Russell –

I’m sending you three. The first, “Beyond Seventy”, is obvious.

The second, “Rainy Day in the Library”, recalls one All Saints’ Day when I was in the Southport Library and became aware of the books around me, recalling Hebrews 12 – “Seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses”.

The third,” Erato Oversleeps Again”, refers(as you probably know) to the muse of lyric poetry, and to Deucalion, the Greek parallel to Noah. He and his wife Pyorrhea were forewarned by Zeus of his impending deluge, and made a watertight chest in which they enclosed themselves. Afterwards, instructed by the Delphic Oracle, they gathered stones and cast them over their backs.

His stones became men, hers women, and humanity was given a fresh start. Hope you enjoy them.

BeyondSeventy.doc
RainyDayintheLibrary.doc
Erato.doc

Dear Tom,

Thank you for sending the three poems. It is Beyond Seventy that I
like the best, consider the strongest. I sent them on to Ed, I think.

Something about your transmission by attachment caused two or three computer crashes however. Possibly if you could load and send them without the attachment mode it would eliminate a crash here. The crash happened when I tried to transmit the poems to Ed though, so it may be that as long as you send them to him by cc, everything will work out. I did not see Ed’s
address in the cc box. His address again is hettig@edhettig.com.

I look forward to seeing the poems in the website. I would like it if
you sent Ed a bit of an autobiography introducing yourself to readers.
I used to say partly in jest, that wisdom is no compensation for youth
is something the poem reminds me of. When I think of it further I think
that you almost don’t get old if you’re not wise in the first place.

At any rate I am very pleased with the fact that the poem causes me to think
about the changing state of ourselves, and the nature of it.

Russell