206
DAVID JACKSON
rooms and streets to drop down somewhere else. They smoke one
cigarette after another and stump them out, moodily. With the
intensity of their German natures they .are imitating the current
style. And this, I gather, is Beat. I am tempted to warn them of
the outcome in a quatrain called,
The Digger:
(1 dig Jazz and James Joyce, man!
1 dig Zen and Horse!' you rave.
That's nice. Dig everything you can.
You'll get around to your own grave.
But I would be wasting my time. They ..." Abruptly, he stopped.
The truth was he knew little about Beatniks. "Damn little," he
told himself, drumming his fingers. But he was diverted by the
pension garden coming up more clearly into light. He peered
out, noting how wet and brown it was, seeing a snow bird tramp
around under some leafless berry bushes. And the prospect of
weeks more of greyness overwhelmed him. He began imagining
The South. Italy. The Mediterranean. Next, he remembered his
old friend and fellow-poet, Walter Norman, a resident of Venice.
He pushed the typewriter aside and reached over for a postcard
from a handy pile he kept on his desk. They were all reproduc–
tions from the Schack Gallery (with the exception of a dozen
pornographic Rubens he had found at the Pinakothek). He
wrote:
"Dear Walter, it's the old season of discontent, up here in
Krautland. And we are all partied out. I imagine you in hip
boots strolling around San Marco. Would you like a caller,
namely me, Meredith?"
With a sense of accomplishment, he rose, took off
his
mechanic's suit, climbed under the quilts of his bed, and, in the
middle of a new thought, went to sleep.
Approaching Venice by sea, at this time, was yet another
poet, Nicolas Manas.
Unlike Meredith Wilder, Nicolas knew all about the Beat
