Endnote

I come from a long line of people
like me;
they are me
andering through the woods, lost.

I came back from where I’d been
to discover dead the man I was
hed clean with soapstone and with gravity.
Had I not polished the bastard
ization of his autobiography to where
you could read it from the start to the end
note, he might also have been myself
ish image.

But neither, when I found him, was he alone
ly man in life, as far as I have been;
he had loved a little, lost, and loved again,
and looking on his life, I pity hym
nals that focus merely on the extra
ordinary love of God, ignoring the everyday
expression of that very love—
I mean that between a woman and a man
ageable man.

Whoever wrote those hymns, I think,
had more in common with this author
ized version of his autobiography
than with the man himself.