The following poem came in the mail the other day. According to its author, Chris McDonnell, a retired headteacher in the UK, a slightly different version of it was published in the Merton Journal in the UK shortly after Robert Lax’s death in 2000. It’s language and rhythms capture the feeling of the “anti-letters” Lax and Merton sent to each other over several decades. (Chauncey was one of the playful names they used to address each other.)
Patmos Poet
O Chauncey
Its sorrows
Now
for everyone
My letters
from islands
chased
your letters
from pine
tree bottoms
paper voices
through whole
dark
night
here
or there
The sorrows
is now
done plenty
these other
letters
tells
the story
friends, faces
we knew
or just
peoples
who read
the books
us
is just
words
to them
but us
was
to us
much more
than that.
