The first poem is called, "Prayer to the Good Poet."
You might call this poem an ars poetica.
I know many of you have written poems,
and occasionally one reflects on the very nature
of poetry itself, tries to figure out
what has meant something to him in his life,
in poetry and in life, and how poetry and life might sometimes
become one.
At a particular time, I heard that my father in Ohio
was terribly ill.
He's quite old now.
He's still very strong.
He's a good man.
And I was thinking about him, and I was also
thinking about what I cared about in my own life,
and I cared about a lot of things in Ohio.
I also cared about a certain poet, Horace.
I care very much about Horace.
When I was a boy in high school in Martin's Ferry, Ohio,
I started to read Horace.
I read him further and more thoroughly
when I was in college.
Horace is pretty far away from the ideals--
the ideal poets of people at the moment.
That's all right.
I love him.
He'll last, I think.
Maybe for the next two weeks or so.
"Prayer to the Good Poet"
"Quintus Horatius Flaccus, my good secret.
Now my father, a good man in Ohio, lies alone in pain
and I scarcely know where to turn now.
50 years he worked in that bitter factory.
He learned how to love what I found so ugly.
Ugliness.
What is it?
A bitter taste of one body.
Now if I ask anything, I would ask you
how to gather my father to your bosom.
He knew, after all, how to love Italians.
Others said dagos.
One good friend of mine, Benny Cappelletti,
told me how in a basketball game one person
called him a dirty Guinea, and Benny did not even slug him.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, my good secret.
Benny Cappelletti had the fastest hands
in that fast Ohio Valley.
He could have killed him.
More than love, my father knew how to bear love.
One quick woman, a dark river of labor.
He led me and my two good brothers to gather
and swim there.
I still love the fine beauty of his body.
He could pitch a very good Sunday baseball.
One afternoon, he shifted to left hand
and struck out three men.
Every time I go back home to Ohio, he sits down and tells me
he loves Italians.
How can I tell you why he loves you, Quintus Horatius?
I worked once in the factory that he worked in.
Now, I work in the factory that you live in.
Some people think poetry is easy, but you two didn't.
Easy, easy, I ask you.
Easy, easy.
Early evening by Tiber, by the Ohio,
give the gift to each lovely other.
I would be happy.
Now my son is another poet.
Fathers, I can go on living.
I was afraid once.
Four loving fathers meeting together
would be a cold day in hell.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, my good father,
you were just the beginning.
You, quick and lonely, metrical crystals of February.
It is just snow."
I don't think Horace was a Latin poet.
He's an Italian, a premature Italian.