[APPLAUSE]
And now I'll read from the sonnet crown.
And like I said, don't worry I'm not reading all 15 of them.
I'll begin with a poem set in Buenos Aires, Argentina
in the year 1945.
And the imagined speaker of this sonnet is Eva Perón.
And I'm imagining that she is proposing to Juan.
I'm taking some small liberties with history in this one.
So this is "Five," 1945.
"Don't lie about abandoned ground.
I come from there.
This veranda is better.
In its vista stricken with rain we
can see our Valenciennes copied by thunderheads over the city.
Buenos Aires.
Clear evenings, I watch lovers linger in the park,
embracing each other, but fingering the dark.
Some quicken at curfew without going in.
Sometimes I drive from the city through the bombas
or the South.
I've memorized the never-never of this terrain--
cerulean rise, blizzarding ravine,
laws dictated must be obeyed.
I walk among my people counting off mouths
beneath the gallows tree.
They won't come for me.
I'm not a sham.
I am not afraid."
"Six."
United States, also here in 1945.
Lady days, Hollywood earthquakes.
"Unafraid, no sham in white satin that day you almost
died, smoking away your toothache beneath the palm
tree.
That came crashing down just after Matt pushed you aside.
And you, songbird, flew, as the quake crashed the party
and created rolling waves.
Chandeliers liquefied.
Split slope.
The pool water bubbling over like the champagne
you sipped through your first earthquake with Bob Hope.
And you hated champagne, though you still,
with each tune, sip air.
Then give it back and sighs and murmurs now
stored whispering to Frank and everyone
alongside your keyboard, to the very Earth breaking
blue beneath your voice.
Sing again, your flight, the day you did not die--
almost a world of word to slip through.
Not your time yet, lady.
Though we've heard ever since, in your breath,
filled with blues and motherland opening."
"Seven."
500 years before--
Spain, Aragon-- Katharine betrothed.
"Infanta in her homeland far from death and the veils
she'll wear for the journey between Spain
and the country to which she's been betrothed.
Just barely in their nudity--
three years old, and diapered, and a title--
Princess of Wales.
Ringing princess and dais, a full tournament
regales the ambassadors who, to save their dynasty,
spare no bombast.
They leave keeping heraldry on her red gold head.
In the midst of pageantry bells floating Spanish galleons
across the sea, where she, fast 14, behind a veil,
meets the seventh Henry and becomes the first of six
Queens taken by his son--
five discarded, two beheaded.
Now she's greeting everyone, and England
loves her, veil and all.
The ball and banquet.
Henry bends to raise her bat and face a silhouette."
"Eight."
500 years later, Argentina, La Boca.
"When he goes down she kicks up her flitting silhouette spikes
heel to toe for him to climb up the terra firma of her split
splitting thigh--
a slippery vision in such steps, backward ochos of evasion--
then rush and murmur of advance.
Each blink a bet; each salida snaps a threat;
the fugitive sweet nothings in this dance--
vaguely avian but made for men--
all cocky preening in a sure wide stance.
Still, for her, all get little give, some sidling bandoneóns,
a shift of shins.
Then stripped dipping, deadpan.
They trade tokens of affection-- stiff upper lip
for jaw locked to mask.
Hand grasps hand.
His hand clasps her back.
Her hands transects his fancy slant.
All the silver gestures relinquished and taken,
ask of the body.
This answer, this dance.
This steady barely checked hex unsashed.
This hush, this rushing, this fight, and flight floored.
This lusty nunc stans, ravished accord."