Not a letter. A sheet of poems. I don't think I copied these. They are by Robert Burns (John Anderson, my jo, John), some Edwin Markham (He drew a circle that shut me out - heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in!).

I wonder if that's why I kept taking in lost boys.

And a couple of others about fate and forgetting. One of them by Charles Hanson Towne, whoever he is, ending with: "'Here's a telegram, sir...' 'Jim died today.'"

They remind me of the deathless poetry written by Lisa Simpson some years ago, the meat of which I don't remember, but the refrain is stuck in my head forever. "They died. They died."

The last one - it's longish - I'll copy it out, because I just Googled it and the author is unknown. Deservedly so, I think. Such drivel - but it's the kind of thing to swell the hearts of young romantics and ruin their lives forever. Heh heh heh.

Two shall be born, the whole wide world apart,
And speak in different tongues and have no thought
Each of the other's being, and no head;
And these, o'er unknown seas, to unknown lands
Shall cross, escaping wreck, defying death;
And all unconciously shape every act
And bend each wandeering step to this one end -
That one day out of darkneww they shall meet
And read life's meaning in each other's eyes.

(and if that weren't bad enough - it goes on...)

And two shall walk some narrow way of life
So nearly side by side that, should one turn
Even so little space to left or right,
They needs must stand acknowledged, face to face,
And yet, with wistful eyes that never meet,
And groping hands that never clasp, and lips
Calling in vain to ears that never hear,
They seek each other all their weary days
And die unsatisfied - and this is fate."

And I, dear reader, am so resolved to bare my deepest, most shameful secrets that I reprint the thing here to reveal the awful fact that I must have, at one moment in my life, found this meaningful.