Franco Beltrametti

 

Dear Jack Spicer

          I watch with curiosity and surprise faces bodies words
as you know I write you from outside San Francisco
          and other objects surface from the past, float towards
some 4 hours drive east
          a crowded place called future, while sitting
I don’t know how patient you are
          on a bamboo chair in a basement
but I know you are dead
          the starry Berkeley winter evening is the present
Groucho Marx said he would never enter a club
          plans & tickets always need adjustments
that would accept him as a member
          “the ghosts the poems were written for”
so it is January and I am alone
          “cannot hear the noise they have been making”
I greet your small vocabulary
          regarding past present and future
that lamp that horse that continent

                                                                1-7/1/75