Business, Done and Undone

Fort Square, the name popped into my head looking out the window at Destino's across to Our Lady of Good Voyage church. A few minutes drive, I was parking my car--on the diagonal, as directed--in front of the Fort Square Cafe, and walking out Commercial Street between warehouses and marine yards.

Fort Square, Gloucester: a tight little circle of a neighborhood, houses on top of each other, climbing over a small hill, surrounded by water.

I could have Googled the address, but preferred just to wander around. I had just about completed the loop. For some reason looked back over my shoulder and noticed the small plaque, next to an empty flag-holder, on the brick wall of a house I had already passed: "Charles Olson/Poet/1910-1970"

Olson moved to the apartment in Fort Square with his wife Betty in 1957. For an excellent, archaeological account of Olson in Gloucester, see Iain Sinclair's American Smoke. Below, the view he would have had as he walked out from the apartment. Perhaps the one he had in mind when he wrote the conclusion to "Maximus, to himself":

It is undone business
I speak of, this morning,
with the sea
stretching out
from my feet