This last poem that I'm going to read is called "The Ice Eagle."
The title is a reference to that kind of ice carving
that's done for very, very expensive parties.
It's always fascinating.
They carve the ice into very beautiful shapes
and then it melts.
I write a lot of poems about the culture that we live in,
and it's bravado masculinity, which is almost always
a very pseudo masculine.
And which is what, trying to constantly reinforce it
makes a lot of problems in our culture.
And in a funny way, women suffer from it
as much as men do because we are constantly
at the mercy of strong facades with very weak things
to master.
And I am talking about the ice eagle
because I was thinking of the fact that the totem for America
is the eagle is a very fierce bird.
"The Ice Eagle."
It was with resolution that she gave up the powerful teardrops
in her eyes.
That crystal, the Venus soft, lizard-eyed creature
called woman gazes through her philosopher's stone.
The sweet glass that drops from the sky, ancient in sacrifice,
cut off tears with knives.
The 50-pound eagle carved out of ice
sitting in the silver punchbowl turned her attention
to physical detail.
Why am I saying her?
It is I. Undoubtedly, I, the life, a dream work.
Undoubtedly, the life has been confused
with the movies, and, I, Gloria Swanson,
walking discontented for all parties become that to me.
I cannot walk through the rituals without my golden mask.
Alas!
Three dozen of them hang on my wall.
The thick lips reminding me of what has been eaten,
and has not nourished.
Physical detail: The lawn that sloped down
to the sea cliffs, the swallows building
their nests in rafters.
The stone house punctured with courts and patios,
bougainvillea winding up its sides,
raw, old Spanish wood composing chests,
and high steel chairs moved and touched
in the water-like smoothness.
The gravel driveway balancing the cutaway heels
of beautiful women.
The men swimming through the night in dinner jackets,
like paper cups floating on the ocean.
Yes, her eyes.
Again, why do I say her?
I must insist it is I. My eyes are
informed of silk and the obsidian mines of the rich.
Here is a thick black, glossy black, smooth idea--
sex, and nothing else.
The rich are born bored and look for purposes,
causes, projects to keep them busy.
The women make up wild malachite eyes,
green with beautiful sleep, and restless knowledge
of new plays, new dancers, new books, new jazz.
They can ring their Egyptian eyes with kohl
and be aesthetes.
And in veils walk down the rocky path to the sea,
riding black tigers of Sartre and Camus and Ionesco.
Yards of chiffon trailing their heels,
and they despair the men.
They, I, we, all women, when it gets past social class,
despair the men who have only the moon
in their milky fluid fingers.
Yes, they wait.
For the sun God, we wait to find him naked in a blaze of fire
and we are stuck with vulgar substitutes.
The fashionable avant-garde dancer, the sensational beat
poet, the jazz trumpeter, the Negro novelist, and Amen-ra,
Amen-ra, Our Father, they are all glorious sun,
brilliant artists, but homosexuals fucking each other,
riding on their own black panthers
wading into the iron waters.
Again, the women must rest their bodies against each other
and moan.
It is not the mysteries that draw the men,
but the fear of that great mystery, the veiled woman,
Isis, mother, whom they fear to be greater than all else.
And I am sick unto death.
Sick, I say.
We live in a world where men have forgotten their offices,
only taking the woman like good debaters assigned
to the positive side on whom rest the burden of proof.
Only taking her on the surface.
She, I, we can peel off layer after layer
where you have taken her.
And yet, find the bottom deep and tight, and untouched,
and longing for the greater measure.
She, no it was I, walked to the moon in Pisces,
and felt the trout slipping down into the ocean.
The carved ice eagle of that party
was melting into the gin and strawberries.
In its beak, someone had placed an American flag.
I found it hard to believe myself
in this slippery, unreal, man-made country.
Look!
Look, I want to say the eagle is a powerful bird.
In your fear, all you can do is carve him out of ice.
And that leaves only one alternative
in this temperate climate.
The ice eagle can do nothing but melt.
[APPLAUSE]