And the last one I'll read--
Whether the execution was summary or not,
the walls an alluring extra in the background.
In the foreground, the image is not a stethoscope any more
than I am a hero or a movie actor.
The image does not say whether my heartbeat speeds up.
At this very instant, I'm grinning wide.
I'm strong, the worst son of a bitch alive.
I'll shoot myself, smoke my last cigar, after which,
I'll rise and grin at you again.
He's dead.
He gets up, resuscitated, if you like, or fully imagined,
passing into the silence of this image with no beating heart,
without clarifying who is speaking, except that someone
is speaking.
Someone announces the exact moment
that he falls and gets up, like a line, anew, falling, cutting,
reversing.
The execution, everything is there, set into play,
brought to term.
That is why the verse opens with such a cadence decasyllable
and internal rhyme in the hemistitch.
Whether the execution was summary or not,
there is in the line an execution that is always
in some sense summary, of the course of meaning,
of discourse that does not relate to the moment.
The break in that course, in contrast,
must take place only at the precise moment,
meaning shoots itself.
What a cold phrase, sputtering without appeal.
And the rising smoke from the cigar
here mixes with the smoke from the guns.
A poem is always, at each moment,
a last word with no conclusion.
That's my conclusion.
Thank you so much.
[APPLAUSE]