I want to pause to tell you of a swift and dramatic enactment
of poetic justice.
I'm sorry to have to correct Dr. Muir,
but this Poetry Center opened in November of 1960
for other poets to live, be taken care of,
bed and breakfast that is.
And in 1961 of September after my first trip
to Japan just as I was leaving, I was given a house for life
in which to write poetry.
In being given this house, the priest before--
it was a priest of a Zen Buddhist temple
never had heard of this Poetry Center.
In fact, he knew very little about me except my poetry.
So it was purely on the same level in which we invite poets
here.
This temple, all right was a temple,
it is a temple is one of the rarest small temples in Japan.
It is in itself a national art treasure.
It was an unprecedented invitation.
And I lived there in a separate little hidden house
perfectly taken care of very, very simply Japanese style.
And all I do is write poetry.
My audiences are not audiences such as you.
The only audience I have is when I
have written a poem the priest reads it at dinner.
He is the only one who speaks English.
And then he puts it into Japanese for the rest
of the family and the students.
Now the reason they gave me this house
is because they said my poetry is pure Zen.
I never studied Zen.
The priests in this whole compound
say my poems express what they feel
so they want me to be there.
Now I'm going to read you from now
on except for one, the poems I wrote
that caused the invitation and then poems
I wrote while I was there.
But the first poem I'm going to read to show you
that I've always been this way with this same type of vision
is the first poem I had published.
And this poem was published by accident
because I was very, very shy and a friend
took it and by chance showed it to the editor
of Harper's Magazine who published it
to my absolute fright.
Well, here is this poem.
And I think you'll see it's one of the longest I ever wrote.
But I think you'll see that the vision is the same as now.
This poem is called "Identity."
I am a thought in other minds, an echo sounding in the heart
to awaken songs, or pangs, or find
a conversational counterpart.
I am a voice to listening ears, a murmur, shout,
or tone of truth.
A ring of jollity or tears, a seeming sage or a hasty youth.
I am a thorn before the eyes, a swinging movement,
a surmise of grace or shamelessness.
I am a frame for touching hands, a felt and feeling warmth that
stands apart or in closeness.
I am a quantity to hold reflection of experience,
impressed by humans manifold in sweet or hurtful incidents.
I am a sum of all I've sensed of passionate intelligence,
by tons of science influenced and tracings of art testaments.
I am a page prepared by years of forceful primitive forebears,
the issue of a race.
I am the memory to be, the promise of posterity,
a step through changing space.
As breathing beating living leaves above the barren body
grieves each one known and cherished.
I am not dead.
They weep to see the pieces of themselves
in me that have passed and perished.