I want to read one more new poem,
and then I'll read a couple of poems from The Bride of E.
And then the poem I wanted to read you is another erasure.
I hope I can find it here.
I did an erasure of the first three cantos
of my translation to see what would happen.
I may not be able to find it.
You'll be in constant suspense.
Here it is.
And as I did it, I put each canto
which is anywhere from about 130 lines to 150 into eight lines.
So there are two four-line stanzas--
part 1, two four-line stanzas and part 2
which, again, represent the cantos,
and I had in mind to do the whole inferno,
and so that reducing it down like I had Mrs. Dalloway.
And it seemed to be when the poem got written,
it seemed to be about a moment of beginning like birth.
And so you'll recognize some of the elements at least
in section 3 as having come from the cantos I just read you.
"At the moment of beginning, a cage
can be a body, part in the night, quieted slightly.
Mind, a stopped top.
Clock, spring set, hand in motion.
The fact of the hollow nothing head.
How did we come to this?
Inch by inch, I was born, borrowed from the beast.
I was now property in a country where chain reigns the Empire
City of I. Two, so the empire, the breath, the legend
of the well-guarded hell.
One comes to tell you what you should have done differently.
I think I say, and I am not you.
In the margin of fear, I heard a woman convincing me to listen.
Listen, she said, to the doctor.
Three.
The city before this was nothing than dolls
voices crying mama, mama, mama, and swirl of sand and a storm.
Nothing turns back.
I saw fluttering, I recognized in the distance.
Out of nowhere, there was red, the furnace
and the beating heart, camera flash with the scene."
I actually think that's probably a good place to end.
So thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]