I'd like to read my wife's--
My wife's in the audience.
I'd like to read my--
her favorite poem of mine.
It's called "Salami."
It's in-- It's in They Feed They Lion.
It's a poem in three sort of short movements.
There are no transitions between them.
And so it might seem difficult just hearing it.
If you had it on the page, I don't
think it would be difficult.
The first section just describes a Spanish woman
making a salami.
And there are a lot of place names, towns in Spain that
are famous for the kinds of salamis
they produce, as our towns are famous for their athletes.
[LAUGHTER]
Theirs are known by wines, and cheeses, and salamis, more
sustaining significant things than a bunch
of jerks running on a big lawn.
[LAUGHTER]
The second part describes a stone cutter
and his idiot daughter.
His daughter is a full-grown woman
but she has the mentality of a child.
And the third section is about me.
I'm awakening from a nightmare.
There's a reference to the Tremontana, which
is the name of a wind that comes out of the Pyrenees in Spain
or the Alps in northern Italy, and brings
violent changes, great cold, and is much feared by Spaniards,
and the subject of a lot of folk tales.
It comes out of the Holy Mountains,
as the mountains are called, just behind Barcelona.
"Salami."
Stomach of goat, crushed sheep balls,
soft full pearls of pig eyes, snout gristle, fresh earth,
worn iron of trotter, slate of Zaragoza, dried cat heart,
cock claws.
She grinds them with one hand and with the other fists
mountain thyme, basil, paprika, and knobs of garlic.
And if a tooth of stink thistle pulls blood
from the round blue marbled hand all the better for this ruby
of Pamplona, this bright jewel of Vich,
this stained crown of Solsona, this salami.
[LAUGHTER]
The daughter of mismatched eyes, 36 year old infant smelling
of milk.
Mama, she cries, mama, but mama is gone,
and the old stone cutter must wipe the drool from her jumper.
His puffed fingers unbutton and point her to toilet.
10, 12 hours a day, as long as the winter sun
holds up he rebuilds the unvisited church of San Martin.
Cheep cheep of the hammer high above the town, sparrow
cries lost in the wind or lost in the mind.
At dusk he leans to the coal dull wooden Virgin
and asks for blessings on the slow one
and peace on his own grizzled head,
asks finally and each night for the forbidden,
for the knowledge of every mysterious stone,
and the words go out on the overwhelming incense of salami.
A single crow passed high over the house,
I wakened out of nightmare.
The winds had changed, the Tremontana
was bearing out of the Holy Mountains
to meet the sea winds in my yard,
burning and scaring the young pines.
The single poplar wailed in terror.
With salt, with guilt, with the need to die,
the vestments of my life flared, I
was on fire, a stranger staggering through my house
butting walls and falling over furniture, looking for a way
out.
In the last room where moonlight slanted
through a broken shutter I found my smallest son asleep or dead,
floating on a bed of colorless light.
When I leaned closer I could smell the small breaths going
and coming, and each bore its prayer
for me, the true and earthy prayer of salami.