I had finished my sandwich and turned to go. He grabbed my arm and flung open his ledger.
"Listen to this," he said.
Spit at the altar,
Wait for the mortar shell;
Pencil-seller and suicide,
Child in the arms of a wrought-iron apple tree:
I do not know the face of God.
Totem poles and pews of silent men,
Fingers not meant to entwine sequaciously;
Exploding suns
Like amusement park balloons:
Light the way to Paradise.
"It's mine," he said. "Of course, it's only a fragment. It's an elegy to Henry Miller." I said I had to go. "Of course," he replied. "Come back any time. I'm always here, on the beach. If I'm not at school."
The major works of Henry Miller, I reflected much later, would always be locked up on rare book Erotica shelves and the keys bestowed to a spinster librarian. "Pornography and anarchism," I exclaimed bitterly, and longed for the bosom of Mother Advocate.