Mougins, near Cannes. Late morning. April 8, 1973.
Oxford, Mississippi. 2:30 A.M. July 6, 1962.
Ketchum, Idaho. Soon after dawn. July 2, 1961.
St. Vincent’s Hospital, Greenwich Village. Ca. 1 P.M. November 9, 1953.
Schwesterhaus vom Roten Kreuz, Zurich. 2:15 A.M. January 13, 1941.
Hollywood, California. 5:15 P.M. December 21, 1940.
Kierling, near Vienna. Noon. June 3, 1924.
Railroad station, Astapovo. 5:45 A.M. November 7, 1910.
East Twenty-sixth Street, Manhattan. 12:30 A.M. September 28, 1891.
Auvers-sur-Oise. 1:30 A.M. July 29, 1890.
Gad’s Hill, Kent. 6:10 P.M. June 9, 1870.
Haworth Parsonage, Yorkshire. Ca. 2 A.M. March 31, 1855.
Haworth Parsonage, Yorkshire. 2 P.M. December 19, 1848.
Vienna. Amid lightning, late afternoon. March 26, 1827.
Missolonghi. 6 P.M. April 19, 1824.
Bay of Spezia. Hour unknown. July 8, 1822.
Piazza di Spagna, Rome. II P.M. February 23, 1821.
Stratford-upon-Avon. Hour unrecorded. April 23, 1616.
Madrid. Hour unrecorded. Identical with the foregoing.
Eleanor Bull’s tavern, Deptford. Perhaps 7 P.M. May 30, 1593.
Castle of Cloux, near Amboise. Hour unrecorded. May 2, 1519.
Age. Age.
Every man is worth just so much as the things he busies himself about.
Said Marcus Aurelius.
Sophocles dressed the chorus of his next play in mourning, after the death of Euripides.
Or are all these nuisance disabilities somehow more serious than Author acknowledges?
So persistently worn out. And that peculiar lightheadedness still, his sense almost of something beckoning from just beyond the edges of vision.
Threescore miles and ten.
Edgar Allan Poe’s wife Virginia, dying of tuberculosis in their Fordham cottage — and having to be swaddled in his old army greatcoat because Poe could not afford firewood.
The same coat Poe then wore to the funeral.
My memory and intellect have gone to wait for me elsewhere.
Wrote Michelangelo to Vasari at eighty-three.
I know the color of that blood. It is arterial blood — I cannot be deceived in that color. That drop of blood is my death warrant.
And a sensation even of gaps in his consciousness? As if moments have sometimes bolted past that Author has somehow managed not to be aware of until they are gone? Recently, did one?
Thunder occurs when clouds collide.
Go, litel bok, go, litel myn tragedye.
Which Chaucer says in Troilus and Criseyde.
Having appropriated it from Ovid’s Tristia.
And with brightness involved? A flooding of stunning light?
Velazquez was in the employ of Philip IV for almost forty years.
I am utterly crushed, wrote the king in the margin of a document dealing with his death.
Light. Terrifically, it seems.
But why in heaven’s name is Author convinced that he only hours ago abruptly stopped working and went in to lie down? In the middle of the day? Another nap? Could Author have taken a nap almost without realizing that he did?
The legend that Ibsen, dying, lay near a window and confused the people passing on the street with characters from his plays.
The legend that Mozart, dying, asked that a canary be removed from his room — unable to abide its song.
And Author’s shoulder smacking against the corridor wall again?
A passage he has normally navigated ten thousand times without a second thought?
You and I must always remain young, and you shall always be beautiful to me. We must keep no count of the years.
Wrote Ausonius to his wife.
Wrote Ausonius — whom Gibbon disparaged as a second-rate poet.
As if Author’s Adidas have whims of their own.
Yis-ga-dal v’yis-ka-dash sh’may rab-bo.
I like a view but I like to sit with my back to it.
His secretary’s recollection that in his last moments Henry James asked to hear the sounds of her Remington — typing one of his manuscripts.
And after the corridor? This even newer image of Author’s bed having gotten to be such a vast distance across the room?
Why can’t Author tell whether he is imagining that or remembering it?
Among the wreaths and bouquets at the funeral of Verlaine — one nodding bunch of violets.
Brought by Mallarmé.
Plus the sense that Author could also not seem quite able to make his way across?
Hovering there, did he almost seem to be?
O God! O God! That it were possible
To undo things done; to call back yesterday
Says someone in Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness.
Your Majesty’s horse knows more about art than you do.
But the brightness, was that when the brightness occurred?
Going in to take a nap he is now not sure he is really remembering having gone in to take at all?
That terrificness, that extraordinary flooding.
I have wasted my hours.
Said Leonardo at the end of his life.
Leonardo.
When, dammit, that terrificness?
Does anyone know any longer where Spinoza is buried?
Where Rembrandt?
Where Marlowe?
Did anyone essentially ever know, with Mozart?
Light? Brightness?
“Dad? Dad? Say something.”
Rosie, You Are My Posy.
A sentence consists of a noun and a verb. If you want to use an adjective, come and ask me first.
Orchestra play like pig.
“Dad? Please? You can’t just sit there and stare. Talk to us. Answer us, Dad. We love you, you know?”
I do at least three paintings a day in my head. What s the use of spoiling canvas when nobody will buy anything?
A symphony is no joke.
You know I can’t stand Shakespeare’s plays, but yours are worse.
“Dad? We truly want to bring the children. But they won’t understand at all, if you just sit and don’t say anything. They’ll be frightened. Dad?”
Couldn’t that lady cut herself, standing on that seashell?
Go, litel bok.
“Oh, Dad. Oh, Dad.”
Selah.