Thank you very much.
Writing poetry is such a singular business in many ways.
If the poet has any humbleness in his soul at all
when he begins to write poetry he
realizes that he has many, many years
ahead of him of silence and inattention and so forth.
It takes a long time for him to receive any node at all
before he has a poem published really.
It's really a very lonely business in many ways,
unless you like to talk to yourself.
And so that's why I'm always amazed whenever
I'm invited to read at a place like the University of Arizona
and people show up to hear me and it's really incredible.
So many people it's wonderful.
I'm really very happy to be here and very
grateful to have this audience.
For a number of years I was not able to write poems
about myself.
I kind of spent a good deal of my time creating
my own mythology kind of casting my voice out
into various characters.
And I'd like to read a longer sequence of poems
about a particular character that I made up.
His name is Imbellis.
And imbellis is the Latin word for peace and soul.
And I wanted to kind of create a person right from Adams
and create him in innocence and then show what happens to him.
And I'll read-- it's not too long a sequence.
I'll read the sequence without any comment between the point
because I think Imbellis tells his own story.
The sequence is called, "The Brief Passage and Quick
Corruption of Imbellis."
And it's dedicated for Hawks from a Dove.
Can you all hear me?
There's no problem?
All right.
The masters report their confusion
at the sudden existence of Imbellis.
If he had commenced with multiple budding
complex but understandable, intricate yet simple,
we would have prevailed.
But a cell decided to suddenly divide and we were confused.
It was unperceived by us.
We could have predicted partway down the chain
but a single isolated cell cleaved and split and re-split.
And before we could control Imbellis, he was here.
Zimmer reports his confusion at the sudden existence
of Imbellis.
I am innocent I swear it, but delighted.
For years I dabbled with Perry plums and footnotes
of gerantic men.
I dreamt of plums in an icebox, of globes
of palpable fruit and locomotives spouting violets.
Then Imbellis suddenly happened in some agar jar
in my darkest corner, untainted, trusting and benign.
He stepped forth burying a sequence with him
into the world.
Imbellis reports his confusion at his sudden existence.
Does everyone suddenly awake to find
they wholly exist knowing that the instant before they
had not?
How curious to be born in a jar of jelly.
How strange to see terror on my father's faces?
I love them instantly but they did not
trust me save one perhaps my mother who was overindulgent.
They seemed angry that I stickily was there.
But how does one prevent his happening?
Imbellis strolls out among the trees
and imagines the world to be as peaceful as their seasons.
Above me the trees do things with such simplicity.
I walk in their shadows.
I feel them press up against the wind.
Hear their leaves, flick rain, and watch them take the sun
completely as their due.
They are so pervasive, so abundant, so gentle.
They grow giddy with their richness in the fall
and loosen leaves from their tiny sockets to flash
and clatter down to my feet.
Then they tighten quietly to wring another year.
Snow clings to them curving and angling
in black and white gathering and spilling
with its weight to tingle down on my face.
I cannot even perceive the time they enter the gentlest
of seasons.
They are buds then flowers and small leaves and clutching
and all this so green and graceful before my eyes.
I do not know what is happening.
I have seen these trees in day and night.
I have passed through them in peace and happiness.
They have no secret periods of ferocity.
They do not surround and swallow each other
like insidious cells and jelly.
They are strong like meaningful through all seasons.
Surely the world I come to is like them.
Imbellis strolls out onto the battlefield.
I step onto the field at midnight
and suddenly bombs fall arrows slant and the moon
is scribbled with tracer fire.
By morning I have nearly lost my life
and assuredly my innocence is gone.
No primrose fingers squeeze those triggers and pluck
those bows and catapults, but hands unsound with strength
and sick with hate.
The innocents are ground into the Earth like leaves
and die in mortal terror, but still
the captains blow their charges and generals wring their hands
upon the hills.
By day's end trembling more in rage than terror
I have seen enough.
I step forth from my hiding place and change the landscape.
Warriors turn back meekly toward childhood.
The ground grows whole, blasted trees, men.
Mangled flowers bloom and animals
return to dart and fetch upon the land.
Shells are temped with their smoke back into cannons.
Bombs rise and return like eggs to droning rooms.
Sabers dull and arrows pluck sweet music on their strings.
The night has returned and the war is gone with my innocence.
I have brought peace but I have seen blood, hurt anguish
and known anger.
I sit beneath the moon and grind my teeth.
I have become as cunning as these childlike warriors
who play now like ferns beneath the trees.
Imbellis bellicose.
To fuming hell with talk, let the shriek of steel on steel
convey my subtle messages, give meaning to my symbols
and place reason in my words.
I defy innocence.
I have seen peace and no it is no longer useful.
I thrash and cleave pure flesh.
I feel purpose in the heart of war.
So deadened by accord I am revived by combat.
Peace has become intolerable.
Blood, oh only blood excites me.
It is worth all torture, all pain that is not mine.
Invincible I strike in passion at the groveling and wincing.
I, Imbellis, I'm King of terror and peace is puny memory to me.
The master's report the mortal illness of Imbellis.
Just as we knew it would happen, he is dying.
Not horribly on a cross nor gallantly on the battlefield
amidst the gore of his ultimate victims, but slowly painfully
and ignoble we of a subtle cancerous growth, which seized
him before we could control it.
Soon his strange heart will gasp upon its blood
and his trachea will chatter like a gourd.
Those cells that had so quickly multiplied to make him
will sag and fall apart.
His synthesis will never reoccur.
Having feared Imbellis once we know his make up and will never
let him happen again.
The death rattle of Imbellis.
I have been cheated of my innocence.
Like God, I have stumbled on my peace and grown ferocious.
And what is to show, a shattered body, a rotting mind and death
in hideous stupefying bursts of pain.
What I have proven is unspeakable.
I return in raft to the agar jars
and pray that all my cells will die.
I bequeath nothing and leave no message.
I wish only for eternal darkness.
Zimmer writes an epithet for Imbellis.
Now that Imbellis is dead, I will not
make blank statements such as dust to dust.
I am a poet and expected to design bright messages.
So I say Imbellis is dead and that is all.
Time that predictable rot has taken him.
He was good and he was bad, that is all.
I write no anguished elegy for him.
I will not sum up his existence.
Forget him.
A study of his life would show things we cannot believe.
If you insist I will say it, dust to dust.
Now, forget him.
That's enough of that stuff.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]