WEBVTT

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The next poem is a
poem I owe someone.

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I owe this poem to Ramona Weeks.

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I read in Phoenix
not very long ago,

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and she requested
that I read it.

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And I didn't have it with me.

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And I was very embarrassed.

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She's here tonight.

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Ramona Weeks is a very, very
talented poet in Arizona.

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Lives in Phoenix.

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And I want to read this to make
up for my lack of having it

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with me last time.

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This is called
"Connais-Tu le Pays?"

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It's the only of my poems
that has a French title.

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The New Yorker magazine fought
me over this for some time,

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they didn't like poems
with French titles.

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But eventually they
published it anyway.

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Since I wouldn't
change the title.

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The title means, do you know
the land, or where is the land.

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It is from an aria
from the opera

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Mignon, in which
Mignon is looking

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for her country, her land.

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I have discovered a country
where the pages of books

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are all margins.

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And the calendar is
frozen in a wall of ice.

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Its mirrors are kept in
cages and covered at night.

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I cross its borders by way of
the labyrinth and the radiator.

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The doors close behind me.

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The guards at the gate of the
Principal city are dangerous.

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Also, the Porter who hangs on
the wall, like a silver knife.

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As for the troll, who once
lured me under the bridge,

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I blame him for everything.

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There is no map of the city.

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But I know my way.

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When I get to my room,
the others are waiting.

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The child with the tiny
bluefish in her hair.

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The ghost with a flashlight.

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The Prince who died
of a bloody nose,

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and the angel who guards him.

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The white nun dragging
her long black shadow.

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I show them the sand I
have smuggled in my shoes.

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And my letters
written on dry grass.

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I bring them a yellow wax
flower in a green pot.

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We celebrate the silence.

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At night when it rains, we
paint a small fire on the wall

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and sit before it, drinking
from cups made of buttons.

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We drink to the present,
which is eternal.

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We drink to the delicate
shells which grow in the garden

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to salt, rising up from
the Earth like smoke

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to another safe journey.

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Outside, the water is
moving past in search

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of some low place to lie down.

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I've had people ask me if I was
under the influence of drugs

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when I wrote that poem.

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And I denied it emphatically.

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I wrote that poem all by myself.

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I wouldn't rely upon any
such crutch as drugs.

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However, there was a
fifth of scotch involved.

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And I'm sure that had
the scotch lasted longer,

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the poem would have
been longer, which

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is a kind of horrible
thought, I suppose.

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