I think I'll read one or two.
Well, here's another poem touching about the same thing.
These are very sad poems because something sad is happening
in the United States and no one knows when it's going to end.
But some of it is not the fault of the United States,
some of it is just the fault of being
an industrialized country.
We are the leader of the world in that respect.
When you go to Europe, you see it very closely.
The European poets have nothing to write about
because they're at the edge.
We're at the center, things are happening to us
more horrible than they are happening to any
of the European countries.
So they aren't as happy as we are.
Anyway, there is a happiness of being at the center of what
is going on, even if it's bad.
And we didn't used to be at the center.
Australia is not at the center now, but we are.
So we suffer things that other people are
going to suffer in 100 years.
And one of the things that we suffer in an industrialized
society is that we have to feed people into the machine
all the time.
When you think of the comparison between industrial America
and industrial nations, and the old times
when people lived for thousands and thousands and thousands
and millions of years in the forests.
And had a group of 30 or 40 human beings who
wandered around chewing on roots,
and the women chewing on skins and doing that sort of thing.
All of the people's lives were lived, all the way through.
They may have been killed fighting rhinoceros or whatever
they were fighting, and the women
may have lost their teeth from chewing up
all these foods to get the clothes on their men.
But no one's life was sacrificed pointlessly.
No one was not allowed to live.
But in an industrial society, we can't
have all these people living.
We have a machine that's going and we have to feed about 80%
of the population into the machine.
Have you ever talked to people who really
worked in lines in Detroit?
Have you ever looked at the kind of lives those people have?
They have wonderful hobbies in the basement.
They all have these woodworking sets.
Then they give up those and they buy art, they buy a big boat,
and they use that for a year and a half
and they get sick of that.
They sell it.
And then they go into high fashion.
And the only reason is that they're being sacrificed.
Exactly like slaves were sacrificed to the Roman Empire
to keep it moving.
So it's very sad.
It's exactly like the trees.
We can't allow the trees to stand anymore
because we've got to have the Sunday edition of the New York
Times.
The trees have got to be turned into paper.
So you're just in college, you're just college kids,
but you'll realize when you get out
that your main problem was to prevent yourself
from being turned into paper.
It's not easy.
And you will see, 10 years after college.
You'll see people you knew in college who were
full of life, who were radiant.
And when you look at them, they're papers.
Some kind of on, some senior papers.
But that's the problem.
So anyway, this is a poem touching on that.
The cry of those being eaten by America.
Others pale and soft being stored for later eating.
And Jefferson, who saw hope in new oats.
The wild suburban houses go on, with long hair growing
from between their toes.
The sleeping feet, at night get up
and run down the long white roads by themselves.
The dams reverse themselves and want
to go stand alone in the desert.
Ministers who dive headfirst into the Earth.
The pale flesh spreading guiltily into new literatures.
That is why--
No, that is why these poems are so sad.
The long dead running over the field, the mass sinking down.
The light in children's faces fading at six or seven.
The world will soon break up into small colonies
of the saved.
I think we'll take a five-minute break, and I'll be back.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]