Well, here's a half a minute poem as a last one.
And thank you very much.
Very glad to see you all.
And we'll meet out in the hall I hope.
And hope to be back sometime and wish you all the best
of luck in the future.
This is a little poem, I guess, about which I usually
tell audiences something.
But I think it'll stand at this late hour just by itself.
But it was-- let me just say one thing.
In my whole books, there are only two poems
that I've ever written which were
written at the very moment of the event that caused the poem.
And tonight you're hearing both of them oddly enough.
One was "The Cancer Cells," which was written immediately
upon seeing a picture in Life magazine of the spread
of these cancer cells.
And this one when I almost ran over
a little squirrel in my car, an experience that
many people have had or some such experience.
And I pulled to the side of the road, found I'd missed him,
was terribly nerved up.
And for three or four minutes, had a sort
of feeling of clairvoyance as if I understood everything
about this little creature in relation
to me, in relation to time, space, and infinity.
And so I had a pencil there and I wrote this poem
down exactly the way it is.
You see it had happened to be a good fate
but it could have been the opposite kind of fate.
And what does the-- how do you ever figure these things out?
You know.
It's impossible.
"On a Squirrel Crossing the Road in Autumn in New England."
"It is what he does not know, crossing the road under the elm
trees, about the mechanism of my car,
about the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
about Mozart, India, Arcturus that wins my praise.
I engage at once in whirling squirrel praise.
He obeys the orders of nature without knowing them.
It is what he does not know that makes him beautiful,
such a knot of little purposeful nature.
I who can see him as he cannot see himself repose
in the ignorance that is his blessing.
It is what man does not know of God composes
the visible poem of the world.
Just missed him."
[APPLAUSE]