I'd like to read two poems about--
excuse me.
If I shake a little, it's just I have an electric motor attached
to me.
These are two poems about someone who had died.
This poem for Carol Marcus, 1946 to 1969.
The poem is called "Sleeping on Doors."
It's an odd title, but the way it
works out in the poem is trying to get between the--
it's as if death is another universe and there's a--
we wish there were a doorway between the two.
Sort of sleeping on that door.
"Sleeping on Doors."
"If we could only see further, we
could look through to the other side.
Such impossibilities, the death of a sister in August,
leave us standing in a kingdom of tongues
without mouths, without even silence to contain our doubts.
When we sigh, we encounter her breathing.
To each ghost, we assign lamentations like zeros,
like seeds.
We would people whole accessible universes
with our need, entrances, exits, as if we could accept loss
forever.
Tonight is the first closed door, the stone.
And we lie down on it, sleep on the door, on the door,
sleep on the door, a way of seeing past the darkness,
as though we could come and go, as we please."