Is it possible it's 9:30 already?
Well, when do we start?
8:35 or 8:40?
There's still a lot of poems I want to read.
Quarter to nine, all right.
Well let me ask you what you'd like to do.
I still have a good many poems I want to read.
Would you like to go on?
Or should we have an intermission?
Five or 10 minutes.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
I don't understand any of that but I'm going to go on.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
Wait, wait.
Judge later.
I am looking for someone to speak in this poem.
Someone, not I, who can say I without laughing,
with a veiled smile.
The other voices all belong to me now,
and I can't remember where I borrowed them.
If you have something to give, give it
to the man who vanishes into the rock.
To the one who watches and speaks behind his mask
without breaking into giggles.
As for myself, I mistrust my name, my face, my fourth eye,
the shadow of my hands under which ants
scurry to their deaths.
I predict my own death, when all my poems will fly back
into my mouth, small crystals dissolving
in the acid of truth.