WEBVTT

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One of the earliest
poems I wrote

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is called First Song, about
the first experience of music

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for a boy growing up in the
prairie of Illinois, which

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isn't where I grew up.

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Then it was dusk in Illinois.

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The small boy after an
afternoon of cutting dung

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hung on the rail fence, a
sapped thing, weary to crying.

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Dark was growing
tall, and he began

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to hear the pond frogs
all calling on his ear

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with what seemed their joy.

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Soon their sound was
pleasant for a boy

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listening in the smoky dusk
and the nightfall of Illinois.

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And from the fields,
two small boys

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came bearing corn stalk violins.

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And they rubbed the
cornstalk bows with resins.

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And the three sat there
scraping of their joy.

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It was now fine
music, the frogs,

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and the boys did in the
towering Illinois twilight make.

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And in the dark, in spite of
the shoulders' ache, a boy's

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hunched body, loved out of
a stalk, the first song that

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is happiness.

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And the song woke his
heart to the darkness

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and into the sadness of joy.

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Well I could no more
write that poem now

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than [AUDIO CUTS OUT] some
of the more recent poems

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I'm going to read.

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And I'll leave it up to you
to judge how far I backslid.

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In the meantime, I feel a
certain hesitation really

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about reading some
of the recent poems,

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but I won't read them quite yet.

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I'll read some earlier ones.

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