One of the earliest poems I wrote
is called First Song, about the first experience of music
for a boy growing up in the prairie of Illinois, which
isn't where I grew up.
Then it was dusk in Illinois.
The small boy after an afternoon of cutting dung
hung on the rail fence, a sapped thing, weary to crying.
Dark was growing tall, and he began
to hear the pond frogs all calling on his ear
with what seemed their joy.
Soon their sound was pleasant for a boy
listening in the smoky dusk and the nightfall of Illinois.
And from the fields, two small boys
came bearing corn stalk violins.
And they rubbed the cornstalk bows with resins.
And the three sat there scraping of their joy.
It was now fine music, the frogs,
and the boys did in the towering Illinois twilight make.
And in the dark, in spite of the shoulders' ache, a boy's
hunched body, loved out of a stalk, the first song that
is happiness.
And the song woke his heart to the darkness
and into the sadness of joy.
Well I could no more write that poem now
than [AUDIO CUTS OUT] some of the more recent poems
I'm going to read.
And I'll leave it up to you to judge how far I backslid.
In the meantime, I feel a certain hesitation really
about reading some of the recent poems,
but I won't read them quite yet.
I'll read some earlier ones.