[APPLAUSE]
It's nice to be here.
I'm going to begin tonight by reading
a poem by a poet I discovered recently, though he's
been around a long time.
I did some research in the Stanford Archives
at a conservative think tank called The Hoover.
But the interesting thing about The Hoover,
is that they save leftist literature.
And I was reading the poetry of The Daily Worker,
because they had so much working-class literature there
in the poems of The Daily Worker.
And I discovered this one particular poet that I thought
was just, he was great.
I thought, this guy's great.
And his name was Edwin Rolfe, whose real name
was Saul Fishman.
He was a Jewish red diaper baby.
He was a lifelong member of the Communist party.
He fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigades
with the Republican Army in Spain, and all in all,
was a big supporter of the Hollywood Ten
when they were being persecuted by the House
on Un-American Activities, which he would have
had to appear before had he not had
a heart condition at the time.
He died in 1954.
One of his last published books was
a book about Spain and about his experiences fighting there.
And it was something for him that
became a formative kind of, seminal experience for him.
And so I want to read you a poem of his, because he's a poet,
I think, that needs to be read and listened to, still.
And the name of the poem that I'm
going to read you is the last book in his manuscript
of his book called First Love and Other Poems
and it's the title poem, "First Love".
And interestingly enough, he does
a play on that romantic idea.
Because that first love is also that very appalling thing
called "war" in Spain.
And so I'll just read you the poem.
"First love.
Again, I am summoned to the eternal field,
green with the blood still fresh at the roots of flowers.
Green through the dust-rimmed memory
of faces that moved among the trees, there for the last time
before the final shock, the glazed eye, the hasty mound.
But why are my thoughts in another country?
Why do I always return to the sunken road
through corroded hills, with the Moorish castle's shadow casting
ruins over my shoulder, and the black-smocked girl approaching,
her hands laden with grapes?
I am eager to enter it.
Eager to end it.
Perhaps, this one will be the last one.
And men, afterward, will study our arms in museums,
and nod their heads, and frown, and name the inadequate dates,
and stumble with infant tongues over the strange place names.
But my heart is forever captive of that other war that
taught me first, the meaning of peace and of comradeship.
And always, I think of my friend who,
amid the apparition of bombs, saw on the lyric
lake the single perfect swan."