I'm going to first of all break off from these veins
that I've been following in the poetry
right now for some shorter poems that are light verse.
And then I'm going to come back and read some more of the poems
from the second book and conclude that.
I feel like this is getting a little--
I feel like it's getting a little heavy.
And I want for a moment to back away from that
and do something else and then come back to it.
To be perfectly honest, it's not so much backing away from it,
it's just coming on it from a different tack.
This first one is called "Swan Song."
And when I was a kid, I was very interested in all
of the historical figures that had the name
Bill, or William, or Billy.
And my own name as I was growing up was Billy.
And there were a number of Williams
and there were quite a few Bills.
"Wild Bill" Hickok, "Wild Bill" Elliott, Buffalo Bill,
and Wild Bill Cody, all these people.
But there was only one Billy and that was Billy the Kid.
And so I had a--
it was kind of a hero worship, I guess, at the time on him.
And even saw a movie which backed up this idea.
And I found out subsequently with The Left Handed
Gun with Paul Newman playing Billy the Kid.
And I've often wondered, how I would
have felt about Billy the Kid if I had known then
that he was an adenoidal moron.
But it seemed to me, being Paul Newman, that was so obvious.
When I saw the movie, I couldn't believe it.
More recently, they've done a Michael J. Pollard
version of Billy the Kid called Dirty Little Billy.
And this one is just "Playing Around with Billy the Kid."
"It feels good to be famous, he gasped, face down in the dirt.
I could have died of old age, gut rot, or the preacher's
threats but it's you that done me in.
Just think, Billy the Kid, a notch
in that big gun sure beats a niche in the old lady's
cupboard.
I love you for what you'd done.
And Billy grinned and bid farewell to another winner."
After writing that, I've become very conscious
of people's farewell smiles.
Not really people's, but of movie stars, for instance.
And Paul Newman's is really amazing.
He smiles farewell more times per movie, probably.
Every time he leaves a room, and he smiles farewell.
And does it very well.
WUSA comes to the end of it.
And he's done these horrible things to various people
throughout the movie.
So it's a bad movie from a really good book
called Hall of Mirrors.
And he just turns around and says something
to the effect of, well, it's just us survivors.
And sort of pats himself on the back and walks out with a smile
on his face, which is the famous Paul Newman smile.
And the other day-- what was it?
I guess it was Hud.
At the very end of Hud--
I'd seen it before, and I'd forgotten
the very last line of it.
He's talking to his younger brother, Hud being the old guy,
probably in his 30s, anyway.
And he's been around a lot.
And the younger brother looks at him in awe and so on.
But his younger brother is very straight,
on the straight and narrow.
And Hud's trying to get him to stay there
and as he's walking off to get a bus to leave the whole area,
Hud's driving alongside him in a Cadillac convertible,
telling him how to stay and help him work the ranch
and so on and so on.
And then the boy just won't respond to him.
So finally, he just slams on the brake and gets out of the car,
and puts one arm up there on the door jam and says,
you just think that if you're careful,
you can get away from it all.
He said, but it's so thick out there, he says,
that there's no place that you'll be able to go
and no way you'll be able to be so careful
as not to step in it.
And he gets back into the car and turns around
and drives off.
But I think Michael J. Pollard finally
has a cleverer smile because he's smiling goodbye already
just upon meeting you.