I'd like to read another maybe more pervasively than I think--
"A Dedication."
We stood by the library.
It was an August night.
Priests and sisters of hundreds of unsaid creeds.
Pastors going their separate pondered roads.
We watched them cross under the corner light.
Freights on the edge of town were carrying away
flat cars of steel to be made into secret guns.
We knew being human, that they were enemy guns.
And we were somehow vowed to poverty.
No one stopped or looked long or held out a hand.
They were following orders received from hour to hour.
So many signals all strange from a foreign power.
But tomorrow, you said, peace may flow over the land.
At that corner in a flash of lightning, we too stood.
That glimpse we had will stare through the dark forever.
On the poorest roads we would be walkers and beggars
towards some deathless meeting involving a crust of bread.
Now, one reason I plunged for this
to try to make a point in the program is--
I feel this is like vivisection.
Some were sacrificed so that others may more fully live.
So with this poem I look--
We stood by the library.
This is geographical.
But also that's a pretty good thing to do.
It's sort of political, you'll forgive me for a minute.
We stood by the library.
It was an August night.
Now, later it gets more elaborately like this
when it says priests and sisters of hundreds of unsaid creeds.
And so it begins to draft to language
and all sorts of things.
But what I'm thinking about is that maybe every day,
the speech we use every day is full of these
we stood by the library little things you know.
It's not much and you may not know it,
but it's having an effect.
And composition is organizing effects, maybe.