WEBVTT

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I want now to read one last
poem to you and it's a--

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like taking the leaves, poem
and sections, several points.

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And it's a poem
that bears relation

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to the one I just read
or written earlier.

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This is an attempt to go further
in a way, but only an idea.

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There are many other
things in this poem

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besides notions of time
that I'm working with there.

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This is a poem
called Stone Walls,

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and it's the poem of coming
back as much as anything is.

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A poem in six parts,
I think it is.

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Stone walls emerge from leafy
ground and show their bones.

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In September, a leaf
fall singly down,

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then 1,000 leaves
whirl in frosty air.

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I am wild with joy
of leaves falling,

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of stone walls emerging.

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A return to the countryside
where I lay as a boy

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in the valley of noon
heat in the village

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of little sounds,
where I floated out

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of myself into the world
that lives in the air.

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In October, the leaves turn on
low hills and middle distance

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like heather, like
tweed, like a tweed

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roven from heather and gorse.

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Purples, greens, reds, grays,
oranges weaving together

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this joyful fabric.

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And I walked in the afternoon
sun, kicking the leaves.

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In November, the brightness
washes from the hills.

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And I love the land most
leaves down, color drained out

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in November rain.

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Everything gray and brown
against the dark evergreen.

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Everything rock and silver
lichen and moss on stone,

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strong bones of
stone walls showing

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at last in November cold,
making wavy rectangles

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on the unperishing hills.

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Part two.

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Wesley wells was my
grandfather's name.

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He had high
cheekbones and laughed

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as he hoed, practicing stories.

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The first time I remember him,
it was summer at twilight.

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He was weak from flu and
couldn't hike for his cows

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on ragged mountain.

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He carried the old
chair with no back

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that he used for milking to
the hillside over the house

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and called that mountain Kibosh,
kibosh, kibosh, kibosh, kibosh,

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kibosh.

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While he milked, he told
about drummers and baseball.

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He recited Lyceum poems
about drunk deacons

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or about lawyer Green, whose
skin was the color, green,

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Ridiculed as a schoolboy
who left town and returned

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triumphant.

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And riding home from the hay
fields, he handed me the pass.

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How he walked down
a row of fence posts

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in the blizzard of '88 or sword
oblongs of ice from Eagle pond.

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Or in summer, drove the hay
rack into shallow water,

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swelling wooden wheels
tight inside iron rims.

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Or chatted and teased
outside Amos Johnson's

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with Buffalo Billy Fiske
who dressed like a cowboy.

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While I daydreamed
my school year life

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at spring Glen grammar
school or Hampden High,

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I longed to return to him
in his awkward coat and cap,

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in his sweater with many holes.

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Three.

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A century ago, these
hills were bare.

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You could see past eagle pond
to sheep in the far pasture.

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Walls crossing clear land,
keeping Canesten lambs

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from peasly potatoes.

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Today, I walk in
fields grown over,

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among bare birches, oak
saplings, enormous sugar

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maples gone into
themselves for winter.

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Beside granite that men
stacked for $0.25 a rod plus

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forage for oxen.

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Boulders sledded into place.

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Smaller stones fitted
by clever hands

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to lock together like the
arched ramparts of Mycenae.

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I come to the foundations
of an abandoned mill.

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At the two sides
of a trout stream,

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feel stone walls emerging
uncut and unmortared,

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rear like a lion gate.

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Emptiness over the
still rushing water.

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Four.

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In this part, you will
notice some politics

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that are out of date as I
knew they would be shortly

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when I wrote them.

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Though perhaps, not
quite so shortly.

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Part four.

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Allende's murderers follow
Orlando Letelier to Washington.

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His car explodes when
they push the lever.

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His scream is distant,
like the grocer's scream,

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stabbed in the holdup.

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These howls and Tsvetayeva's
and Yelabuga who hangs herself

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in her cottage,
pulse, reverberate

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and die in the scrub pine that
grows from granite ledges,

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visible against snow at
the top of Kearsarge.

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Because jamming plates
drove the Appalachian range

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through the Earth's crust
before men and women,

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before squirrels, before
spruce and daisies,

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when only amoebas wept to
divide from themselves.

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Stone dwindled under millennial
rain like snow banks in March

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and diminished under glaciers
under the eyes of mice

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and reindeer, under
the eyes of foxes,

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under Siberian
eyes tracking bear

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10,000 years ago on Kearsarge.

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And the Shah of
Iran's opponents wake

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to discover nails driven
through their kneecaps.

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When Pinochet frowns in
Chile, hearing these howls,

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the corners of his mouth twitch
with an uncontrollable grin.

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Tiberius, listening, grins.

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Each morning, we
watch stone walls

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emerge on Kearsarge
and on Ragged Mountain.

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I love these mountains
which do not change.

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The screams persist.

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I continue my life.

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Five.

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At Thornley store, the dead
mingle with the living.

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Benjamin Canesten hovers
with Wesley among hardware.

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Kate looks over spools
of thread with nanny

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and old shadows stand among
dowels and raisins, woolen

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socks and axes.

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Now Ansel stops to buy
salt and tells Bob Thornley

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it got so cold, he saw two
hound dogs put jumper cables

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on a jackrabbit.

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Skiers stopped for gas.

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Summer people join us.

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Hitchhikers, road workers,
machinists, farmers,

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saw sharpeners.

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Our cries and hungers,
stories and music

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reverberate on the hills and
stone walls on the Exxon sign

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and clapboard of Thornley store.

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Part 6 is the last part.

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At church, we eat
squares of bread.

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We commune with
mothers and cousins

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with mothering, fathering
hills, with dead and living.

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And go home in gray
December in advent,

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waiting among generations unborn
who will look at the same hills

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as the leaves fall and turn
gray and watch stone walls

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ascending Ragged Mountain.

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These walls are the bones
of presidents, men and women

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who were never born, who
will never lead the Republic

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into the valley of cattle.

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When gangs fight with
dogs for the moose's body

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and poems for
Letelier are scattered

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like the molecules of
his body, and the books

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are burnt, and this room wet
ashes and language burnt out

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and the dead departed
along with the living.

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Wavering stone lines will
emerge from leaves in November

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on mountains without names.

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Pole beans raise their green
flags in the summer garden.

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I grow old in the house
I wanted to grow old in.

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When I am sleepy at
night, I daydream only

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of waking the next
morning to walk

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on the Earth of the present,
past noons of birch and sugar

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bush, past cellar
holes many miles

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to the village of nightfall.

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Thank you.

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Thank you

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[APPLAUSE]

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