I'm going to read three more poems.
This next poem is a poem called "Ode
to a Lebanese Crock of Olives".
[LAUGHTER]
I guess this poem allows me, technically,
to be called a romantic poet.
And-- it's a kind of hymn to my sense
of the beauty in the world.
The poem is dedicated to my friend
Walter Hamady's Aunt Libby, who lives in Lebanon.
And I can't believe that anyone in the United States
ever has any decent food so, constantly,
since Walter and Mary, his wife, packages
of delicious and wonderful food from Lebanon.
And it was on the receipt of one of these packages of olives,
nearly all of which I consumed, [LAUGHS]
that I was inspired to write this ode.
Actually, Walter said he'd never let me visit again
if I didn't do something to replace the olives that I
consumed.
[LAUGHTER]
"Ode to a Lebanese Crock of Olives".
"For Walter's Aunt Libby's diligence in making olives.
As some women love jewels and drape themselves
with ropes of pearls, stud their ears
with diamonds band themselves with heavy gold,
have emeralds on their fingers or opals on white bosoms.
I live with a still life of grapes whose skins frost over
with the sugar forming inside, hard apples,
and delicate pears; cheeses, from the sharp fontina,
to icy bleu.
The aromatic chévres, boursault, boursin,
a litany of thick bread, dark wines, pasta with garlic,
soups full of potato and onion; and butter and cream,
like the skins of beautiful women, are on my sideboard.
These words are to say thank you to Walter's Aunt
Libby for her wonderful olives; oily green knobs in lemon
that I add to the feast when they get here from Lebanon.
Where men are fighting, as her sisters
have been fighting for years, over whose house the company
stays in and whose recipes for kibbe or dolmas or houmas
are passed along.
I often wonder, had I been born beautiful,
a Venus on the California seashore,
if I'd have learned to eat and drink so well?
For, with hummingbirds outside my kitchen window
to remind of small elegance, and mourning doves
in the pines and cedar, speaking with grace,
and the beautiful bodies of lean blond surfers,
dancing on terraces.
Surely had I a beautiful face or elegant body,
surely I would not have found such pleasure in food?
I often wonder why a poem to me is
so much more like a piece of bread and butter
than like a sapphire?
But with mockets flying in and out of orange groves,
and brown pelicans dipping into the Pacific, looking
at camellias and fuchsia, and abundance of rose,
and the brilliant purple ice plant which
lined the cliffs to the beach, life was a 'Still Life' for me.
And a feast.
I wish I'd known then the paintings of Rubens or David,
where beauty was not only thin, tan, California girls,
but included all abundance.
As some women love jewels, I love the jewels of life.
And were you, the man I love to cover me naked with diamonds,
I would accept them too.
Beauty is everywhere, in contrasts and unities.
But to you, I could not offer the thin tan fashionable body
of a California beach girl.
Instead, I could give the richness
of burgundy, dark brown gravies, gleaming onions,
the gold of lemons, and some of Walter's Aunt Libby's
wonderful olives from Lebanon.
Thank you, Aunt Libby, from a failed beach girl,
out of the West."
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]