Dear ----: Those who have wept in the darkness sometimes are rewarded with stray leaves blown inadvertently. Since your last I have [had] one of those few experiences that come,--ever, but which are almost sufficient in their very incompleteness. This was only last evening in a vaudeville show with -- -- -- --. -- -- -- -- has manifested charming traits before, but there has always been an older brother around. Last night--it sounds silly enough to tell (but not in view of his real beauty)--O, it was only a matter of light affectionate stray touches--and half-hinted speech. But these were genuine and in that sense among the few things I can remember happily. With -- -- -- -- you must think of someone mildly sober, with a face not too thin, but with faun precision of line and feature. Crisp ears, a little pointed, fine and docile hair almost golden, yet darker,--eyes that are a little heavy--but wide apart and usually a little narrowed,--aristocratic (English) jaws, and a mouth that [is] just mobile enough to suggest voluptuousness. A strong rather slender figure, negligently carried, that is perfect from flanks that hold an easy persistence to shoulders that are soft yet full and hard. A smooth and rather olive skin that is cool--at first. Excuse this long catalog--I admit it is mainly for my own satisfaction, and I am drunk now and in such state my satisfactions are always lengthy. When I see you ask me to tell you more about him for he is worth more and better words, I assure you. O yes, I shall see him again soon. The climax will be all too easily reached,--But my gratitude is enduring--if only for that _once_, at least, something beautiful approached me and as though it were the most natural thing in the world, enclosed me in his arm and pulled me to him without my slightest bid. And we who create must endure--must hold to spirit not by the mind, the intellect alone. These have no mystic possibilities. O flesh damned to hate and scorn! I have felt my cheek pressed on the desert these days and months too much. How old I am! Yet, oddly now this sense [of] age--not at all in my senses--is gaining me altogether unique love and happiness. I feel I have been thru much of this again and again before. I long to go to India and stay always. Meditation on the sun is all there is. Not that this isn’t enough! I mean I find my imagination more sufficient all the time. The work of the workaday world is what I dislike. I spend my evenings in music and sometimes ecstasy. I’ve been writing a lot lately. --/--/ I’m bringing much into contemporary verse that is new. I’m on a synthesis of America and its structural identity now, called _The Bridge_. --/--/ 137: TO WALDO FRANK _Cleveland, O._ _Feb. 27th, ’23_