Tom Thomson in Limbo
Each thing done is a thousand things not done:
to read Frost is to not-read Henry James
or Keats and/or Rimbaud or Heisenberg ...
(Calculus floors him. Physics spins his mind
beyond all equilibrium.) But worse,
to read anyone else's books is to
not-write his own. But why, when others' songs
fill all the airwaves full, should lack of song
on his own part make him feel shameful so?
If every ear already is stuffed dumb,
why want a voice? (He knows what she'd suggest:
pure egotism.) "In silence can man best
preserve his own integrity," fortune
from fortune cookie say. "And he say " ."
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