WEBVTT

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I'd like to close with a
poem I've had some fun with.

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I read this to the
librarians in Phoenix.

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It's a poem that got to
be accidentally religious.

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But I am a very bad
mechanic, a sort

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of Stone Age fitter of pieces.

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And I have a power mower.

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I have to say that
carefully always,

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because somebody once
referred to my paramour

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when I read this poem.

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This is two words.

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P-O-W-E-R M-O-W-E-R,
power mower.

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I have a manual.

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And I suppose if I
did everything right.

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I could put the thing
to sleep in the winter

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and keep the battery on trickle.

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And then put it back
together in the spring

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and do all the things
I'm supposed to

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and push the button.

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And it should start.

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But it never does.

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I mean, I do my
theological lessons.

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I read the manual.

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I say my prayers.

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I pour the holy oils.

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And I try to get
the right mixtures.

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I can't call the soul out
of this piece of junk.

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And I conclude that this
is a Catholic power mower.

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If it were Protestant,
we could argue this out

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between our consciousness.

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But this requires a priest.

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And I have to call
Sears, Roebuck

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and eventually he comes.

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And he brings the
true sacrament,

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and he pours the oils,
and he pushes the button,

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and the thing starts.

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And once he has started it
for me I am back in power.

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But somehow that's a
theological sequence.

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And this is the poem.

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"On the Orthodoxy and
Creed of My Power Mower."

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All summer in power, out
roaring the bull fiend,

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it raves on my lawn spewing
into the dirty lung hung

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on its side.

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Myself, maddened by power, I
ride the howl of hot new mown

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sacks full.

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The powder bursts
of gnashed moles

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runs till in one sweaty
half day of the beast,

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my lawn is lined
to tidy passages.

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So neatness from
lunacy, the orderliness

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of rage, Bedlam's Eden.

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All calm now, the dead
beast washed in cool light

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and stalled.

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Again and again all summer in
power to touch it frenzies.

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At falls dry last, I kneel to
the manual to the word touch

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and pour extreme unctions
that the locked life

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waken when called.

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And do call year after year in
season to the lunacy of power

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and am not answered.

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I probe, prime, pump
and might as well

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pray to headless
stone gods, nothing.

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Nothing I know wakens
the power blast

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hidden in it, which is no
cause of Protestant conscience

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to be worked out between
me and the source

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but a priest held
power of maintenance.

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Hours at last defeated,
I call and its priest

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comes with cups, knowledge,
and the anointed touch that

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does reach power and mystery.

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The beast gasps, shakes,
wavers deep in itself.

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Then roars full to resurrection.

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And here we come to
cure green again.

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Our triumph of faith,
which is of course

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that even the powerless and
inept may ride fit power

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once wakened by the anointed
man believed in deeper

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than conscience and defeat.

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Whole in his knowledge
given his touch

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charged, the dangerous
blind beast tame in service.

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