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A Midwest Mezzotint |
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| In the foreground there's the old hotel, a frame
affair the grey sky frames. On the porch sundry persons ready to doze off or wake up look uncomfortable as if brooding on a jagged thought, while, in the background, a dog with head on front paws races a palpable dream. |
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| The first question: do all of us keep one
address? Each year the same guests, the bones of mice discovered in the spring, their feet eaten off by lye Cook left; in the winter the frozen lake and stream, on the porch rail an empty pair of boots: nothing will become more personal though the scene be changed, the dog, for example, catch the rabbit. |
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| As against a backdrop, the face of a girl
momentarily snagged by her hair or brassiere strap floats below the ice that, some time during February makes a tricky path to a sister state. A small item in the local paper gives some facts which, never too near, are accurate as to marriage and birth, and hint at the probable mode of inclement death. |
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| To be here, whether inside or out, whether
among the frozen hedges or the trellises and grapes, among the pictures of old guests (faded, taken from photographs, not life) or the loungers on the front porch, is to be at the edge of things, separate from their troubled or even river. |
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| The builders of what a former or formative
age called an ordinary were both impotent and resourceful, recognized the worth of a cup of hot tea with sugar and milk, and may have guessed that in a panorama of objects a personal address would freeze in the throat. And what memory, however grey or brilliant, does not contain reminders: the traveler |
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| lost near Chartres one winter, found by his nose
poking through a drift. As for me, once when skating I heard a snap as of ribs, and recalled the many vows I had not kept, the friends who had left me, and my comforts. Whatever the compass of our address we cannot crack it, and yet it is true that I grow less particular where I lay my head to rest. |
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