It's very hard, I know, to listen to poem
after poem coming at you.
Let me just change that for a moment
and perhaps let you relax a little.
I'm going to read a short prose piece, or prose-like piece.
It's called A Short Novel.
I mean about that short.
I've always envied friends who are fiction writers, especially
novelists, because they have this--
yeah, they move into a novel.
And they have this sense of 1, 2,
3 years ahead of them working on this long continuous piece,
so that every morning they get up and they sit down
and they enter their novel and work.
And it seems like a marvelous sense of continuity
to be able to do that.
It's an enviable kind of continuity.
And then after you've finished that sense
of envying the continuity, you envy the fact
that, for example, they can sell their novels.
And if they're really fortunate, they're made into movies.
And you retire and you do all sorts of lovely things.
So I had this enormous envy and desire to write a novel.
But I'm a lyric poet.
And lyric poets don't write novels very well.
Anyway, I took a hand at it.
And I have written a short novel, probably
the shortest novel ever.
I think-- lacking all humility-- it
has all of the ingredients of a great many novels.
It goes this way.
A woman took a man for her husband,
but things did not go well for her.
She would come in from digging in the garden.
"Worms in the cabbage," she'd say.
"The bright horns of Moses," he'd reply.
She would be banging the pot in the kitchen.
"The cracked dish," she'd say.
"The princess is dancing in the ballroom," he'd reply.
She would be darning socks by the fireplace.
"The rip in the seam," she'd say.
"Two birds in the bush," he'd reply.
She would come back from speaking to the neighbors.
"I'm leaving," she'd say.
"The wind in the orchard," he'd reply.
So the woman packed her trunk, went off to the next village,
and was courted by another man.
"Worms in the cabbage," she'd say.
"No doubt," he'd say.
"The cracked dish," she'd say.
"Just as I've always thought," he'd say.
"The rip in the seam," she'd say.
"And not a moment later," he'd say.
The woman took the man for her husband.
They became prosperous, raised a family,
and grew old in the even tenor of their days.
The man died looking out the window.
The woman died with her eyes tightly closed.
Their children gave them a grand funeral
and took a different name.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
I told you prose was successful.
I've been waiting for the movies to make me an offer on that
but no one has bothered.