The Scene

Thank you for the compliment. I will assume
it is partly sincere. And soon, when I compliment
your work, I will try hard to be sincere.
Thus our relations will be cordial--thus we may be grateful
for the social scene that prompts from us these compliments.
But what I want--ten or eleven years from now
you stand at a window, early on a winter morning;
it is a week or a month after the death of
someone you knew well; you gaze out upon the chill stiff scene
of trees and stone walls, gray and black and gray. . .
Admire my work then. Love it then.