This's the second letter in full by Eric Mottram in Gröningen, Netherlands, where he was Professor of English, from 1955 to 1961, addressed to T. Wignesan in West Berlin, together with a poem entitled "Lecture in the Cave".
(I have not seen this poem published elsewhere and Eric's handwriting being what it was, I can't be certain of the "spelling" of some words: I stand to be corrected, though, by those who know better.)

A-weg 39,
Gröningen,
Netherlands

February 4, 1958

Dear Wignesan,

I’m very glad indeed that you like living in Berlin, and you sound as though you are at last getting something done and being reasonably content.
I suppose you think I’ve been rude in not replying to your letter until now: frankly, I felt mad at you for one thing and another and could not bring myself
to write. It’s my fault, not yours. Anyway you can think that if you like. Of course I’ll read your poems « in their present reformed condition », as you put it,
any time you like: you don’t have to ask. But you must not expect dishonest praise. As for your coming to Gröningen, I was right: my landlord has been
forced to fill up his spare room by some new regulations about Dutch householders taking in Indonesian refugees. So that’s that, and in any case, I’m
so buried in work that I couldn’t think of looking after anyone at the moment. The thought of having to put up with your arguments for more than one hour
fills me with panic, I may add. I’m beginning to see how intolerant and emotional I am, and I don’t like it. So let me do penance by reading your revised
poems !

Incidentally, going to Berlin, as you suggested, last Christmas, was quite out of the question: I had to see my family, actually, and later attended a
dying friend in the Isle of Wight. I should like to see Berlin, but I can’t see why you say I « can’t afford to miss » it. From what I’ve heard, it is a fascinating
place for those with money or a taste for vice and culture. You must tell me what it is really like. On the whole I am not very fond of modern Germans
and their ways and utterances.

I wonder if you have managed in Berlin to come across a prize-winning Indian film called « Pather Panchali »: it is undoubtedly a masterpiece by any
standards. The director is a young man named Sanjyit (Satyajit) Ray: it’s his first film, astonishingly enough.

I envy you (in) Berlin, being free to work when you like, plunging into philosophy, writing your poems (whatever I may think of them). I lead a very tied
existence for no good reason I sometimes think. My poems lie in a folder unfinished, like all my other creative writing: a pity, this. I think the time has come
for another move, a change, in my life: I’ve been still for three years. Here’s a poem - unrevized - on lecturing: it’s as good a subject as any: and it’s
called the Lecture in the Cave.

Best wishes.

Eric Mottram

LECTURE IN THE CAVE

If words of mine act in their nests of beaks to drown,
How should they know what pressure underlies the drumhead skin ?

Notions crack across their willing two-backed tustling hours:
Some druid (dried) sightless but for propitiating manic seats

Will expose Marsyas or avenge Eurydice’s betrayed Lord on dolmens
Erected under murderous insistence. Ought I then to walk the stage,

Ignore its resinous creaks, just pour the hairy longings
In shoals of hot molasses for the pails they queue with,

Negro knuckles reflecting their inturned eyes which shutter
Everything except the centaur’s cloven words their ears receive,

And panic, wordly transmissions Chiron batters down their pores ?
I make a cave of sunlit wilderness, a guano hoard of rich dimness.

Meanwhile with hooves well manicured, deceiving the important few,
Shanks well shagged and legs in four-time steadily ramming the course,

I hold my manic head erect above the stall and speak where neighing
Might attract attention to what bestial parts and trampling horn are saying.

Prince, since it is written you must act the beast, parade the Shaman, wag the Slaver’s tongue,
Let a guru maim your confidence, mine apologetics with a breach unslung.

(c) T. Wignesan -Paris, 1958-2023