I'm going to end with one other fairly serious, sort
of ritualistic poem like that.
I'm currently attracted to the idea
of getting turns in poetry which will relate
to the sort of invocatory or celebratory turns
which do occur in a public ritual like a religious ritual,
without necessarily using directly religious subject
matter.
And this last poem isn't fair to translation
from the Hungarian of a very fine poet, I think,
Laszlo Nagy.
I should say that I don't know Hungarian,
and it's worked up from literal versions that
have been prepared for me.
Nagy is a poet who has something in common, I think,
with Dylan Thomas and with Robert Lowell.
He translated Dylan Thomas into Hungarian, and has, I think,
been very affected by the surreal elements
in Thomas's style.
At the same time, some of his subject matter
is a series of very bad breakdowns, which he had.
He was in and out of hospital.
And he felt that he'd been pulled
through these by the continuing attention of his wife.
And in this poem, he addresses her
as a kind of goddess of healing.
The poem's called "Prayer to the White Lady."
"Creature of flame, out of the sun's bow, I call you.
Moment of crystal for the throwing knife,
lighten my darkness.
I need you now.
Oh, lady of the small locks, keeper
of the instruments in the zenith, last room of the king,
lighten my darkness.
I need you now.
Palm and the reign of sorrow, fire underglaze
lifting the twin domes of your body above me,
lighten my darkness.
I need you now.
Mistress of victory, flame of the gathering storm,
brightening into the jails of my eyes, lighten my darkness.
I need you now.
Nurse of the war wounded, yours is the house
of the Jew and the Negro.
The loft of the bees kiss mysterious honey.
Lighten my darkness, I need you now.
Lady, oblivious of blood and money, belly dancer of hunger,
echo in the resonance of the millennium,
lighten my darkness.
I need you now.
Oh, my dear one, tempered by the beam of the laser,
torn by the stone body of the Gorgon, the man child,
lighten my darkness.
I need you now.
Always your tall house was open to me,
glittering with expectation.
Oh, god-like above the bronze cauldron of your beauty,
lighten my darkness.
I need you now.
In the beginning, I felt your body lap me,
drowning into the sarabande of love.
Killer of the black crows that haunt me, lighten my darkness.
I need you now.
Now, on the brink of the vacuum at the edge
with a million tendrils of nothingness
that are erupting even out of my own mind, lighten my darkness.
I need you now.
Already of pain, shell of this affliction,
sufferer under the same electric coil,
now as I reach for the pill and the needle,
lighten my darkness.
I need you now.
Only in you will the house of my body glisten gold
in all its chimneys and veins.
Only in you will the white pigeons flicker.
Lighten my darkness.
I need you now."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]