And the last poem I'll read comes from two sources.
One is the Italian philosopher, Agamben
who notes in a wonderful book, Profanations
that one way to know that in the classical world
that you're dead is that you keep doing the same thing over
and over again.
And the other is an old, old tale
of Tantalus and his bending down to drink
and the water withdrawing and his reaching up to eat
and the fruit disappearing.
And that in the afterlife, Orpheus, this is poet saw this,
sympathized.
Then he sang a song, and for as long as Orpheus sang,
Tantalus could drink and eat.
Arcadian, "I could not stop my hands clapping.
I clapped and clapped.
I clapped as in the dirt, the bird collapsed.
As worms grew wings, I clapped.
A man stood in a river, balancing a grape on his lips.
His tears fell in the current, swept them away.
He kept performing his trick, grape hovering
over the whole of his open mouth, and never dropping in.
I clapped, and I could not stop my hands
from wanting to cover my mouth, but they would not.
They clapped.
And I listened to them clap.
And noise that if there were woods, would echo in the woods.
But there were no woods.
I could see only a man, twigs in his hair,
bent over the water where the water stood most still.
A tree fell in the woods.
He kept speaking to his own face.
Is true if, and only if a tree fell in the woods is true.
If and only if he kept speaking to his face in the water
as I clapped, applauding the logic that needed no belief.
Like the shadows of bird's wings, the shadows
of my hands on the ground.
If there were birds, I could believe in the birds.
So I let myself look up.
One bird kept exploding in the sky.
One flower kept dying.
"Isn't it happy?"
A child asked.
Everything eating the son, isn't it happy?
Isn't it?
She asked, laying down on her back in the grass
happy everything eating the sun, Isn't it?"
Thank you.