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And then I want to
write a poem which

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has two versions,
"Prelude to an Evening."

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I won't read the first version,
which has eight stanzas.

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They are four-line
stanzas with four

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stresses in each line
and no final rhyme

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at the ends of lines, unrhymed.

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And I had a mean streak going.

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Well, I think no
poet is a saint.

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Well, he's needed not a
complete poet if he is.

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And I think a poet
never hesitates

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to deal with an ugly
subject, provided there's

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something good about it.

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And so this was a mean poem
about a man returning home

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to his wife and
rehearsing the speech

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that he wanted to make to
her when she would ask him

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to go and babysit with his
children, their own children,

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and teach them the names
of the French kings,

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because they were
studying a little French.

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Well, but he was
like Edgar Allan Poe,

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or like the man in the doomed
house which which fell,

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the House of Usher,
who liked horrors.

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And he wanted to die with
great pomp and horror.

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But he wanted to have a
loving woman accompany

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his last vigils.

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And so he hears
that sort of a man.

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And a young lady, a
brilliant young lady

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who had been one of my graduate
students at Vanderbilt,

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teaching now in a
college herself,

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she was on the board of one
of those little magazines that

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call themselves an explicator.

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A French word,
"explication de texte."

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They straighten you
out, tell you what,

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give the paraphrase, you
know, which is forbidden

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by some of the critics.

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But an honest critic, he
has to do the best he can,

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tell his readers if there's
some strangeness in the work.

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So he commits to the policy of
the paraphrases continually.

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And so the query was
that she was answering,

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what's the matter
with that fellow?

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How could he say such things?

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And she replied, oh, it's very
simple, he's just a big brute,

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and he's not going to
sit with any babies,

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even if they're his own babies.

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And I felt greatly
relieved when I read that.

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That was about five years
ago, four or five years ago.

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And you see, I had
reached an age,

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I think I must have been at
least as old as Chaucer was

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when he had to recant from
some of the heretical things he

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had said in his poems.

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And so I said, I'll just
do a little recanting,

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and I'm going to have a
happy ending in that poem.

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And then any poet is
delighted to reprint again,

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because he always sees how
he can touch up certain lines

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and put some new beauties in.

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And so the eight lines
of the eight stanzas

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grew into 13, with the second
stanza, one of the new ones,

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and then after the ninth
stanza, four more new ones

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in which the recantation occurs
and the happy ending happens.

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I'll read you only
the complete poem.

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"Prelude to an Evening."

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Do not enforce the tired wolf,
dragging his infected wound

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homeward to sit tonight
with the warm children,

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saying the pretty
kings of France.

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You are my scholar,
then languish,

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expire with each day's
terror and next week's doom

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till we are twice
espoused in love and ruin,

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and grave but smiling
as the heavens fall.

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The images of the invaded
mind were monstrous only

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in the dreams of your most
brief enchanted headful.

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Suppose a miracle of
confusion, that dreamed

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and undreamt become
each other and mix

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the night and day of your soul.

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Though it never mattered
your twice crying from mouth

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unbeautied against the
pillow, to avert the gun

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of the same old soldier.

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If quickly cry
cock-crow or bell,

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breaking the
improbable black spell,

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annihilated the poor phantom.

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And now to confirm
our strange supposal,

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your monsters wait
upon sunniest mornings.

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You and your pain peignoir
commend the heaped oranges,

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gold on the platter,
the cheeky and children,

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but freeze at the
turbulence under the floor

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where unclean spirits
yawn and thrash.

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The day long clock
will strike your fears.

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The heels detonating
the stair's cavern.

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Freshening the water in the
blue bowls for the buck berries

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with not all your love.

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You listen for a low, lost
wind to awaken the warning

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whisper of our sentinel pine.

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Finally, evening.

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Hear me denouncing our
equal and conniving furies.

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You making those, but
they lack conviction,

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smoothing the heads of
the hungry children.

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And that was the
ending of the old poem.

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Now, four more stanzas.

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I would have what's
magnificent at my coming,

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two souls, tight clasps,
and the swamp of horrors.

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Oh, you shall be handsome
and brave at fearing.

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Now, my step quickens
and meets a huge no.

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Who's no was it?

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Like the horse policeman's
clapping on stage

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in the name of the law.

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That was me, forbidding
tricks at homecoming,

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at the moment of coming
to its white threshold.

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I went to the
nations of disorder

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to be quit of the
memory of good and evil.

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There even your image
was disfigured, then

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the boulevards rocked.

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They said, go back.

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Here I am.

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And to balk my ruffian,
I bite the tongue,

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rehearsing all that treason.

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Then creep in my wounds to the
sovereign flair of the room

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where you shine on
the good children.

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The idea of the sovereign
flair, the king is a sovereign,

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and his touch heals any wound.

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So I had a little
double meaning there.

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Well, I felt relieved
after that recantation.

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