Traveling-- I guess the rhythm of my life
is somehow moved between traveling and retreating,
between the privacy that it takes to work
and the traveling for programs, different universities.
You know what I mean.
This is an age of people traveling around.
Here's a poem that sort of went back
to the very beginnings of this sort of rhythmic pattern
in my life.
And it's been very influential on my style, I guess.
It's a poem called "Rubicon".
And it takes place at two different times.
It takes up place right after I got married
and then back when I was still a boy.
My parents did a lot of traveling to escape the--
my father liked to play golf and tennis
and used to try to escape the cold weather.
"Rubicon".
"The train from the tail of my memory
careens through the night field South to the peg leg
of America, Florida.
Buried somewhere in the swamps, the fountain of youth.
A boy still trying to grow into his face clasps and mother's
hand on the station platform.
He is aware of the cop wearing rule
on his hip, the silver of his pistol teasing
the clasped hand.
Hand clasped is now I hold yours teasing dawn.
At dawn, the boy leaps to the coupling between the cars
where Negro porters take on oranges as the train slowly
moves out, swerving, bouncing, rhythmic under his body,
transport as a woman.
In the wood pen yards, young girls
squat facing the tracks with squalor, allure of the limbs.
The suit of wool he wears scouring his thighs as he
sits erect in rooms of adults.
This train bears sailor's past Pensacola to Korea,
taking their last leer at the women aware of the jogging
motion the Pullman makes, carrying
sweet aromas of orange peels.
He was meant to be saccharine.
His girls were meant to have pedigree.
His first girl had pink pants.
She said, boys tickle.
At Fort Lauderdale, Sunday, '53, the weather is shut thighs.
The train speeds to its destination.
An orange blossom special in Ponce de Leon's nightmare.
A vibration in the surge as the brakes grasp.
The boy careened through thighs, letting his bowlful
with silence at this station.
Life slowly leaking out into the tropic bed."