That's about one third of that new book.
Let's read some others.
Somebody this afternoon asked about the poem
about Warren G. Harding.
Now I have complicated feelings of my own
about the people in Ohio, and also
about America, my country, and the leaders there.
People who have tried to make sense out of it.
I've been haunted for a long time.
I keep remembering that Edmund Burke, who
to me is one of the greatest public figures who ever lived,
gave a very powerful oration in the House of Commons
in England in about 1775, in which he
defended the American colonists against King George III.
And to do that openly and clearly
as he did at that particular time,
was the act of a brave man.
He said something that's haunted me philosophically.
He said, "to love our country, our country
ought to be lovely."
To make it-- No.
It's "to make us love our country,
our country ought to be lovely."
Ought to be lovely.
And doesn't that raise the old beautiful question?
People used to make fun of President Harding all the time.
He is from Ohio.
He was buried in Ohio.
And e.e.
cummings, we were talking about this poem this afternoon,
mocked him very brilliantly after Harding's death.
Harding got in some kind of political trouble.
You may not remember, but he got into some political trouble,
but he cared about life.
He was one of the Main Street crowd, all right.
And I've heard him sneered at.
I wrote my poem about him because I wanted to defend him
against the sneer.
I'll tell you why I don't think he should be sneered at.
He got mixed up with a bunch of political crooks there
in the early '20s, and he was an honest man
who got mixed up with crooks.
Right at the end of World War One,
Harding, who was a Senator from Ohio,
learned that a certain man named Herbert Hoover was
to be in charge of the relief of children in Europe.
It was called the Committee for Belgian Relief.
Harding went over to him, this big, husky, very
good looking, beautiful man shook hands with Hoover
and said, neighbor.
I want to be helpful.
That's funny, isn't it?
No?
Well, compare it with some other public statements
we've had in the 20th century.
[LAUGHTER]
Like my favorite-- Nach dem Sieg des Waffens muss der
biologischer Sieg folgen, said Hitler
on the eve of the Polish campaign.
And after the military victory will
come the biological victory.
Well, you can take your choice.
I know maybe Harding was a failure, but I like him.
[LAUGHTER]
He may have been a mess.
All right.
He may have been a failure but that is a failure.
I am willing to share.
"Neighbor, I want to be helpful."
Then he got confused and screwed up with some other crooks.
[LAUGHTER]
In this poem, when I refer to the north,
I mean simply that Marion, Ohio is
north of Martins Ferry, Ohio.
This is called "Two Poems About President Harding."
"One.
His death.
In Marion, the honey locust trees are falling.
Everybody in town remembers the white hair, the campaign
of a lost summer, the front porch open to the public,
and the vaguely stunned smile of a lucky man.
Neighbor, I want to be helpful, he said once.
Later, you think I'm honest, don't you?
weeping, drunk.
I am drunk this evening in 1961.
In a jag for my countrymen who died of crab meat on the way
back from Alaska.
Everyone knows that joke.
How many honey locusts have fallen,
pitched root long into the open graves of strip mines
since the first World War ended, and Wilson, the gaunt deacon,
jogged sullenly into silence.
Tonight, the cancerous ghosts of old con men
shed their leaves, for a proud man, lost
between the turnpike near Cleveland
and the chiropractor signs looming among dead Mulberry
trees, there is no place left to go but home.
Warren lacks mentality, one of his friends said.
Yet he was beautiful.
He was the snowfall turned to white stallions standing still
under dark elm trees.
He died in public.
He claimed the secret right to be ashamed.
Two.
His tomb in Ohio."
As I say in the, poem I've never been there.
H.L Mencken wrote something about the death
of William Jennings Bryan.
Bryan died after the Scopes Trial in Tennessee and Mencken
said--
I love Mencken, but I've always been horrified
by this, his obituary on Bryan.
He didn't die of a broken heart, he died of a busted gut.
Well.
"The 100 slag piles north of us at the mercy of the moon
and rain, he lies in his ridiculous tomb
our fellow citizen.
No, I have never seen that place,
where many shadows of faceless thieves
chuckle and stumble and embrace on beer cans,
stogie butts, and graves.
One holiday, one rainy week after the country fell apart,
Hoover and Coolidge came to speak and sniffle
about his broken heart.
His grave, a huge absurdity, embarrassed cops and visitors.
Hoover and Coolidge crept away by night,
and women closed their doors.
Now junk men call their children in before they
catch their death of cold.
Young lovers let the moon begin its quick spring, in the day
and as it grows old, the mean one-legger who rakes up leaves
has chased the loafers out of the park.
Minnegan Leonard half believes in God
and the poolroom goes dark.
America goes on, goes on laughing,
and Harding was a fool.
Even his big pretentious stone lays him bare to ridicule.
I know it, but don't look at me.
By God, I didn't start this mess.
Whatever moon and rain may be, the hearts of men
are merciless."