I have a new book coming out in the fall,
and I think this following poem is
going to be the opening one although the publishers make up
where it gets to go into the book.
It's called "The Young and the Old."
Will we make it to 2000?
1984 slides along ominously.
Now murder and assassination assail free Canada.
The center is not holding, Willie.
I sat beside you when the course was young.
I knew, old man, you would tell the truth.
How the young laugh at your singing Byzantium bird,
ventriloquists all no golden bow for them.
Who would want the intellect?
That great stride only to reach a tinsel bow.
The drab in the ditch is better, you thought of that.
The purgatory knife, the sharpest you ever honed.
We are easy riders to the fields of grace,
a bombshell in the gut.
No reality but in the spirit.
I might give you a footnote on the last line of that poem.
You remember that, William Carlos Williams was always
harping on the sentence that he kept repeating,
no reality but in things.
So I pay my respects to him in that answer.