I seem to have gone on for a rather long time.
So I'm just going to read one more poem, quite a short one,
which is the title poem of a book I came out
with about 10 years ago.
It's called "My Sad Captains."
"One by one, they appear in the darkness, a few friends
and a few with historical names.
How late they start to shine.
But before they fade, they stand perfectly embodied,
all the past lapping them like a cloak of chaos.
They were men who, I thought, lived only
to renew the wasteful force they spent with each hot convulsion.
They remind me distant now.
True, they're not at rest yet.
But now that they are indeed apart, winnowed from failures,
they withdraw to an orbit and turn
with disinterested, hard energy, like the stars."
Well, that's it.
[APPLAUSE]