A Faithful Account of Where I Live: The Letters of Cid Corman and William Bronk

1 May 69

Dear Cid,

I started on a short walk after dinner but when I had gone a little way I met my friends the moon-watchers whom I told you about last summer or fall. They had started too early, they told me, and the moon was not due for a time. I said I'd be home before then; but after I left then I put an extension on my route and was going along the railway when the moon came up in the still light sky-no more solid than a wash of pink color across a flower petal. But I stood still there for awhile and watched the tree branches move down across it as if it were true as it is said, that the earth is like a great globe turning against the sky.

I saw a muskrat making a V-shaped ripple for yards and yards along the canal as he swam to his hole and ducks flew up from the swamp like mechanical ducks whose button had been pressed and the wild cherries were frantic with white blossom in the chill air, and, as I got to the bottom of the Fives [Locks on the Hudson River described in "Displacement: The Locks on the Feeder Called THE FIVE COMBINES"] there were three children hurrying away (I suppose they had been told to be home before dark). They had three pickerel, one sucker and two perch in a pail and the little girl had caught one of them. I motioned to the east and asked the oldest child, as if secretly, had he seen the moon and the surprise of it picked his lock: he was wholly open and defenseless for just a moment as he said yes.

If you use that poem about Charles Carleton's ["The Use-Unuse of Us"] let the last line read

us, Charles. No use to. We ask ourselves.