There's no, well-- well that's the nicest introduction
I think I ever heard.
It's not-- I don't think true either all of it.
I know all of it can't be except I'm glad if it is for Steve.
I really appreciate the kindness of the introduction.
[LAUGHTER]
Excuse me.
I would like to begin by reading an old poem.
I want to end with new poems if I may.
But one of the reasons I like to read this poem
is because although I started writing it as long ago as 1952,
it's not finished yet.
And yeah it's been published.
It's been around for a long time.
And so people unless I'm able to tell them
that it's not finished might be under the illusion
that it is finished.
I had to leave some things out.
I believe in leaving things out of poems
but I don't believe in leaving the kind of thing
out that I had to leave out in this one.
And every now and then I still go usually in some summer
I go back to it and try to write the last stanza.
It's in 3 stanzas and it should have 4.
I like unfinished poems really.
It's interesting to me that this should have remained
unfinished all this time.
But there is a piece of information
that I like to provide too if I read it.
It's called "On a"--
It has a long title so there should be everything in it
that's missing from the poem know but it isn't.
It's called "On a Painting by Patient B of the Independent
State Hospital for the Insane."
Now, that's a place in Iowa.
And as in many states that I've come across,
the towns that I suppose it's the state legislature
just chooses to situate such hospitals
and have names that themselves have a meaning.
In Iowa I remember Independents as being one of the places
and Mount Pleasant as being another of the places
and so on.
Well, that was interesting to me.
But this point comes out from a-- comes out
of an exhibition of paintings done for therapeutic purposes
by the patients at Independence, which
I saw in the summer of 1952.
And later on after the exhibition was taken down.
I remember this particular painting
and tried to describe it as best I could remember it.
The patients had been required to attach to the paintings
an explanation of them, which in some cases did seem necessary.
Not only did they lack talent frequently as painters
but the paintings were so strange in some cases
that unless you had an explanation you might not
have guessed what was going on.
Now, patient B was gifted in a very amateurish way
as a painter and very gifted as an explainer
of what he was doing.
And this particular scene in the painting
that I'm trying to describe he said
was a painting of Beverly Hills which he had never seen.
And it was a very small town in the painting.
And of course, it doesn't look like the Beverly Hills you
and I usually see.
But it's I like to think that it's the Beverly Hills
within Beverly Hills.
And near the end of the poem, this
is what I have to explain because this is what is part
of what's left out of the poem.
Near the end of the poem I talk about clouds
that hang over the town and the fact
that names are given to the clouds, which
are sort of the godlike in the way the clouds hang
over the town.
And the patient B explained that the names of the clouds
were rabbit, bear, and hyena.
And I wasn't able to get that in the poem.
But you have to imagine a yet unwritten fourth stanza which
begins with those words, rabbit bear and hyena
and then you finish the poem however you like.
OK.
[LAUGHTER]
And I couldn't do it.
On a painting by patient B then.
These seven houses have learned to face one another
but not at the expected angles.
Those silly brown lumps that are probably
meant for hills and not other houses
after ages of being themselves though naturally slow
are learning to be exclusive without offending.
The arches and entrances down to the right out of site
have mastered the lesson of remaining closed.
And even the skies keep a certain understandable distance
for these are the houses of the very rich.
One sees their children playing with leopards,
tamed at great cost.
Or perhaps it is only other children.
But none of these objects is anything more than a spot.
And perhaps there are not any children, but only
leopards playing with leopards.
And perhaps there are only the spots.
And the little maids from the windows
hanging like tongues calling the children in,
admiring the leopards are the dashes
a child might represent motion by means of,
or dazzlement possibly the brilliance of solid gold
houses.
The clouds resemble those empty balloons
in cartoons which approximate silence.
These clouds if clouds they are and not
the smoke from the seven aspiring chimneys, the more one
studies them, the more it appears
they too have expressions.
One might almost say they have their habits,
their wrong opinions, that their impulsivity masks
an essentially lovable foolishness.
And they will be given names by those who live under them
not public like mountains but private like companions.