SIMOhe poet at the Iional Arrivals Building, holding one hand behind him. The nine-hour Finnair flight from Helsinki has been ex?hausting, but she has met A, B, d D -- Russias so fabulously gifted that none of them has been allowed to publish so much as a weather report. "Thats terrific," he says. "You look beautiful." "They all speak English," she says, "this half-misuood English which is three times as good as regular English." She notices that he is holding something be?hind his back. "Whats that?" He produces a large, eak, a steak big as a Sunday Times. She is em?barrassed and pops the steak into her vas carryall. "I do your metaphor," she says in the cab. "Is it hunger?"
Shes right, it is hunger. Dont tell her.
They sit in her kit. "The burning barns in your poems," he says, "why so many? Isnt that a little. . . repetitive?" "My burning barns," she says, "my splendid burning barns, Ill burn as many barns as I damn please, Pappy." He is older than she is, by ten years, and she has given him this not altogether wele niame. She looks absolutely stunning, a black three-quarter-length skirt embossed with black bird figures, a knitted sleeveless jacket, a yellow long-sleeved blouse, a red ascot. "Seriously, do you think there are too many? Barns?" Its the first time she has asked his opinion about anything ected with her work. "I was half teasing," he says. "But they did burn," she says. "Every one Ive ever known." "Simon says," Simon says, "Simon needs a beer." She rises and moves to fetch a St. Pauli Girl from the refrigerator.
The poet lives in the try, in an old Putnam ty farmhouse that she has not touched except to paint the walls pale blue. She has painted over the old aper, and the walls puff and wrinkle in places. The furniture is junk golden oak, one piece to a room except i, where there is a table and two mis?matched chairs. "This one is Biedermeier," the poet says, "from my mother, and the other, the potato-chip jobbie, is Eames, from my father. That tell you any?thing?"
Simon takes the train from Graral to Put?nam ty. He doesnt like the train, almost always in miserable repair and without air ditioning, aes ging at Croton, the rush from orain to another more like a stampede than anything else, but the views of the stately Hudson from the discolored windows are wonderful, and when he alights at Garri?son at the end of this trip she is sitting on the hood of her circus-red Toyota pickup, drinking apple juice from a paper cup.
The poet sings to him:
Row, row, row your bed
Gently dowream. . .
THE professional whistlers wife calls and says that if the resident bitches and tarts doheir hands off her husband she will cause a tragic hap?penstance.
"Sounded a little pissed," Anne says.
"These housewives," says Veronica, "I guess you t blame them they dont have the latitude."
Dore says, "Let her e around, her ass is grass."
"Simon is passive."
"I dont think hes so passive he grasps you very tightly. I think the quality of the embrace is important."
"I think hes more active than passive. Im still sore. I dont call that passive."
"Hes at a strange pla his life."
"Youre like one of those people who have tiny little insights of no sequence."
"The hell you say."
"Youre like one of those people who have weird fig?urative growths on their minds that e out in dismal exfoliations."
"Youre funnin me."
"Youre like one of tho