I want to thank the interpreters very much, because it's not
easy to do poems.
It's particularly tricky, so thank you very much.
Please thank the other interpreter.
[APPLAUSE]
God knows what I would do if I were the one interpreting.
It would just be a real mess.
I'll tell you.
I'm going to read these poems largely in chronological order,
starting with my first book, and just go through and see.
Maybe you can see what you think is the same,
and what you think changes.
Dark.
I'll tell you why I'm afraid of the dark.
It has its own idea.
It's like a bullet.
It doesn't want to know what you know.
The dark is under.
It fits a place to put a hand, but I can't see.
It's like a voice behind a door.
It can be just about anything I want to hear.
Darkness comes in every size of threat.
The dark cocoon at the end of my life.
Storms that turn the sky into an empty can of dark, fitting snug
onto the horizon.
The dark, and putting my head in my hands.
My head, into the cave of a person I don't love anymore.
I'll tell you again why I'm afraid of the dark.
I can see it coming, and can't ever
tell just when it has arrived.
I sense it, thin and waiting, between the pages of books,
but it's too fast, even for a good reader.
From that place, darkness, comes a phone call,
erratic with grief.
It fills the story called dying in your sleep,
and was the only time left for voodoo to take,
for rapists to dress in.
I can't get a grip on darkness, though it wears my imagination,
like a shroud.
I've started hearing sunsets as cracking twigs.
I've taken to hiding a piece of flint in my shoe.