WEBVTT

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Well, I'll read now a
few, a few more poems.

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I thought I was
a little hesitant

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about reading some
recent poems and these

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are the ones I'm hesitant about
because not too long ago I

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read these poems at
a Lutheran college.

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And well just as I wrote
that poem for William Carlos

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Williams, while he was
giving his reading,

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or perhaps it was
afterwards, I don't remember.

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But any case, just
as I in my day

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wrote poems to poets who gave
readings, so at the Lutheran

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college it came
my turn to receive

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a poem written on the
[? case ?] of my reading.

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It was pressed into my hand
directly after the reading.

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A woman gave it to me.

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She had scrawled at the
bottom, if you need me, ask.

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[LAUGHTER]

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I don't know what she meant.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So the poem went
something like this,

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I can't say it all but it
began, "Go away for now.

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Why are you so obsessed
with health and disease?

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Your words are as
cruel as your heart."

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And it went on in this way.

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And it ended with a
line I can't forget.

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"In the midst of the jar
of life, you are a pickle."

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[LAUGHTER]

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Well, I laughed too
when I read the poem.

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And yet the laughter
stuck in my throat.

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Because I could
feel the pity from,

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I could feel it too,
that in those times

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there was something that
had reached that woman.

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And so I put her
letter up above my desk

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and had it there for a long time
as a kind of modern equivalent

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of the death's head.

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And it did make
me a little timid

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about reading these poems.

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That is perhaps, I'm
even more timid tonight

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because I was just
told a strange thing

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before I came in here.

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That an old Sunday
school teacher of mine

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is in the audience.

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And I don't know who it may be.

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I hope you'll call me
or say hello afterwards.

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All I can be sure of that is
that a Sunday school teacher

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has been well steeped in
the doctrine of forgiveness

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of the New Testament.

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And if these poems are not
those that a Sunday school

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teacher would want to be
proud of in a graduate

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from Sunday school, I must
invoke that doctrine from her.

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I think I'll just read
two poems, the kind that--

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Well, a prickly poem, and--

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Then it's called the
porcupine and then

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and then it's called the bear.

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I don't know if you
have porcupines here,

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that for here those
of you who aren't

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familiar with the animal,
it's necessary to know

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to make any sense of this
poem that the porcupine has

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a fierce craving for salt
and will eat anything

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that human beings have left
the residue of their salt upon,

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even automobile tires
or steering wheels.

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I even heard of them
eating the aluminum

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siding of a motor left,
[INAUDIBLE] left it,

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they left the motor,
left in the woods.

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And I have this old
place in Vermont

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and when I was away
one period of time

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the porcupines ate their
way into my cellar,

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ate a hole right
through the cellar door

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and got into the cellar.

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And had they got up into
the rest of the house,

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they would have
completely demolished it

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because my sweat has been
slammed over floor, ceiling,

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and wall in that house.

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And however, they ate down the
cellar stairs on the way up.

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They're not a very
intelligent animal.

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That's because it's-- that's
because they're so well

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protected, they are the
easiest animal to kill.

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And they are the
only wild animal that

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is easy to kill in Vermont.

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And you can just
get alongside them

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and strike them over
the nose with a club

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and that's the way
to finally kill them.

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Sometimes it's hard to find
some [? intelligent ?] trees

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and in that case, the
farmer shoots them.

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The Avesta is the
Zoroastrian printed book

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and you may think the doctrine
is [INAUDIBLE] they were saved

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by [INAUDIBLE]
arrow, and force fire

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is that name given
to the fire supposed

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to be able to make by
rubbing two sticks together.

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[INAUDIBLE]

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"The Porcupine."

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"Fatted on herbs,
swollen on crabapples,

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puffed up on bast
and phloem, ballooned

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on willow flowers,
poplar catkins,

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first leafs of aspen and larch,
the porcupine drags and bounces

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his last meal through ice,
mud roses and goldenrod

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into the stubby high fields.

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In character he resembles
us in seven ways:

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he puts his mark on outhouses,
he alchemizes by moonlight,

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he shits on the run, he
uses his tail for climbing,

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he chuckles softly to himself
when scared, he's overcrowded

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if there is more than one
of them per five acres,

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his eyes have their
own inner redness.

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Digger of goings across floors,
of hesitations at thresholds,

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of handprints of dread at
doorpost or window jamb,

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he would gouge the
world empty of us,

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hack and crater it until it is
nothing, if that could rinse it

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of all of our sweat and pathos.

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Adorer of ax, handles
aflow with grain, or arms,

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of Morris chairs, of
hand-crafted objects, steeped

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in the juice of fingertips,
or surfaces wetted down

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with fist grease and
elbow oil, of clothespins

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that have grabbed our body-rags
by underarm and crotch.

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Unimpressed, bored by the
whirl of the skies, by these

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he's astonished,
ulta-Rilkean angel

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for whom the true portion
of the sweetness of earth

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is one of those bottom-heavy,
glittering sardonic bits

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of salt water that
splash down the haunted

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ravines of a human face.

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A farmer shot a
porcupine three times

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as it dozed on a tree limb.

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On the way down it tore open
its belly on a broken branch,

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hooked its gut and
went on falling.

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On the ground it's sprang to
its feet, and paying out gut

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heaves and spartled through
a hundred feet of goldenrod

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before the abrupt emptiness.

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The Avesta puts
porcupine killers

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into hell for nine
generations, sentencing

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them to gnaw out each others'
hearts for the salts of desire.

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I roll this way and
that in the great bed,

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under the quilt that mimics
this country of broken farms

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and woods, the fatty sheath of
the man [AUDIO OUT] bristles

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reversing, blossoming outward--

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a red-eyed, hard-toothed,
arrow-struck urchin, tossing up

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mattress feathers, pricking
the woman beside me

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until she cries.

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In my time I have crouched,
quills erected, Saint Sebastian

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of the sacred heart,
and been beat dead

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with a locust club
on the bare snout.

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And fallen some high
places, I have fled,

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have jogged over
fields of goldenrod,

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terrified, seeking home.

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And among flowers I have
come to myself empty,

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the rope strung out
behind me in the fall sun

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suddenly glorified
with all my blood.

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And tonight I think I prowl
broken skulled or vacant

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as a sucked egg in
the wintry meadow,

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softly chuckling, blank
template of myself,

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dragging a starved belly
through the lichflowered acres,

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where burdock loses the
arks of its seed and thistle

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holds up its lost
blooms and rosebushes

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in the wind scrape
their dead limbs

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for the forced-fire of roses."

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[APPLAUSE]

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