McNair to Hall: October 31, 1982

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October 31, 1982 Dear Don, I hope you and Joey like the enclosed. If you both do, please let me know and keep it. If there are reservations, I will just wait and return to it later. Writing is ‘going fine’ in spite of all my teaching and other duties! I remain on my daily schedule! Love, Wes

Editorial note about this letter: The unnamed poem referred to is “The Minister’s Death.”

Here is the text of “The Minister’s Death” as sent to Hall:

That long fall,
when the voices stopped
in the tweed mouth
of his radio, and sermons
stood behind the door
of his study in files
no one would ever again inspect,
and even the black shoes
and vestments, emptied of him,
were closed away,
they sat together Sundays
in the house, now hers —
the son wearing his suit
and water-combed hair,
and mother in a house dress,
cradling the dead
man’s cane. Somewhere
at the edge of the new
feeling just beginning
between them, floorlamps
bloomed triple bulbs
and windowsills sagged
with African violets,
and the old woman,
not knowing exactly how
to say his face looked lovely
in the chair, framed
by a white aura
of doily, said nothing
at all. And the son,
not used to feeling
small inside the great
shoulderpads of his suit,
looked down at the rugs
on rugs to where the trees kept
scattering the same, soft
puzzle of sunlight
until, from time to time,
she found the words
of an old dialogue they both
could speak:”How has the weather
been this week? What time
did you start out from Keene?”