Thank you very much.
I am going to somewhat redundantly introduced myself
with and my poetry and one or two
of the notions about poetry, which
I propose to talk about this evening with two short poems.
They are two portraits, and they are the only two poems
that I'll be reading this evening, which
are of any great antiquity.
I wrote them quite some time ago, most of the poems.
All the rest of them are quite recent.
As well as introducing what I have said,
they also introduce the kind of person who I most admire,
the simple, positive kind of person
who is laboring-- as we all labor under Adam's curse--
the necessity to earn our keep and to live out
our lives under the course of toil
and yet who do so in a selfless way,
in a positive way, which, for me, shows
that they are the custodians of the meaning of human existence.
The first is called-- the first poem is called "The Laundress."
And the figure in the launderette
is one with which you are familiar
from countless pictures of Dutch or Flemish interiors,
the domestic scene with the kitchen on show,
the various utensils, the dog quietly scratching itself
in the corner.
Well, an implication of something vast and timeless
is at the same time brooding over the picture.
"The Laundress."
Her chair drawn to the door, a basket at her feet,
she sat against the sun and stitched a linen sheet,
over harrowed Flanders, August moved the wheat.
Poplars sharing the wind with Saxony and France
dreamed that her gait soared in a summer trace, a clock
in the cobbled yard.
A shadow changed its stance.
As a fish disturbs the pond and thinks without a stain,
the heels of ripeness fluttered under her apron.
Then her heart grew strained and light
as the shell that shields the grain.
Bluntly through the doorway, she stared at shed and farm
at yellow fields unstitching about the hoarded germ.
At land that would spread white when she had reached her term.
The sower plumps his acre.
Flanders turns to the heat.
The winds of heaven winnow, and the wheels grind the wheat.
She searched in her basket and fixed her ruffled sheet.