Telegrams of the Soul

October Sunday

A steamy sun-drenched quiet afternoon. I sit and write. Somebody knocks at the door. “Please do not disturb me, I must be alone!”

“Gee, Peter, I really just wanted to chitchat with you, it’s so boring today, do you have office hours, are you poetizing?”

“Why the irony? Yes, I’m poetizing.”

“But Peter, you’re not some kind of manual laborer, thank God you’ve got no steady job, you can go right back to composing your poetry undisturbed in two hours when I’m gone!?”

“Just try it some time, you don’t seem to understand much about this kind of work!”

“That’s a new one, a poet who keeps office hours and refuses to receive a friend who’d just like to pleasantly chitchat with him. It’s not like your impressions are going to evaporate away! Or are they?!”

“Would you ever think of troubling a lawyer, a doctor, a bank director while he was engaged in his work?!”

“Engaged in his work, Peter, come off it, yours isn’t work in the ordinary sense of the word, it’s a distraction, an amusement!”

“Do you wish to impede my distraction, my amusement with your pleasant chitchat?!”

“See you ’round, Peter, you’re downright ungrateful to your admirers, but nobody takes you seriously, thank God. Adieu. Poet! I don’t want to be the cause of the world’s missing out on something! So long.”