I'd like to say that it's really a pleasure
to be in Tucson, Arizona.
I'm a Westerner, and I always feel at home when
I come out West.
And I can't say that I've ever been in the last few years,
to a town where people seem to be so nice and so receptive
to poetry.
And I'd like to thank all the people that
have been doing nice things like taking me birdwatching,
and cooking food for me.
I promised a young man named Jan that I
would read a poem tonight, and I'd
like to begin with that poem.
It's always hard for me to decide what to read,
because a poetry reading is such a personal thing.
I guess this audience belies that fact.
And one wants--
I really always want to read things that in some way
I feel moved to read on the occasion,
and it's so hard to know who you're talking to
and how they feel.
At any rate, I'd like to start with this poem for Jan, which
is called "On Barbara's Shore."
It's a poem that I wrote this year,
or last year for a woman who's the wife of a publisher.
And who is a very, very beautiful woman.
And I'd just like to say as preface, something
that I'm sure all of you women in the audience know.
And perhaps many of you men know,
that in the strange culture that women grow up in,
that one of the problems we have is that we don't really
learn to like ourselves very well,
because we see women in a very strange and often degrading
role.
And the result is, if we become somewhat healthy people
as we forget about that and embrace our own lives,
but we find it very, very hard to like other women.
And we direct all of our energy at the men of the world.
And I'd say that I've been fairly typical in doing this,
that almost all of the poems I write are spoken to men.
Perhaps in an attempt to try to get them to understand
what being a woman is all about, or what my feelings are about.
And it's seldom that I really do address myself to women.
Although I feel that obviously as human beings,
we all have things to say to each other,
but this is one of the first times
that I ever felt compelled to write almost a love
poem for a woman.
And it occurred because she created a real change
in my concept about certain kinds of women.
I've always been extremely prejudiced
against very attractive women.
And growing up in Southern California,
developed an extreme prejudice against blondes.
Women who were models.
Women who spent their lives as housewives, and did not
do other things.
Women who were not intellectuals.
And when I first met Barbara Martin, she was blonde,
she was a model, she spent her entire life as a housewife
and she was not an intellectual.
And I was prepared to be polite, and charmingly condescending
to her.
And much to my dismay, she turned out
to be one of the nicest human beings
and perhaps one of the wisest women I had ever met.
And I suddenly realized after about my third visit
there, that not only did I like this woman,
but that she had something to teach me
about being a woman, that was something I was really very
hungry to know.
And so I went home and wrote her a love poem, so to speak,
which is called "On Barbara's Shore."
The ocean has befriended me.
The rough white crests of waves walk
as if in moccasins, trailing a pale moist shoreline.
Knowing I cannot swim, the ocean has not taunted me.
Instead, its rhythms and sounds fall like sea roses at my feet.
The singer walks on the beach.
The faces who listen are cliffs of the water.
Tonight's concert is over, but every day of life
is some concert, clear and beautiful.
Fish like opal roses and the singed edges
of tea garden roses, and the camellia faces of blind roses.
The row of fish, caviar and roses
brush past me in this life.
So confusing, but beautiful.
When I wake up in your house, the serene white rug
catches my eye.
I know it reappears from room to room, a thread of continuity
in all of your days and nights.
I dream of living in such a well-tended house myself,
with Eastern rugs, tiles scrubbed to Dutch freshness,
copper, brass and porcelain surfaces sustaining the day.
But in such a life, the agonies of my past
would be unexplainable.
And if life is to have any ultimate agony,
perhaps that pain would be the loss of explanation, of reason,
of meaning.
The cockatoo sits in her brass cage,
crushing rocks against her powerful bird's tongue.
There is music, poetry, dance in this house.
It is clean, organized and direct in its meanings.
My life has none of this poetry in it.
None to frame it.
And being in your house, eating your generous breakfasts,
sleeping in your beautiful daughter's bedroom
and talking to you, makes me feel complete in some way.
As if each of your movements were teaching me
the beauty of women.
I know you have some wisdom, dark as afraid ancient books
setting off your fine face, which I have not yet learned.
Perhaps your greatest beauty is a form
of hope, imparted to all who talk to you.
That life will yield its secrets to the careful searcher.
Your movements are slow, and teach me
that they can be learned.
Music of the spheres, that means the planet's
moving in such harmony, that beautiful chords
are heard in their concert.
Surely, when you move it sets up a similar music,
all life is motion.
Mine is the quick silver flash, yours some more steady beam.
The ocean is my background.
Its motion designing the sand, carving the rocks,
offering life to simple things.
Your house is an ocean, a white bird curling its feathers
like flower petals against itself.
A sea which has befriended me, even though I cannot swim.