250
PARTISAN REVIEW
so you thought I couldn't feel anything and was just being bourgeois
about Love. But you would have understood if you loved me, or if
I were younger, though I'm not so very old now. But I really mean
more eager.
"But all that is in the past now, because I think for everyone
there
is
only one time or opif>rtunity to dedicate themselves, and
now as it
is
I feel my life is over. Even if I think you were cold, in
my heart I know what horrors I am capable of, even if I couldn't
pretend to you. But I couldn't explain either. So I am guilty, and
this cruel image of myself is going to pursue me eternally I suppose,
but you must never forget that someone lives in the world, even if
it is a life-in-Death, someone who wishes to have loved you...."
Craven was in Europe when the thick letter arrived in Carmine
Street, where his ex-wife was staying during his absence. She opened
Lucy's letter, of course, and reading through it, penciled her com–
ments in the margins, making the revisions that would have served
Lucy better. Then she sent it off by regular mail to Craven in the
Via dell'Anima- who could only wonder at his great mistake. He
was just then in danger of making still another one.
EPITAPH FOR A HORSEMAN
Let no one mourn his mount, upholstered bone
He rode so cruelly over bog and stone,
Log, fence and ditch in every kind of weather;
Nor glibly hint those two came down together:
A horse fell dead and cast his master down,
But by that fall their union was undone.
A broken jade we found, the rider gone,
Leaving no tokens but his cold clean gear,
Bit,
reins and riding crop for friends to gather:
None but a beast's remains lie buried here.
Michael Hamburger
