Dear Patricia:
On your birthday, I must say ting that are lovely, break my heart in two; moonlight on still pools, you? I have written this to you before and it is still true. I was close to tears of pure joy and poignancy when I left you today – in fact the tears brimmed but I was able to take care of them.
You are still the most delightful young lady I know – this morning especially so – and though it may be futile for me to continue trying to make you believe that I know whereof I speak, you repeatedly you reinforce my confidence and justify me in the tenderness I feel for you. It doesn’t matter if you are convinced that you’ve discovered for yourself that your IQ is somewhere below 220. It is the things that you are – different from the common elements that I observe as readily in others that make you a shining personality to me.
You stand with your feet planted firmly in the earth of genuine reality; you are so ingenious that you can’t see yourself in a mirror through the eyes of another such as me (and that makes you very dear). You hold your head high – many heads higher than your stature suggests – up where the minds of truth blow freer than most persons even know them; You look at another person directly and unabashedly without guile, for in the presence of anyone at all honest, you have no need for guile, but only sweetness and light and genuineness, and you breathe the sweet clean air of pure poetry, one of the greatest gifts of all. In this your “antennae” are as selective as those of the delicate little creatures we were discussing – and as pure as what you seek!
How else could you be so appreciative [page 2] of the spontaneous musical expression of your friend, Mike (correct name?) that he relaxed in your presence and played and played and played? How else could you know that to attempt to formalize him would only destroy the fine spirit that he has revealed to you?
And your poem of self identification with the beauty of the world of interrelation between tiny insects and flowers that you read to me. Such things are born only of souls that are nurtured on beauty and the poetry of life. And such souls are so rare! No matter how much of mundane living they must share for “practical” purposes with other persons (and no matter how good and genuine these others may be in the their contexts of living) These rare expressions of poetic insight that permit one to cross the finite barriers of physical individuality and see the essential unity in all things are what more than anything else I hope to awaken in those who take my classes. Yes they remain extremely rare. Perhaps this is why I feel they are so precious and why I feel so honored and so humbled in being accepted into their circles of friendship. This is why I feel as I do in your presence, and why I treasure so the relationship you have entrusted to me. You are, in my eyes, one of the precious ones! But I have said enough.
Except for one thing. Please do let me help you work over your poems of past years before the papers on which they are written become damaged to the point that some of the content is lost. I know that I can preserve all of the delicacy and beauty inherent in your verses so that you may – as you wish – submit them, free from the chance blemish of the language of one still grasping toward maturity – and more will be able to read them without seeing their beauty and being touched by it. With abundant love and affection – as you will understand – Carl.
For Patricia
Who has known heights and depths
Shall not again know peace.
Not as the calm heart knows,
Four ivied walls, a garden close,
The old enchantment of a rose,
And though he walk
The humble ways of men
He shall not speak
the common tongue again.
Who has known heights
Shall hear forevermore
And incommunicable things
That hunts his heart
As though a wing
Beat at the portal challenging;
And yet – lured by the gleam
His vision wore
Who once has trodden stars –
Seeks peace no more!
Author? (c.d.c.)
Dr. Carl Duncan and Patricia Whiting Collection (SJSU)
