by the Central Falls Free Public Library
and discovered by me (taking the mean words
as they give themselves out: am I not central
to myself when I scour the margins? and free
falling, if not yet fallen free? and public
precisely in the library sense?), turning
up just when it had been turned down, discarded

by the Central Falls Free Public Library
then: REFERENCES FOR LITERARY WORKERS
with introduction to topics and questions
for debate, Chicago, 1884
(page 80, torn out, found October 13,
1929). So was I - one among
other facts which as such need no sense, data

like that detached page, lost the 45 years
of my life and found on “my” - someone’s - birthday…
Adoption is that human act which alloys
accident and intention. Hence my saying
I was “found,” come upon, invtented - found in
nature and not yet imitated by manm
as the old poets used to speak of invention.

Here was the question put to this literary
worker, providentially askd of the dopted
I liked to call myself, on the page restored:
Has the prevalence of fiction in modern
literature been, on the whole, a good thing?
References follow to Helps’ Friends in Council,
Hollander’s Everyday Topics, Friendman’s

On the Threshhold, Thwing’s Reading of Books,
Van Doren’s Mercantile Morals, and a Miss Willard’s
How to Win. Even Miss Willard, I wager,
will not help much, and Helps less, for the problem
on my pasted page, the question of fiction, is
not one of doctrine but opportunity.
We make coincidence the sign of ourselves,

provided it glistens with significance:
that lost-and-found leaf with the magical dates
becomes a page in my precis of process,
an event filled, even to overflowing,
with meaning - but meaning at large, not any
one meaning (to unify ourselves is, in
itself, a great mutilation; harmony

prevails in the soul only over ruins)…
The prevalence of lying - never to leave
the Masked Ball, never? never - is a good thing,
for nothing is true until we believe it
so well we know its being no longer lies
with us. It is to others we lie, and tell
(is this not one?) fictions only to ourselves.