Read Online After the Stroke by May Sarton - Free Book Online Page A

letters!
    I had such a good talk with Carol on the phone just before six—she thinks I am right to go out and do poetry readings whatever the risk. That gave me a boost. I think she understands my slow starvation these past months and reading the poems will help give me back the person I have lost.
    Carol was interesting about Frances Partridge—saying she was never the central person to herself —and that I have been that and am that. Yes, if I can write poetry again—ever again. For to be the central person for oneself implies that one is somehow the servant of something greater than oneself.

Wednesday, July 9
    Well, the old heart is out of sync, fibrillating and running about 140 a minute—so I’m back to square one and determined to get Dr. Petrovich to agree on the operation at Massachusetts General which would free me, I hope, from the long struggle.
    We are having a heat wave, although today there is less humidity and it is quite bearable.
    I must go back to Monday because I got back a little of the magic of this place when all was ready, champagne on ice, glasses, a plate of cookies, for Bill Heyen and Han and Bill Ewart who brought one of their boys. I sat down as I have not done lately, watching the light dancing in the leaves of the lilac, and feeling happy and at peace, glad that friends would soon be here. And such good friends. Bill Heyen is one of the very few poets I know now. I admire his work, tender, deep and authentic as it is, and I love him, great blond man. And of course Bill Ewart is the magician who imagines and prints the Christmas poem for me and once a little book of poems—and will do another tiny book next year. So all was festive for their arrival, even to a blue sea—and we had a good talk. I’m afraid Han, slight and shy, was disappointed in the garden—there is so little to see these days. But the Japanese iris are coming out!
    And suddenly this afternoon a huge bunch of flame-colored roses arrived from Laurie Shields way off in San Francisco at the Older Women’s League.
    Bill’s son, who has a sheltie, was dear with Tamas, stroking and talking to him just as though he were a person, as indeed he is.
    Lucy just called from Dr. Petrovich’s office—he is going to get hold of Dr. Ruskin, the “guru” for this operation, so at last I may get well soon! Unbelievable!

Friday, July 11
    But now it seems Dr. Ruskin is away until the end of August—and Dr. P. is trying to get in touch with his assistant, Hasan Caran. I meanwhile feel awfully sick and abandoned this week end, still having to take the infernal medicine. And it is an almost perfect July day, warm and dry, the air so clear everything is in sharp outline.
    How can I ever tell all the people who have sent flowers? Today a charming blue and white arrangement in a basket, very pale yellow lilies, iris, some little soft flowers in button-shaped branches that look like a wild flower, and harebells! The latter seem like magic in a florist’s bouquet—this one from Dorothy Peck whom I have never met, but we talk occasionally on the phone.
    Flowers and the telephone have kept me from despair. Jabber called from St. Louis yesterday. Pat Keen calls every morning from Los Angeles.
    I have forgotten to speak of the good night sounds, the steady pulse of the crickets and gentle sea murmurs in the distance—and the other night I was kept awake by a mockingbird who sang the three songs he had learned without stopping from midnight to three! It was a mixed pleasure although one of the songs, a curious chuck-chuck between arias, reminded me of a nightingale.
    [And where and when did I get to know the nightingale’s song? At Grace Dudley’s in Vouvray. Her house was called Le Petit Bois, and in that little wood we once walked out in moonlight and heard six nightingales. That was just after World War II in the forties, an eon ago.]

Wednesday, July 16
    A lot of days