From Lowell’s Notebook 1967-68, which I am trying to finish a paper on, this poem
Robert Lowell: Mania: 1958
Remember standing with me in the dark,
Ann Adden? In the wild house? Everything -
I mad, you mad for me? And brought my ring,
that twelve-carat lunk of gold there . . . my Joan of Arc,
undeviating then from the true mark -
robust, ah taciturn! Remember our playing
Marian Anderson in Mozart’s Shepherd King,
Il Re Pastore there? O Hammerheaded Shark,
the Rainbow Salmon of the World, your hand
a rose – not there, a week earlier! We stand. . . .
We ski-walked the eggshell at the Mittersill,
Pascal’s infinite, perfect, fearful sphere -
the border nowhere, your center everywhere. . . .
And if I forget you, Ann, may my right hand . . .
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