Now this poem, when I wrote it at Irvine,
I was sick for a while the first year
I went there because my teachers hated the poems I
wrote after I got there.
Before I got there, they liked my stuff.
Then they hated them.
They gave me a real hard time, so I couldn't write, well,
from October to December.
And this poem, the teacher liked short poems.
And if you turned in a long poem,
he'd say, well, I like short poems.
That was the sort of criticism we'd get.
And he said this sounded like Thomas Hardy's poetry.
I've changed it a little.
It's called "The Corpse Hauler's Elegy."
"Beside the river, I stopped the wagon,
loaded with the plague dead, and have a drink.
I fill my mouth and swallow slowly,
then climb back into my seat.
The old horse drops one turd, another.
Corpses, I give you these flowers."