WEBVTT

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And the last poem
I'd like to read

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is based on the method
of hunting bear,

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rigged by the Eskimos, in
the days before airplanes

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took over.

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[INAUDIBLE] stopped in the bone
and freeze it in a lump of fat

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and put it out there for
bears along the path.

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And when a bear ate
such a lump of fat,

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his stomach grew
fat in his mouth,

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and the bone was
being opened, he

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shot the bear twice
in the stomach

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and caused him to
hemorrhage to death.

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And I asked the man who told
me this how long would it

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take the bear to die.

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And he said, oh, days.

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In a strong bear,
sometimes a week.

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And he told me the bear would
run all day, all this time,

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just run without
any set direction,

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but just keep running, and
moved very fast, day and night.

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And, in order to get the bear
before the scavengers got it,

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you had to follow
the trail of blood,

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running yourself, day and
night, until you got to him.

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And I asked him, how
do you eat if you--

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you couldn't acquire enough
food to last for a week,

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running day and night.

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And he told me what
the diet became

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after a certain number
of days, when you ran out

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of food, how you stayed alive.

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And it impressed me.

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And this story sat with me
for, I think, about a year.

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And then, one night,
I was in Mississippi

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and having a sleepless
night, and just

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got up and wrote the poem out.

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And I fixed it up a
little bit and [INAUDIBLE]

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but, basically, it
just came out this way.

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And, hopefully, I don't
know what it means.

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It's called "The Bear."

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In late winter, I sometime
glimpse bits of steam

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coming up from some
fault in the old snow

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and bend close and
see it is lung-colored

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and put down my nose and know
the stinging, enduring odor

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of bear.

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I take a wolf's rib and
whittle it sharp at both ends

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and coil it up and
freeze it in blubber

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and place it out on the
fairway of the bears.

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And when it has vanished
I move on the bear tracks,

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roaming in circles until I come
to the first, tentative, dark

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splash on the earth.

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And I set out running,
following the splashes of blood

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wandering over the world.

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At the cut, gashed resting
places I stop and rest,

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at the crawl-marks where
he lay out on his belly

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to overpass some
stretch of bauchy ice

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I lie out of it
dragging myself forward

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with bear-knives in my fists.

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On the third day I begin
to starve, at nightfall

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I bend down as I knew I would
as a turd sopped in blood,

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and hesitate, and pick it up,
and thrust it in my mouth,

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and gnash it down, and
rise and go on running.

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On the seventh day, living
by now on bear blood alone,

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I can see his upturned
carcass far out ahead,

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a scraggled, steamy hulk, the
heavy fur riffling in the wind.

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I come up to him at stare at
the narrow-spaced petty eyes,

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the dismayed face laid
back on the shoulder,

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the nostrils flared, catching
perhaps the first taint of me

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as he died.

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I hack a ravine in his thigh,
and eat and drink, and tear him

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down his whole length
and open him and climb in

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and close him up after me,
against the wind, and sleep.

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And dream of lumbering
flatfooted over the tundra,

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stabbed twice from within,
splattering a trail behind me,

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splattering it out no
matter which way I lurch,

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no matter which parabola of
bear-transcendence, which

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dance of solitude I attempt,
which gravity-clutched

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leap, which trudge, which groan.

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Until one day I
totter and fall--

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fall on this stomach
that has tried so hard

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to keep up, to digest the
blood as it leaked in,

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to break up and digest
the bone itself, and now

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the breeze blows over
me, blows off the hideous

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belches of
ill-digested bear blood

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and rotted stomach and the
ordinary, wretched odor

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of bear, blows across
my sore, lolled tongue

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a song or screech, until I
think I must rise up and dance.

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And I lie still.

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I awaken, I think.

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Marshlights reappear, geese come
trailing again up the flyway.

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In her ravine under
old snow the dam-bear

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lies, licking lumps of
smeared fur and drizzly eyes

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into shapes with her big tongue.

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And one hairy-soled trudge
stuck out before me,

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the next groaned out,
the next one, the next,

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the rest of my days I spend
wandering, wondering what,

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anyway, was that sticky
infusion, that rank flavor

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of blood, that poetry,
by which I lived?

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