Face to Face With the Mystery

You would, I guess, have to be here and to see that just a month ago Andrew couldn’t read anything aloud and had a lot of trouble with any sort of coherent critical thinking to realize how astonishing these Three Sonnets for Yukio Mishima are.

His brain, besieged by tumors, his body wasting away (he weighs in at close to 130 now on a 6’3” frame) must have rerouted critical functions so that he could conceive of, and then execute these three linked metrical pieces this week.

My own theory is that all those years he spent up all night tinkering with various metrical challenges have really paid off. He dug a groove in his brain pan that stuck around even when verbally the man has trouble getting out the right proper noun.

It is a wonderfully hopeful sign for us all. That even at our end the poetry can still be there, challenging us, driving us and abiding with us.

What a difficult and magical time this is being, each day steeped in the wild waters of the big mystery.