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Boxes, Trunks, and Darkness 1
!["p. 2 retyped 21 Jan. 79, and revised and[/or] contd, 6:05 p.m.—7:09; whole revised somewhat, 8:40 p.m.—9:01 THE BOAT BASIN, YEARS LATER the ice spread calmly near its heart but turbulently strained to its extremities, in every middle zone still [clutching] trapping arms and legs (portions of metal chairs half visible, reaching through the ice, thrust up or down, depending on the drama [played] that had played). No face approached me, not a hint, no shudder in the ground; and yet a memory of peopled autumn chairs came by: poolside sponsors doing on their sailboat [crew, crew, bank] tenders when suddenly midwinter came, QUICK as forgotten pain, [they panicked] [ousting] whishing panic on both resting watchers (and their [innocent band] [dripping] shirtsleeve crew, [*change dripping*] [*26 Feb. 79: line by itself*] some dashing with their chairs into the pool, some wading out--precisely when the water froze. No movement in the bodies led me on, and over my shoulder, a noontime certainty declared the others would be gone: the woodcutters, the bundled loungers in the sun. I let go of the pool, measured its drift by throwing a small, clean rock dead center. I set my watch by the nearest public clock, heading home. "](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/8/7/5/875082c2-0dc5-4a1f-a8fa-f6329bdf7414/attachment/2c503591ef72cc8438d478194c2cb029.jpg)
Draft, THE BOAT BASIN, YEARS LATER 2
!["Partial fair copy of poem begun 19 Jan. 79, av. Du Maine, Paris, 20.1.79, 10:50 a.m.—11:37; 11:45—12:00; 3:22—4:24 (with changes) THE BOAT BASIN, YEARS LATER A January moon, almost, and flat-blue sky from the Obelisk down to the Louvre beckoned me up thin, white steps and past a rigid dog sniffing an icy footprint melting in the sand, past woodcutters bent over in a truck, unmoving, as if to hide behind their planted cross: it said historic trees were cut to guard the public’s ... the missing word had smashed the corner of the sign. It was in front of me somewhere, the Boat Basin, floating up-- no, I was stepping downward-- [those] more disappearing footprints fitting mine, loosening beneath the sun, stopping. Looking up, I saw them scattered around me, people sitting bent and curved like deep-freeze packages slow thawing in [a] some drafty door propped open, their scarves poked out for breathing, their bones all angles, gloved and padded, positioned as if for a vigil. Partly guided by their gaze, I kept [the] a chosen path until the Boat Basin widened in my eyes, ten years of sudden changer [dropping] beaming like icicles dropping silently around the border of the pool, breaking fitful gleams across my sinking memory of sailboats out of hand, their gleeful little captains by turns awestruck and then distressed to see their bobbling colors drawn away, drifting to the center of the sea-- and if brought back by stratagems [somewhere buried] of strangers in the crowd, they anchored changed, less ownable for having sailed away alone. The dead of [winter this [undecipherable] time] winter tightened by brow its changing spirit [undecipherable] warmest at the center of the pool [*put on line alone*] in the bending statue there pouring Sea God potions into the Boat Basin, keeping its heart alive, companionable, [but] while its slowly pulsing ripples, circling outward, stopped suddenly on ice, [recoiling from the frozen scene] recoiling from the frozen scene I inward saw, and outward woke to like a little dream: "](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/3/0/1/30192152-3879-4021-bd65-b74d649fbe02/attachment/dc398c5506f71026b9b19e5b53455d44.jpg)
Draft, THE BOAT BASIN, YEARS LATER 1
BETWEEN LOVES: A TRAIN FROM LONDON 3
BETWEEN LOVES: A TRAIN FROM LONDON 2
BETWEEN LOVES: A TRAIN FROM LONDON 1
Breakaway Haiku For Racists Remembered
![1st draft, 55 Sinclair Rd, London, 22 July 1978, 2:08 p.m.—3:13; 3:50—5:32.
Changed 24 July, 11:40 a.m.—12:07
THE ONE YOU CAN’T FORGET: A TRAIN FROM LONDON
Riding backwards, [too late to change,]
I felt her opposite me,
[her lipstick something I remembered
Warm as wine spilled on my lips]
strange her [second] doubled self [a shadowed] in tranquil window-box outhinged,
glassframed, [and] floatfixed in my lucid eye
that saw it sharp as Paddington and Royal Oak
[outside] gliding outside, photo-real
[from] on stations [for each mind] to cling to,
like friends at destination Reading, [friends to cling to,]
[minutes left] twenty minutes left for [patchwork] picture[s], patchwork,
[clicking back] clickbacks to those lively whiles and [times] aches between
now focused on a dizzy track of life outside
that snatched my window-watching to [a] its stream
that [climbed] flashed across the glassy face and arms
of her whose placid self
ranged with me knee to knee,
her outdoor countenance alive
beneath the hordes that slivered her:](https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/system/resource/3/e/4/3e49d202-48a5-4ee7-9f75-d9879ccbc888/attachment/ea5d906662758acda118bf16f2f6052c.jpg)
THE ONE YOU CAN'T FORGET: A TRAIN FROM LONDON
Three Chores, One Country Day 3