To Robert Lowell

I had no right to talk of you that way,

Robert. An emigre's envy

Must have prompted me to mock

Your long depressions, weeks of terror,

Presumed vacations in the safety of the wards.

It was not from pride in my normalcy.

Insanity, I knew, was insinuating itself

In a thin thread into my very being

And only waited for my permission

To carry me into its murky regions.

And I was watchful. Like a lame man,

I used to walk upright to hide my affliction.

You didn't have to. For you it was permitted.

Not for me, a refugee on this continent

Where so many newcomers vanished without a trace.

Forgive me my mistake. Your will was of no use

Against an illness that held you like a stigma,

And beneath my anger was the vanity,

unjustifiable, of the humiliated. A bit belated,

I write to you across what separates us:

Gestures, conventions, idioms, mores.