I had a fight with my mother trying to wear
this dress in my hometown.
She said, you'll look so different.
I said, mother, I am.
But the dress was bought in Dublin,
but I think it's an Indian dress.
So here I am wearing it in Tucson.
I guess that says a little something about the world
these days.
I'll start out with the poem from instructions
to the double.
But I'll be shifting back and forth between poems there
and poems which I wrote in the Northwest
where I've just come from in Washington state.
And I'll also be reading a number of poems from my five
months in Ireland, which I came home in late November
from that.
This is a poem, the first one is addressed to listeners
and the quality of listening.
"When you speak to me, take care when you speak to me.
I might listen.
I might draw near as the flame, breathing with the log,
breathing with the tree.
It has not forgotten.
I might put my face next to your face in your nameless trouble,
in your trouble and name.
It is a thing I learned without learning.
A hand is a stronger mouth.
A kiss could crack the skull.
These words, small steps in the air, calling the secret hands.
The mouths hidden in the flesh.
This isn't robbery.
This isn't your blood or my tears,
no confidence in trade or barter.
I may say nothing back, which is to hear after you.
The fever inside the words we say.
The words we say so hard they fall apart."