Both of these are from a series.
They are the last two poems in a series,
which I hope to publish someday as a calendar or almanac.
Stealing an idea from Spencer, which
was not original with him.
And this is "November" and "December."
Each poem has the name of a month.
The first one I read will be rather
painful for me and for my mother who is here today.
It is a tribute to my father, who
died in November 1st this past year, very recently.
And in spite of the fact that it's painful to read,
I want to read it because I want it to be a tribute to him,
and he needed more tributes, he deserved more tributes
than he got.
A very, very fine man and a man of enormous wit.
There's going to be a poem in the New Yorker soon--
sometime rather soon, which is a testimony to his wit.
And it quotes two of his lines-- two of his favorite lines
which I love.
He was fond of saying, "I'm going to get drunk again
tonight.
God, how I dread it."
[LAUGHTER]
He was that kind of man.
Very, very witty, intelligent, charming man.
And this poem is "November."
It is divided into four parts, and I
will read the numbers because there is
a time difference in the parts.
During the time of his--
well, he had a very long, very painful illness.
And right at the end, the weather in Boise where he died
was magnificent, gorgeous fall, late October weather
and early November.
And the leaves were falling everywhere.
I've never seen such beautiful leaves coming down
so fast, so many of them.
And then shortly after his death,
turned out cold and rained.
And so one of the sections of this poem
comes in later after the weather had broken and changed.
November, one.
When I arrived, stone crosses hung from the eaves
and the ambulances were lined up the door like hungry mice.
The wound I left here years ago, I asked them,
has it healed yet?
Your father is sleeping, they told me.
Come back tomorrow.
We are closed for the night.
But just at that moment, out of breath and wearing
somebody else's clothes, a funeral
rushed him to the hospital barely in time
to rescue the dead.
Two.
Before that, I was saying something different.
I was a flag trying to escape from its pole.
Now, I enumerate the qualities of silence.
First, the stars, which are pores in the skin of night.
Then my birth, which did not include me.
Then each leaf falling as one wing
flying away without its mate.
Three.
My father went in search of death
like a mole, blind and beautiful.
All summer, he listened to the inner voice of his pain,
rising in a song, clear and high,
dragging the music after it.
His life was an unmade bed.
Nobody rich or famous ever slept there.
He put his face into the fire and said,
I will not keep you waiting.
Four.
Wherever the rain goes tonight, I will go with it.
Through the city I was born in, city
of monuments, the statues, their lethargy, their cold, wet
faces.
The names of the streets are climbing into the mountains
and the mountains are holding their names up to a dark sky.
Weeping birches continue to weep for us and for each other.
I cannot comfort them.
I carry myself in my own arms past the houses
of the important where they live among their habits
as comfortably as water on stone.
The doors are asleep in the arms of their hinges.
I leave them sleeping.
At every step, darkness seeps from the holes in my shoes.
I am cold as an empty glove.
From the sidewalk, I pick up a black walnut
locked in its shriveled skin like a mummy.
Father, I say to it tenderly, old father,
it was harder than hell to love you and impossible not to.
Look what November has done to us both.