Well, I want to read the last poem.
I've depended on these things already formulated
partly out of lack of assurance about being
able to cut loose for very long from them,
partly out of the assurance that that's the kind of occasion it
is and I shouldn't try to talk my way around not having
written poems.
So I read them.
And I'll read one of the last here and remind myself
and you and I see people I hope to converge
with in the gathering afterward at the Center.
But this is the last.
And instead of starting with the expression of gratitude, which
is real, I put it in here.
Glad for the chance to come and what's really exhilarating
is to come back.
I was here before and made it again.
Well, I want to read this poem.
It's called "A Dedication."
We stood by the library.
It was an August night.
Priests and sisters of hundreds of unsaid creeds
passed us going their separate pondered roads.
We watched them cross under the corner light.
Freights on the edge of town were carrying away
flat cars of steel to be made into secret guns.
We knew, being human, that they were enemy guns.
And we were somehow vowed to poverty.
No one stopped or looked long or held out of hand.
They were following orders received from hour to hour,
so many signals all strange from a foreign power.
But tomorrow, we said peace may flow over the land.
At that corner in a flash of lightning we all stood.
That glimmer--