A Question of American Canon
On a winter night in South Carolina,
my friend Beecher,
by then 80,
reminisced
that Venerable Frost
had told him at Breadloaf
many summers before,
“John, don’t write any more
Nigger poems.
That subject is dead,
will resolve itself,
will pull you
into a mere footnote.
“Rather be Eternal.”
“And that’s what the bastard wanted most,”
Beecher sighed.
“Frost proved that most Americans’ hearts,
like most of their textbooks, won’t open
if you get specific.
Every time he neared a meaning,
`a burning barn,
a yellow wood,
or frozen lake,’
he cleared his throat and smiled;
enigmatically, of course.”
That February John rescued a camellia
caught in the gate.
One would need to be versed in perpetuity
not to believe
his ancestors Harriet and Henry Ward B.
wept,
buried far away,
near their Frosty neighbor.