My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise,

a captive as Racine, the man of craft,

drawn through his maze of iron composition

by the incomparable wandering voice of Phèdre.

When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body

caught in its hangman's-knot of sinking lines,

the glassy bowing and scraping of my will. . . .

I have sat and listened to too many

words of the collaborating muse,

and plotted perhaps too freely with my life,

not avoiding injury to others,

not avoiding injury to myself--

to ask compassion . . . this book, half fiction, 

an eelnet made by man for the eel fighting 



my eyes have seen what my hand did.