WEBVTT

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I want to read one poem
from that book, which

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is on the face of it-- quite
different from those others,

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and then a final one
from The Moving Target.

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And this next one
is a poem that I

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remember distinctly the
beginning of the inception of--

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I mean, it was written quite
a long time afterwards,

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but the beginning of it was
on the West Coast in 1962

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when three men, whom
I admired very much,

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had tried to sail a trimaran
into the nuclear test

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zone in the Pacific and had been
arrested by the Coast Guard,

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in, you know like the Pueblo,
in international waters

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and brought back.

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And they tried to bring a
case against the government

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for piracy, but the government
got their case in the first

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and put them in jail.

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And there was a demonstration
for about 10 days

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outside the post office in San
Francisco, and about 30 of us

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slept on the sidewalk and
did other disreputable things

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to call attention to it.

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And one morning, I
woke up and looked

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at these people whom I've
never known before this

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started and had
been spending days

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and nights with for some time.

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And that was the
beginning of the poem.

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I think also, I'd like to take--

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it's as good a moment as any,
as the reading is being taped,

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if one can do it without any
kind of pedantry or pomposity,

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I'd like to dedicate
the tape to anybody

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from the University
of Arizona who's

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been in trouble for draft
resistance, something

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which is very close
to my own sympathies.

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The poem is called "My Friends".

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My friends without shields
walk on the target.

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It is late; the
windows are breaking.

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My friends without shoes
leave what they love.

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Grief moves among them as
a fire among its bells.

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My friends without
clocks turn on the dial;

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they turn, they part.

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My friends with names
like gloves set out

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barehanded as they have
lived, and nobody knows them.

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It is they that lay the
wreaths at the milestones.

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It is their cups that
are found at the wells

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and are then chained up.

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My friends without
feet sit by the wall

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nodding to the lame orchestra.

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"Brotherhood," it says
on the decoration.

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My friend without
eyes sits in the rain

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smiling with a nest
of salt in his hand.

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My friends without
fathers or houses

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hear doors opening
in the darkness

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whose halls announce, "Behold,
the smoke has come home."

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My friends and I have
in common the present--

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a wax bell and a wax belfry.

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This message telling
of metals, this hunger

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for the sake of hunger, this owl
in the heart, and these hands--

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one for asking,
one for applause.

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My friends with nothing
leave it behind in a box.

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My friends without keys
go out from the jails.

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It is night.

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They take the same road.

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They miss each other.

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They invent the same
banner in the dark.

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They ask their way only of
sentries too proud to breathe.

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At dawn, the stars on
their flag will vanish.

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The water will turn
up their footprints,

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and the day will
rise like a monument

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to my friends, the forgotten.

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