Can poets (can men in television)
Be saved? It is not easy
To believe in unknowable justice…
—Auden
All the poets I know despair of poetry. I know a television man, he despairs of TV land. I take this as a good sign. Unknowable justice requires humility. Before humility is an itch. Augustine had it. Siddhartha had it. The justice itch. And justice means loving your fellow kind.
Auden says later in the same poem: “that we too may come to the picnic with nothing to hide”.
Well, I’m on the “back 9” as a friend says. I’m working as I lumber, throwing away my itchy clothes. It’s hard practice, taking them off. Harder perhaps when you have a disability. The disabled are always being poked like badgers. Yesterday a man accused me of abusing my guide dog because we were walking in the cold. I said: “See? The dog is wagging her tail.” But stranger-man was stuck with his broken record. “You are abusive.” I walked away. I was angry. Anger is sometimes vanity dressed up. I will throw away these itchy shirts and pantaloons.
The anger-vanity-complex. Like shrapnel in the soft tissues of the mind.
Planet of the Blind 