258.

where he can stay with Tibetans—Lamas perhaps; perhaps little Bro will become a monk.

One is caught, anywhere one is.

Many folk resent poetry because they're closed off from it.
Poetry is hermetic. The sense of composition: every artist's hidden weapon.
A house is also a composition. And all T.S. Eliot had to do was to *compose* a few elements—collage is above all composition.

We are literally encircled by barking dogs, a canine chorus. The only thing that makes them tolerable is their intermittence, you know they'll stop sometime, if only to irritatingly start echoing each other again. I refuse to complain of human voices; only of those of the dogs. I hate them all. Lovely to be able to use the word hate without guilty feelings.

To love and tolerate one person in life is about as much as one can stand. But how one needs that one!

To love him as I do myself, he's the nearest I'll come to it . . . it could breed questions too . . . a relation that breeds none at all is not a living one . . . no comfort in life away from people who care for you. . . .

We accept ourselves as we find ourselves, that's the trouble. And it's mostly all we can do.

Vishnu, exuberant

Object (with the cows). Blood-heated

Piece of flesh.

259.

The Block, with Krishna, must be mental rather than physical—he's responded physically too often for there to be a question of inhibitions—the inhibitions on his part, and rightly so, are _social_. Never fear defeats—they teach us what we don't already know.

We played on my bed in some loving ways—he didn't get a beat on and for that matter neither did I. But it was all affectionate and he _said_ he loved me and would like to be with me always and would make hotcakes for me tomorrow morning and would sleep with me when the larger bed arrives. What more can I ask? . . . Sexual desire or not, love is there. It's inappropriate to subject him to too much demonstrativeness. Naturally he says Yes to everything; the more I play it like a game, which I do, the more he'll play along with me. He's captured and I'm hooked. We'll take wine where we find it. A lesson in happiness. If your life _too_ isn't a work of art, forget it.

And if you've got it, flaunt it . . . _divine economy now fairly ruled_. James's celibacy counted for a lot.

Three species of birds, small, medium and large perch in the chinaberry tree with its dried berries attached. Not so much the sound itself, but what the sound signifies, utter imbecility in the case of a dog, and utter imposition in the case of an aeroplane.

Nice to have had, as Henry James dubbed them, 'the inimitable France and the incomparable Italy . . .' but nothing ever proves enough.

Krishna's over there erasing and blowing on the page, he's studying his lesson, reading and copying in a dim light, black eyelashes against a brown skin: he's my startling good fortune. You see your life's pattern at last. 'From Greece?' he asked, when I showed him the four missives

260.

found in the mail box today. He's dreaming wide-awake of that Grecian
land to where I've promised to take him. If only London held any glamor
for me—no city does, I've exhausted them all, imagined all that I did
not experience of their possibilities. The new American Consul looks like
a bumpkin, I'm hoping he'll raise no barriers to granting Krishna a U.S. visa.

Little Chandra came up to the table at which I sat at USIS library.
'Where's your horse?' I asked, seeing him with crop and riding hat. He's
the one for taking up something new at every opportunity.

'Quarter past nine,' says Krishna, meaning, It's bedtime.

He needs a servant but at the moment no suitable one is in sight.

What an elaborate system of wedding feasts the Nepalis have—close
to a thousand people gracefully served by elegant members of the family
in glittering saris, pouring your liquor over and over from long-stemmed
silver pitchers—into small clay saucer-like cups—the pouring begins
with the pitcher's spout near the saucer-cup, the pitcher is then raised
several feet and the thin stream goes straight into the foaming receptacle,
not a drop being spilt. These clay cups, after the feast, are thrown away.
The food (thirty courses) is dished out on plates made of large leaves, all
disposable. One eats with one's fingers, no knives, forks or spoons. So
there's no vaiselle to stack up—only the pots and pans and ladles are
left in need of washing, and no chairs or tables are required—the guests
in rows, crosslegged on mats.

It's obvious that we live more in a family relationship than in
a master-servant ambience. I'm in authority, I pay for everything, I take
care of him in every way, and he renders me the duties and obligations that
a son would render a father. It's a situation of mutual care and caring.

261.

We're in it together. He feels he's doing the environmental thing, never
questions it, or he'd be questioning the entire tradition here—so
different than tradition in, for example, the United States of America.
I'm availing myself of his availability, and I do not feel that I'm
exploiting him—I'm bettering rather than further degrading a human being . . .
by their excess . . . one knew them . . . as one for that matter only knew
things in general worth knowing. Would he want to be tattooed? Wear a
gold earring? **Tennyson was not Tennysonian.** And that was a fact of life.
But Gertrude Stein was very Gertrudian. Krishna considers me semi-
omnipotent and with limitless means. The word James uses for Tennyson's
poetry-reading style: spout.

My vicious love, my
Necessity. Not drink, not
Drugs, but nameless boys.

A boy named Krishna: a creative endeavor, inspiring to the point of
folly. A graceless life, life would be without him. Let's feel all we
can—it's all true if you do . . . and God knows that I have no time to
waste.

He's a joyful bird,
My choice, my need, my life.
Echoes sustain and haunt.

One's youth, recalled with nostalgia—but **not** the naivete that went
with it . . . I turned to Europe . . . with what indefinite yet inspiring
intentions.

His hand around my cock last night was firm as a wedding ring. And
it's not a question of which is better but which do you want.