[After nine years without writing verse, Patrick Creagh, now living in Italy, was engaged in a verse correspondence by the painter George d'Almeida. These poems are Creagh's side of this correspondence. Parts 10 and 12 he composed in Spanish, and Michael Schmidt has provided translations. The sections retain the numbering of the original correspondence.]

2.
QUESTION OR ANSWER
What shall I sing?
 (the tongue is severed)
O Lord how long?
But this is my psalm:
 (by a dry river
 a voiceless song)

4.
To a different conversation,
I don't know what as yet, but one
that doesn't seem to be trying; and a tone
more suited to my age and station.

For art is a house,
Emily Dickinson said, that tries to be haunted.
I have found not even words can be hunted
by a game of cat and mouse.

So there is nothing for it
but to build our house and wait. Who can tell
...