234
PARTISAN REVIEW
in the belly of the dark (" the mice hear the feast," as Ling answered
back) .
During the next months in behest to friends I took a number
of quick trips: Zermatt, Winnipeg, Death Valley, and finally Hun–
gary . It was as
if
the wheel of Berkeley life was spinning me out, and
even when the distant had temporarily receded a certain anxiety re–
mained: too much quickness, too little seen. Of these only Death
Valley (where I went with Ling) was connected with something real–
camping out for the first time-and thus lived. The rest were star
faded, places wrapped around people, lost in the candlelight of a
hand holding a glass, fumbling with its silk tie, anxious not to say
something too distressing.
It
was as
if
I were boiling inside. I had
to
get it out or I'd shake apart. During these times I'd write long, dense ,
multi-multi-page poems, then afterwards lie about shaking like a sail–
boat, tipsy, tipsy, hoping my head wouldn't split apart in my hands .
It
was very wonderful and it was very scary; I was cat-high in a tree
and didn' t know how
to
get down.
Since Ling was lonely and fundless in her trailer, I suggested
that she live in my house while I went on a ten day trip
to
Zermatt.
There she kept a little diary, which I found lying on my desk when I
returned :
For the last six years you have begun up grey cement
steps . ... Small buds drop off velvet yellow from the trees
and carpet the porch. You walk in . The man who lives in the
house left on
a
ski trip six years ago. It is only be
a
ten year
jaunt
so
I have abandoned
my
fear of answering the phone.
It 's nice for him to be on the snow, if for no other reason
than the ten year tax relief
(I
plan to let him know, anyway,
just
as
soon
as
the government here collapses).
* * *
I was invited to live in his house. I stack his mail and give
water to everyone and chant for him.
A
vaginal infection,
inside, developed in the first year of his absence. I cannot
imagine that I
am
infested with v. d.-too many outrageous,
blatant symptoms. So, I wish it to be
a
private, non–
contagious women's maladie. The soreness of the symptoms
is easily forgotten over eight years of abstinence; but the
worry is an unrelenting fervor of fear. Did I give an infection