James Schuyler

Tuesday, October 30, 1990

The sky at 6 clear and gray as blotting paper, a sky for which the loud unmodulated grind of a garbage truck is the fitting music on the right instrument.
Tomorrow morning Tim Dlugos is going to be interviewed, and to read part of his long poem just published in The Paris Review, on one of the morning talk shows—”Good Morning America,” I believe it’s called. If only this were not in a segment called “Living with AIDS”! His latest affliction is one suffered only by people with AIDS and birds, which causes his temperature to go rocketing up and up. A line of Stevens kept coming into my mind: “Dying lady, rejoice! rejoice!” How can he? Why should he? Because he’s going to Abraham’s bosom? Bur he’d prefer to stay in his Christopher’s arms.

from The Diary of James Schuyler, ed. Nathan Kernan, Black Sparrow Press, 1997