I can't tell you how weird it feels to follow that
by reading a poem.
I feel like I've been upstaged, but I
am going to read one more, which isn't entirely short,
but hopefully not too long.
And then, please, take questions.
And this is from the last poem in the book Pushing
Water, number 52.
"A solo, a duet, a chorus, a round of fiddles,
a marching band, a catbird singing.
Imagine undone business this morning
by the sea, or Ludd's Hill, or 72nd street,
or at Mrs. Polk's breakfast table.
Speak of a spiral, or a cup, or coins, and keys.
Home from the Hill, he read, with sharp eyes and lean frame.
I too carry marbles in a pocket.
I too have chewed from the bone.
But here is other, rounded hill and cherry blossom,
feet crossing the imagined circle.
There's always color.
It has yet to become light.
A series of marks joined together
to form an object or work over which our eyes may freely roam.
Upon entering a room, one sees everything
and, at the same time, nothing.
And they are the same thing, purple in the grays,
vermilion in the orange shadows.
The care for the syllables, the form
beyond the phonemes, where one moves as if inside.
A sentence, as if part of the grammatical structure,
as if a step were a comma.
A step is a comma.
A stop is an invitation.
A bruise is a mark of state.
A crush is legislative action.
We're at war with our better selves.
We are at war with our more common selves.
Why do we read with the expectation of a subject?
If they flee from me, where do they go?
If I seek to hold in a net the wind or what
is not to be touched, what practice [? is ?]
new-fangledness?
And why not batter my heart?
These are my beginnings.
These and the stopping train, where I first
heard, wring out the wants, the care, the sin,
the faithless coldness of the times.
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
but ring the fuller minstrel in.
And now the bell resounds throughout my frame
in a small room with others, in a space of quiet sitting,
in the room without walls, in the flow of water,
pushing without effort, but only for moments.
Then the enormous tragedy, the bent shoulders,
the impossible loss and gain in the same enclosure,
the impossible gather and disperse, the necessity
of contract and release.
Cynthia is my Elizabeth, says the ocean to the river.
She is gone, she is lost, she is found, is ever-fair,
and she draws a home.
And I draw a home, as death's long night draws on
and lights long day, pursues the new and old wind."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]