Read In The Garden Of The North American Martyrs for Free Online Page B

that. His books were very difficult and she might think him pedantic.
    â€œYou know,” she said, “I had a feeling I was going to see you tonight, either here or at the poetry reading.”
    â€œI didn’t know there was one,” Brooke said. “Who’s the poet?”
    â€œFrancis X. Dillon. Is he a friend of yours?”
    â€œNo. Why do you ask?”
    â€œWell, you’re both writers.”
    â€œI’ve heard of him,” Brooke said. “Of course.” Dillon’s poetry was very popular with Brooke’s younger students and with his wife’s mother. Brooke had picked up one of his books in a drugstore not long ago, intrigued by a blurb on the back claiming that the poet had been translated into twenty-three languages, including Hindu. As he turned the pages Brooke formed the image of a guru in a darkened cell reading these same dreadful verses by no other light than that of his own mystical aura. Now he thought it would be a shame to miss seeing Dillon in person.
    The room was large and overheated and so crowded that the two of them had to stand in the back. The poet was half an hour late but not one person left, even though the air was stuffy and smelled bad.
    Dillon arrived and without apology began to read. He was wearing a lumberjack shirt and a loose pair of khaki pants tied at the waist with a length of rope. All of the poems were about trees. They seemed to be saying that people had a lot to learn from trees. Trees were natural and uninhibited and didn’t find it necessary to build roads and factories all over the place.
    The principle by which the poems were arranged eluded Brooke until, during a pause, Dillon remarked that they would now be moving up into the aspen country. Then Brooke realized that the poems were grouped according to elevation. They had begun the ascent at sea level with the coastal redwoods and they’d been climbing steadily ever since. Brooke’s attention wandered until finally the audience began to applaud; he joined in, assuming that they must have reached the timberline. Dillon read as an encore a very long piece which he described as “my other cedar poem,” and left the room without a word to anyone when he was through.
    â€œIsn’t he wonderful!” Ruth said, as they stood applauding the empty podium.
    Brooke gave a nod, the best he could manage.
    She was not taken in. Later, at Lord George’s, the bar where Ruth had suggested they go for a drink, she asked him why he didn’t like the poems. He sensed that she was close to tears.
    â€œI did like them,” he said. “In fact, I loved them.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œOh yes. I thought they were extraordinary.”
    â€œSo did I,” Ruth said, and began to describe her reactions to particular poems that Dillon had read. Brooke wondered why she had brought him to this place, with shields and maces and broadswords on the walls. She had said he would love it. What did that mean?
    â€œAnother thing I like about his poetry,” Ruth said, “is you don’t feel like killing yourself after you’ve read it.”
    â€œThat’s true,” Brooke said. He noticed that two men at a nearby table were staring at her. They probably thought she was his wife. He could tell that they were wishing they were in his shoes.
    â€œI went to a play last year,” Ruth said, “a Shakespeare play, where this king gave everything away to his daughters—”
    â€œ King Lear .”
    â€œThat’s the one. And then they turned on him and left him with nothing and gouged his best friend’s eyeballs out and jumped on them. I don’t understand why anybody, especially a really good writer like Shakespeare, would dream up junk like that.”
    â€œLife,” Brooke said, “is not always uplifting.”
    â€œI know all about it,” Ruth said, “believe me. But why should I rub my nose in it? I like to read