Thank you very much.
I'm going to kind of reverse the usual order of poetry readings
and read a new poem first, and then read things from my book.
And then I'm also going to read some prose.
But I wanted to get this out of my system
right away, not just because it's a new poem,
but because of your goofy weather.
I just have to read something to get the snow in here.
[LAUGHTER]
I can't believe what you're getting away with here.
It's just not right, and I've brought the winter, I hope.
This poem is called Coldness.
Last night, the new snow lay glittering.
Shavings of mica.
Unreal, individual, more beautiful than snow.
More cold.
We'll take a walk in this, I thought.
But you were already in bed asleep.
The new humidifier whirred next to you in the dark.
The room was wet as a petal.
You lay curved under the blanket, scooping for warmth.
I get cold, you told me one summer.
I get colder than other people.
It's from my childhood.
And there was a story about a too-thin jacket,
and nobody believing you, and wind, and disillusion.
Afternoons, you sat reading on the living room radiator.
Some nights, when I get in bed, you say out of your sleep,
I'm cold.
And I tell you the truth.
Your skin is hot.
You're not cold.
Well, you're cold, you say, and fall asleep,
sullen as a cube in a tray.
I never did believe you got colder than other people.
And when you said you were hungry the day
we drove on the endless freeway, I
told you to pretend you were eating a sandwich.
When you're hungry, you said, we eat.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm afraid of sympathy as if it were a collar tightening,
but alone, I see you.
Your body last night was no more body
than a curl of cold butter on a bread plate.
It was hunched bitterly, silent with regret, alone in our bed.
How beautiful, then, the accumulated privacies
of your sleeping face.
How glad I was that you slept and did not
have to love the starry coldness I had planned for you.
So I wouldn't really bring star--
what is it?
So--
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
I really don't have any starry coldness planned for you.
I'll leave you alone in your fool's paradise down here,
where it's so wonderful.
I just love it.