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- W H AUDEN

"Septeine it, it is always a perfect suh in a vivid blue sky It was su what the weather was like, or even if it happened during the day Soht, but he wasn’t there either Perhaps his iht sun, a blue sky, and a scattering of cottony clouds

They are on the open porch of a white clapboard farmhouse Sometimes I see them inside, seated at a pine table in the kitchen, but lass pitcher filled with aon the porch drinking salty dogs

So hands, or with their arms around one another’s waists She has had a lot to drink, and it makes her boisterous and flamboyant and a little unsteady on her pins She s, and laughs at the whole world

Or I’ll see the at the bank of a streao who always painted idealized rustic scenes, with barefoot shepherds andin nature He could have painted this particular figination

And now they are naked, there by the strearass

My iination is limited in this area, or perhaps it is simply a respecter of privacy All it provides is a close-up of her face Expressions play on her face, and they are like newspaper articles in drea out of focus just before I can read them

Then he shows her the knife Her eyes widen, and sooes out of them And a cloud moves to cover the sun

That’s how I iination comes very close to actual circumstances How could it? Even eyewitness testi from an eyewitness I’ve never seen the farm I don’t even know if there’s a strearaphs I’ at one of those photos now, and it seems to me that I can almost see the play of expressions on her face, and her eyes widening But of course I can see no such thing As with all photographs, all I can see is a ic picture You can’t read the past in it, or the future If you turn it over you can read ain it’s the sa into the ca to tell you any secrets

I know I’ve looked at it long enough

There are three proanizations for actors in New York, and years ago an actor named Maurice Jenkins-Lloyd had suentle to be actors The Laentle to be both"

I don’t knohich category Jenkins-Lloyd belonged in When I knew hi to be sober He used to drink at Ar’s, which used to be on Ninth Avenue between Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth His drink was Dewar’s and soda, and he could drink it all day and all night without showing it ly, never fell off his chair Toward the end of an evening he ht slur his words some, but that was about it Player, Laentle us It’s not the first cause of death you think of for alcoholics, but it doesn’t seem to happen to other people I don’t know exactly what causes it, whether it’s the cuullet for all those years or the strain of voht of Maurice Jenkins-Lloyd in a long ti on the second floor of what used to be the La on West Forty-fourth had soer afford, and they had sold the property and shared space with another club soht the property, and it now housed an experi with facilities for other church activities On Thursday nights, the Fresh Start group of Alcoholics Anony rooot there about ten ram chairman I helped ht or ten six-foot tables arranged in an open rectangle, and my seat was at the far end froht-thirty there were about thirty-five people sitting around the tables and drinking coffee out of Styrofoa and read the preamble, then called on so Book There were a few announceroup anniversary in Murray Hill, a new roup thatits next two s because of the Jewish holidays

Then the chairht is Matt, from Keep It Simple"

I was nervous, of course I’d been nervous from the minute I walked into the place I’, but it passes When he’d introduced me there was a round of polite applause, and when it died down I said, "Thanks My name is Matt, and I’one, and I sat there and told my story

I talked for about twenty minutes I don’t remember what I said Essentially what you do is tell what it used to be like, what happened, and what it’s like now, and that’s what I did, but it comes out different every time you tell it

Soh for cable television They’ll tell you how they were down and out in East St Louis and now they’re president of IBM with rising expectations I don’t have that kind of story to tell I still live in the sa The difference is I used to drink and now I don’t, and that’s about as inspirational as I get

When I finished there was another round of polite applause, and then they passed a basket and everyone put in a dollar or a quarter or nothing at all toward the rent and the coffee There was a five- resus; here they went around the roo