Here's a little sensation of what
it's like to live in Boston when you really don't
want to be living in Boston.
I lived there two years after an extensive three year
period of unemployment.
And so I stuck it out for two years.
But I sort of despised the place.
And people at Harvard had difficulty
understanding my accent and I had difficulty
understanding theirs.
I even asked does someone know where the subway was one night
and they said, you mean the kiosk.
That shows you the kind of things
I think you avoid by living west of the Alleghenies.
Or it's like a librarian who said to me once in Boston,
where are you from?
And I said, I'm from the Midwest.
And she said, I was in Albany once.
So there's that kind of terrible provincialism in Boston.
So I'll read this little poem, "Night in Boston."
"From the roof, the color.
From the roof, the nights the color of a mollusk
stained with teeth and oil.
She wants to be rid of us and go to sea.
And the suit is the odor of brine and imperishable
sausages.
Beneath me from a window, I hear blue Hawaii.
On Pontchartrain, the Rex Club dances
on a houseboat in a storm.
A sot calms the water without wetting a foot.
I'd walk to Iceland, saluting trawlers.
I won't sell the rights to this miracle.
It was hot in Indiana.
The lovers sat on a porch swing laughing.
A car passed on the gravel road.
Red tail lights bobbing over the ruts.
Dust sweeping the house.
The scent of vetch from the pasture.
Out there in the Atlantic, the baleen nuzzles his iceberg.
All monuments drown in the lava of bird shit.
I scuffle the cinders, but the building doesn't shudder.
They've balanced it on rock.
The Charles River floats seaward, bored with history.
Night cutting you open.
I see you're full of sour air, like any rubber ball."