--go on to recite poems about--
well, I've kind of divided things
into three sections, work, war, and love.
So since that last poem I recited had an office setting,
I think I'll recite some work poems.
This one is called "Elegy for a Gifted Child."
This is for all English department majors
who wind up in advertising.
[LAUGHTER]
And it's a double poem.
It's an elegy and a counter elegy.
"Elegy for a Gifted Child."
"Ephemeron, it's over.
All the scales of the clock faces
are so heavy with life, so loaded
to capacity with eyelids and lashes
that they have come around again to zero, midnight,
since you were no Faust at noon, no Mephistopheles at midnight
will reward your prayers with hell
and its continuous distraction.
It's just all over, Ephemeron.
Counter elegy.
Oh, no, I go on doing what I have to do because I do it.
I sat and sat there counting 1 plus 1
plus 1, while all the rest were somewhere else,
playing in the tripe of a living horse
and stroking its great eyes.
This took time.
Then at the end of that eternity, they
gave me 60 bucks, less taxes and dues, and said,
come back tomorrow.
There is always work to do.
It was night.
I went out, or I got screwed, screwed, and tattooed.
My skin read, "I love my mother" and a heart
pierced by a naked sword, weak in the needling.
It was there for all life long in the bent branch of my arm.
You think I just went off like a bomb and was over.
But it has seemed long to me, slow as the explosion
of the whole life of the tree, in which the birds evolved,
each singing out its song."