Letter from Howard Tharsing to Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright

Abstract

Letter from Howard Tharsing to Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright Howard Tharsing O Beth! I have been avoiding writing this letter for day after day since I got the phone call. I have been scolding myself daily for not writing, but I guess I knew that doing what I am doing now would finally make it true: no more Franz. The other day I got on a bus and saw two boys who appeared to be of about high school age, a bit awkward and gangly-looking, as if pieces of them were growing at different rates and their faces and their bodies had not yet coalesced into the manhood they were so rapidly approaching. They were talking forcefully and with great seriousness to one another, then from time to time laughing in some shared sense of the ridiculousness of themselves or of others, their teachers or parents or girls in general perhaps, and I remembered Franz. Indeed, he has risen before me innumerable times in the past ten days. I knew two Franzes. The first, with his long hair and soft face, shy, gentle, but deeply serious and already committed irrevocably and without hesitation to poetry at an age when the rest of us were fumbling through a variety of imagined futures; the second, his visage craggy and his manner outspoken, defiant, and critical, secure in his being a poet, proud of his accomplishment and jealous of its value. Between them lay forty years untold. He and I had no communication, no contact, and lived in worlds wholly apart. Yet when we were reunited in the last few years, what a special joy it was to find the same man I had known as a boy. It was not just that we understood one another's references and touchstones. Any one of our contemporaries would make those same connections and understand one another in the same way. No, it was much more. The only way I can describe it is to say that when Franz spoke, I heard my own words, my thoughts, coming out of his mouth. Yet of course Franz wasn't me. I have stumbled through life. Franz pursued a path that if not always clear itself nevertheless always pointed at a clear destination. This clarity of purpose was matched by an inward assurance of righteousness, not some cheap belief that one is always right but the moral certainty of knowing right from wrong and being able, despite one's own weaknesses and failures, to judge with clarity the people and events one encounters in the world. I remember Franz arriving at school the day after the National Guard murdered four students at Kent State. A group of us were chatting and, no doubt, laughing about whatever nothings high school students chat and laugh about. Franz walked up to us wearing a black arm band. The anger in his quiet voice carried with it grief as well as indignation. "Don't you know what's happened?" he said. I think that all the rest of our little group must have been as immediately—and deeply—shamed as I was. I felt small and wrong and hung my head the rest of the day. And he was right. And we all wore black armbands from then on, and participated in the Moratorium and other demonstrations and struggles as we went forward through those days. [End Page 188] I remember his youthful smile, too. His eyes would narrow and a look of being settled, of peace, would gently lift the corners of his mouth. His happiness was quiet and full—the Cheshire cat, or the cat who swallowed the canary. I cannot thank you enough for having me come and stay with you for those four days last year. I will always treasure those hours with the second Franz, the accomplished and celebrated poet. I loved him for the beauty of his work and of his faith and also for his righteous anger at injustice and at the carelessness with which our culture is squandering its riches and devolving into a squalid and dangerous mess. I cherish the memory of us two old men sitting in those big chairs, talking...