WEBVTT

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This poem-- I knew a
gypsy, a European gypsy.

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And his one aim in life was to
be a South American dictator.

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And so he said I was
too naive for him.

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So when he left, I
read in the paper

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they're having
trouble in Bolivia,

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and I think that's probably
where he is now, OK?

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[LAUGHTER]

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So I got-- all my poems
after that for a while

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were just all about him.

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But this house-- one
paragraph is strong,

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and I've cut it a lot and
tried to make it better.

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So I'll try it out on you.

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It's called "Cuba, 1962."

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"When the rooster jumps
up on the windowsill

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and spreads his
red-gold wings, I

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wake, thinking it
is the sun and call

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Juanita, hearing her
answer, but only in my mind.

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I know she was already
outside, breaking the cane off

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at ground level, using
only her big Indian hands.

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I get the machete and
walk among the cane

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until I see her, lying
face down in the dirt.

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Juanita, dead in the
morning like this.

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I raise the machete--

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what I take from the
Earth I give back--

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and cut off her
feet I lift the body

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and carry it to the wagon,
where I load the cane

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to sell in the village.

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Whomever tastes my woman
in his candy, his cake,

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tastes something sweeter than
the sugar cane, it is grief.

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If you eat too much
of it, you want more,

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you can never get enough."