The next poem is a poem I owe someone.
I owe this poem to Ramona Weeks.
I read in Phoenix not very long ago,
and she requested that I read it.
And I didn't have it with me.
And I was very embarrassed.
She's here tonight.
Ramona Weeks is a very, very talented poet in Arizona.
Lives in Phoenix.
And I want to read this to make up for my lack of having it
with me last time.
This is called "Connais-Tu le Pays?"
It's the only of my poems that has a French title.
The New Yorker magazine fought me over this for some time,
they didn't like poems with French titles.
But eventually they published it anyway.
Since I wouldn't change the title.
The title means, do you know the land, or where is the land.
It is from an aria from the opera
Mignon, in which Mignon is looking
for her country, her land.
I have discovered a country where the pages of books
are all margins.
And the calendar is frozen in a wall of ice.
Its mirrors are kept in cages and covered at night.
I cross its borders by way of the labyrinth and the radiator.
The doors close behind me.
The guards at the gate of the Principal city are dangerous.
Also, the Porter who hangs on the wall, like a silver knife.
As for the troll, who once lured me under the bridge,
I blame him for everything.
There is no map of the city.
But I know my way.
When I get to my room, the others are waiting.
The child with the tiny bluefish in her hair.
The ghost with a flashlight.
The Prince who died of a bloody nose,
and the angel who guards him.
The white nun dragging her long black shadow.
I show them the sand I have smuggled in my shoes.
And my letters written on dry grass.
I bring them a yellow wax flower in a green pot.
We celebrate the silence.
At night when it rains, we paint a small fire on the wall
and sit before it, drinking from cups made of buttons.
We drink to the present, which is eternal.
We drink to the delicate shells which grow in the garden
to salt, rising up from the Earth like smoke
to another safe journey.
Outside, the water is moving past in search
of some low place to lie down.
I've had people ask me if I was under the influence of drugs
when I wrote that poem.
And I denied it emphatically.
I wrote that poem all by myself.
I wouldn't rely upon any such crutch as drugs.
However, there was a fifth of scotch involved.
And I'm sure that had the scotch lasted longer,
the poem would have been longer, which
is a kind of horrible thought, I suppose.