Dear Cyndy,

Your essays haven't arrived yet. Just possibly there was
an error in the ZIP code (02478) of which the post office is 
very unforgiving; or perhaps the postman has delivered
your letter somewhere else. That's not unusual. We not infrequently
receive mail that belongs elsewhere.

I've been rereading the Wendell Berry poem, and looked him up
in Wikipedia, to understand a bit better what his intentions might
be. He is very much of a contemporary, four years younger than 
myself. Accordingly we have been exposed to the same political
and intellectual environment; and I hope you don't feel that I
"reject" the poem, when I reflect on the differences in our 
responses to it; I mean the differences in Berry's and my responses
to an environment that is presumably the same for us both.
I was struck by the account of the darkness 
of night as protection, which is pierced by the searchlight
of the pursuers. Unmistakably post-Edison, a world in which
darkness is not frightning, because it can be commuted to light
with the flick of a switch. And light itself is no longer the
herald of life and truth as it was in the eighteenth century,
again, because artificial illumination has blurred the boundary
of night and day. Society is very threatening; one retreats
from it into darkness; but that's no way to live.

I like the French poem also, pleased with myself that I could
read it without a dictionary. The early modern French seems to
me to have a particular charm of its own. The account of 
blissful domesticity reminded me of Hoelderlin's Abendphantasie
which I believe I translated for you recently, with the difference
that Plantin writes from within the milieu which he praises,
while Hoelderlin is forever the outsider who contemplates
and admires the blissful life with resignation and a touch of envy.
Curiously, Plantin reminds me of my mother's nagging exhortations
of me "doch endlich zur Ruhe zu kommen," - finally to accommodate
myself to tranquillity. I never could, and never will be able
to content myself with a life of repose. I am forever in need
of searching or struggling for something that I can't quite
reach. But it's a beautiful poem, even if I can't accept it
as a prescription.

Please keep your finger on the delete key, because I want to
attach to this letter the two essays on which I've spent
much of today. Criticism is always welcome and never too late,
although what I've written is already neatly bound in four
identical volumes, one for the court, one for the AG, one for
Kimberly and one for myself. I really do feel sorry for her
when she is clobbered with a hundred pages of my legal prose.
I keep offering to negotiate and to compromise, - but of course
that's not what she gets paid for. This morning I was rather
certain I'd lose the case. Tonight I'm very much unsure about
what will happen.

Give my best to Ned, - and try not to fall,
as if it were in your power to prevent.

Jochen