I want to read one poem from that book, which
is on the face of it-- quite different from those others,
and then a final one from The Moving Target.
And this next one is a poem that I
remember distinctly the beginning of the inception of--
I mean, it was written quite a long time afterwards,
but the beginning of it was on the West Coast in 1962
when three men, whom I admired very much,
had tried to sail a trimaran into the nuclear test
zone in the Pacific and had been arrested by the Coast Guard,
in, you know like the Pueblo, in international waters
and brought back.
And they tried to bring a case against the government
for piracy, but the government got their case in the first
and put them in jail.
And there was a demonstration for about 10 days
outside the post office in San Francisco, and about 30 of us
slept on the sidewalk and did other disreputable things
to call attention to it.
And one morning, I woke up and looked
at these people whom I've never known before this
started and had been spending days
and nights with for some time.
And that was the beginning of the poem.
I think also, I'd like to take--
it's as good a moment as any, as the reading is being taped,
if one can do it without any kind of pedantry or pomposity,
I'd like to dedicate the tape to anybody
from the University of Arizona who's
been in trouble for draft resistance, something
which is very close to my own sympathies.
The poem is called "My Friends".
My friends without shields walk on the target.
It is late; the windows are breaking.
My friends without shoes leave what they love.
Grief moves among them as a fire among its bells.
My friends without clocks turn on the dial;
they turn, they part.
My friends with names like gloves set out
barehanded as they have lived, and nobody knows them.
It is they that lay the wreaths at the milestones.
It is their cups that are found at the wells
and are then chained up.
My friends without feet sit by the wall
nodding to the lame orchestra.
"Brotherhood," it says on the decoration.
My friend without eyes sits in the rain
smiling with a nest of salt in his hand.
My friends without fathers or houses
hear doors opening in the darkness
whose halls announce, "Behold, the smoke has come home."
My friends and I have in common the present--
a wax bell and a wax belfry.
This message telling of metals, this hunger
for the sake of hunger, this owl in the heart, and these hands--
one for asking, one for applause.
My friends with nothing leave it behind in a box.
My friends without keys go out from the jails.
It is night.
They take the same road.
They miss each other.
They invent the same banner in the dark.
They ask their way only of sentries too proud to breathe.
At dawn, the stars on their flag will vanish.
The water will turn up their footprints,
and the day will rise like a monument
to my friends, the forgotten.