at least, that writing to me is a sort of relief from whatever’s getting to you. i’m quite flattered actually.

i hope your sister is well. i’m sure she is.

we’re talking about personal in poetry, about autobiography. for me, i think poetry ought to have an entirely separate section; away from fiction and non fiction, away from memoirs and comic books and all that. in my book store i’d put poetry in with the road maps and cook books. and as far away from arts and crafts as possible. though i might make an exception for origami. oh and drama (as in written plays), would get compiled in with all the imported dvds and classical music. i’d have a very special book store, don’t you think?

the prism ^_^ i love that you brought that up, that it’s something of a reference point. i labored over that concept, and it makes me feel so good, almost accomplished, to read it brought up! thank you so much.

i have a poem for you, one that frank wrote. one that you gave me as a christmas present that i’m not going to give back now. hold your prism up to it J this is our autobiography in someone else’s poem…

[I Walk Through the Rain]

I walk through the rain
and it’s really piling up tonight.
My head like a bullet
pierces the downpour.

She in a dark window
irons some man’s shirt
with ponderous columns
atop which the sleepy eggplants
shine in the moon of her peering
out at the mysterious night,

and that’s me.
Why must my eyes, pleading,
response the sky’s convulsion,
humble me before a domestic shrine,
obscure, lonely, slow,
as if I needed this stranger?

[New York, February 1952]

i read into everything frank writes. down to the eggplants. for me, he exists in his poems. he is his poems. i love him because i love his poems. to me, they are real. and i like to make myself the she/her in all of them. in this one, the i is more ashraf. because poetry is that flexible.

i’ll write more to you about this later perhaps. for now i want to leave you with the poem.


a: Oh, Katy, this is wonderful! Thank you for sending it to me. This will be our poem now, okay? I just love it!