I'm going to read two more new ones
and then end with an older one that John Anderson asked
me to read and am very happy reading it.
The first one I'm going to read is very silly, very
recent, I probably shouldn't read it but am going to.
It's a poem called "Scenic View" "Scenic View".
Now I was driving--
I was being driven out in the desert a bit today
and I saw places where you could turn off the road and park,
and look or take photographs.
But thank heaven they just said a parking space,
they didn't say scenic view.
In New Hampshire and Vermont and so on,
the authorities apparently have so much
contempt to the intelligence of the motorists
that they put up signs saying scenic view in case you know,
so you can stop--
I don't know what you're supposed to be doing--
playing solitaire in the back seat or something?
You can look up and see and go, Oh, take a picture,
so very offensive I think.
I'd like to decide what's the scenic view for myself,
I'm sorry.
Anyway, this is called scenic view.
And well, at Cliff's edge they photograph our mountains.
Every year, the hills turned paler and more distant,
trees less green, rock piles disappearing as emulsion
from a billion Kodak's sucks color out.
[LAUGHTER]
In a decade or two, Monadnock, Kearsarge, and Washington
will become wholly invisible.
All tint removed, atom by atom to albums
in Medford and Greenwich.
While over the valleys the still solid granite
rears with unseeable peaks fatal to airplanes.
Like transparent fish hovering in the glass fish
bowls water colored water.
Another-- thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Another Luddite poem for the Sierra Club.
I bet you didn't know that about cameras and motion.
It was all right when we took black and white pictures,
but since then, it's-- you've been noticing everything
getting paler.