I'm going to try to be more uplifting now.
[LAUGHTER]
But thank god Nikki took care of that.
It was really great that I was able to come and read
alongside her, because she's the bomb.com.
[LAUGHTER]
So I've been following her work for a long time.
"The Bells of Prague."
I never meant to break.
But street lights dressed her gold.
The curve and curve of her shoulders--
the hum and hive of them, moonglossed pillory
of them-- nearly felled me to my knees.
How can I tell you--
the amber of her.
The body of honey--
that I took it in my hands.
Oh, City-- where hands turned holy--
her city, where my hands went undone--
gone to ravel, to silhouette-- to moths
at the mercy of the pale of her hips.
Hips in that early night to light
lit up-- to shining sweet electricus,
to luminous and lamp-- where ached to drink I
did 'til drunk.
Where in her rocked the dark Zikmund--
her, by then, a cathedral tower.
One breast, rose window.
One breast, room of alchemists.
Where from her mouth came tolling the music of yolk
and crown, of waist and sway.
Wanting her was so close to prayer--
I should not--
But it was July, and in a city where desire means,
upstairs we can break each other open,
the single blessing I had to give was mouth--
so gave and gave I did.
Every night has a woman for temptation.
Every city has a fable for fruit--
like in the castle gardens, where jackdaws waited
glaze-eyed along the walls for a taste of new--
of figs unsweet yet, yet beryl-bright enough for wonder.
Not jackdaw, but not different, I--
how I destroy myself on even the least of the sweetest things--
the salt of her burned not long on my tongue, but like stars.
I never meant to break--
but love, the hymn and bells of her.
Even now, there are nights I climb the narrow stairway
to an apartment at Hradcany Square, where
a door opens to a room and the shadowed fig of her mouth--
split sweet open, and in me ringing."
[APPLAUSE]