The next poem is-- the next poem is a poem-- well,
this is a poem I wanted to write for years.
It's a poem about drinking, and it's
a poem about a peculiarly--
imagine this situation-- you're walking down
the street with a friend and it's
1 o'clock in the afternoon.
And you say, OK, Joe, let's go into the whatever
it is here, whatever the name of the local bar
is where you drop by for a beer.
And we'll go sit in there and have a couple of beers
till 2 o'clock.
And 13 hours later, at 2:00 AM, you wobble out of the place.
And in the interim, something very interesting has happened.
Anybody who's done this kind of thing
will sense this arc immediately.
There's all joviality in the afternoon.
And about 9:00 in the evening, the mood
begins to change enormously.
It's as if the orchids release this perfume of self-pity.
Everybody sitting around the table
is so tragically beautiful, so gloriously doomed,
and so repellent to anybody else who isn't as drunk as they are.
[LAUGHTER]
But at 2 o'clock, you have to go out into the air and it's cold.
And there are all those poor idiots
on the road who are going to have
to survive your driving home.
And you've got to come to some terms
with your life which isn't quite so operatic and lovely.
I wanted to write a poem which would try and duplicate
that arc.
It's a poem called "Another Beer."
"The first one was for the clock.
And it's one song which is the song's name.
Then a beer for the scars in the table,
all healed in the shape of initials.
Then a beer for the thirst, and it's one song
we keep forgetting.
And a beer for the hands we are keeping to ourselves.
The body's dogs, they lie by the ashtray and thump
suddenly in their sleep.
And a beer for our reticence, the true tongue, the one song,
the fire made of air.
Then a beer for the jukebox.
I wish it had the recording of a Marcel Marceau
mime performance--
28 minutes of silence, two of applause.
And a beer for the phone booth, in this confessional,
you can sit.
You sing it your one song.
And let's have a beer for whoever
goes home and sprawls like the remaining
sock in the drawer of his bed and repeats the funny joke
and pulls it shut and sleep.
And a beer for anyone who can't tell
the difference between death and a good cry with its one song.
None of us will rest enough.
The last beer is always for the road.
The road is what the car drinks, traveling
on its tongue of light all the way home."