THREE POEMS FOR BECKY
Somumas, in the house, or walking in the damp streets, or when the rare sun springs out on London, there comes, evocative, non-existent, reminiscent, a smell of Georgia lanes, red-earthed, honeysuckle-scented. I don't know why it comes, what trick of mind brings it. It comes often, and when it comes I remember you, and the red lanes, and the cold ocean between.
Night fell beautifully on Navaho mountain, twilight shadows striding like gods across the canyons, purple succeeding to red, evening to sunshine.
I wonder if I shall see it again, or if some undirected small fragment of steel will set my cells to dying, uncertain, fragile. Only the rounded mountain will wait indomitable, washed by a million rains, all but immortal. Only the pine trees stand sure of resurrection in their sons.
My body is weak as the memory in my mind, red canyons closing in darkness, Indian faces, a time when I was drunk, not only on Scotch, and you sitting there, brown face and happiness.
And if I am only body one day they'll get me, one of the fatal enemies of mortal life.
If not, and if I'm something unseen, immortal, then I'll go there again, wait on the mountain.
You'll see my fire burning up there one fine evening.
Once you've left them, people stay the same. They are arrested in life, you can't love them more or hate them more, or quarrel, or be disappointed. They stay fixed in a mid-position of friendship, thronged round with a lot of memories of many timed. You are almost a statue to me, our letters are stable. There isn't development. The ocean swings between. I think you'll get tired of my statue in the corner. I'm not of yours. It's still much better than people who have all the unfair advantages of living.
P.S.—" So shall I be, ever hath been, Unto my true love true."
Henry the Eighth wrote that. No wonder I'm caUtiou;.
DAVID WINSER.
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