Text 105

INTIMATES

Don't you care for my love? she said bitterly.

I handed her the mirror, and said:

Please address these questions to the proper person!

Please make all requests to head-quarters!

In all matters of emotional importance

please approach the supreme authority direct! –

So I handed her the mirror.

And she would have broken it over my head,

but she caught sight of her own reflection

and that held her spellbound for two seconds while I fled.

Viewing poets' lives, one can't help feeling they are full of all sorts of aberrations. Remember Emily Dickinson, who was so reclusive that when she wanted to give little children treats of candy cookies, she tied them (the treats!) to along string and lowered the surprises to them (the children!) out of her bedroom window.

Or take Wystan Auden, who was a homosexual. Although he was one, he married Erika Mann, daughter of Thomas Mann, in 1935 so that she could escape from Nazi Germany on his British passport. The two never spent a night together, but his legal marriage lasted until Erika's death. What exactly is an aberration here: the poet's decision, or, more likely, the Nazi regime?

What about Edward Estlin Cummings, the terror of typesetters, an enigma to book reviewers, and the special target of all the world's literary philistines? He even believed in flying saucers.