Competence and confidence converged in him. He was an old man well-satisfied with life. From his garden, from his window, he was patient but not passive. Lifetimes--his own and those of the myriad of strangers whom he had touched and/or been touched by--spun like galaxies in his deep, reflective eyes. He was watching. He was listening, too. And leaning into the wooden frame, pushing back the branches and the tangle of ivy, he was intent in communicating something to me from inside there. Tapping on the glass and close enough to frost it from the fog of his last breath, the poet tried to converse with me from beyond the grave.
"This journal is not a mere literary diversion. The further I progress, reducing to order what my past life suggests, and the more I persist in the rigor of composition--of the chapters, of the sentences, of the book itself--the more do I feel myself hardening in my will to utilize, for virtuous ends, my former hardships. I feel their power." --Jean Genet
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