WEBVTT

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Finally, I'd like to
read the last poem

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in this book They Feed They
Lion, which is another love

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poem to my wife again.

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I had a strange experience
with my first book, the guy who

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published it wrote me and
he said it's weird how you

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make discoveries in your life.

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The guy wrote me and he said
it's going to take me longer

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to print this book
than I thought,

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because I've run
out of capital I's.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And I thought well--

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the first book I this, I that,
I, incredible unrivaled egotism

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of the first book, and so
I had to wait another year.

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When I proofread this book I
kept coming across the word

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breath over and over again.

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And it became clear to me that
I was obsessed with breathing,

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really.

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It sounds dumb when
you say it, but it

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kept coming up in my poems
all the time and I said,

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Jesus I never knew that.

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And so I did just kind of
fired a crazy idea in my brain

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and this poem came
very quickly and it's

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the favorite poem of my best
friend Robert Mezey, who

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had many friends in this
audience, an extremely

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beautiful man and a
great poet, I think,

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and he was very
excited about it.

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So I'll always love it,
because he loved it.

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It's a very simple poem.

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It takes place in the Sierras.

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"Breath."

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Who hears the humming of
rocks at great height?

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The long steady drone
of granite holding

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together, the strumming
of obsidian to itself.

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I go among the stones stooping
and pecking like a sparrow,

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imagining the glacier's
final push resounding still.

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In a freezing mountain
stream, my hand

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opens scratched and raw,
and flutters strangely,

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more like an animal or
wild blossom in wind

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than any part of me.

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Great fields of stone stretching
away under a slate sky.

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Their single flower, the
flower of my right hand.

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Last night, the fire died into
itself black, stick by stick

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and the dark came out of my
eyes flooding everything.

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I slept alone and dreamed of
you in an old house, back home

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among your country
people, among the dead,

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not any living one
besides yourself.

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I woke, scared by the
gasping of a wild one,

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scared by my own breath
and slowly calmed,

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remembering your weight beside
me all these years and here

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and there, an eye of stone
gleamed with a warm light

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of an absent star.

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Today in this high
clear room of the world,

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I squat to the life of
rocks jeweled in the stream

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or whispering like shards.

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What fears are still
held locked in the veins

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till the last fire?

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And who will calm us then
under a gold sky that

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will be all of Earth.

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Two miles below on the
burning summer plains,

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you go about your
life one more day.

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I give you almond
blossoms for your hair,

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your hair that will be white.

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I give the world my worn
out breath on an old tune.

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I give it all I have
and take it back again.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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