Death is the subject that gets poets sort of up in the morning
and at the window as often is far as they make it.
This fellow came over last spring
to wash the windows in our house.
And I was thinking as I wrote out his check
whether I could deduct this because it seems
to be it was tax-deductible since poets--
and it's kind of their job is just
looking at the bird feeder.
Someone said that the hardest part about being a poet
is knowing what to do with what, the other 23 and 1/2
hours of the day.
[LAUGHTER]
But at any rate, death is the great topic
and the fellowship of dust--
George Herbert calls it.
And there's a time in a poet's life
where he or she feels a particularly heavy obligation
to write a poem that acknowledges
his or her mortality.
And that is when they are undergoing a birthday divisible
by 10.
So that it's almost unavoidable that you
have collections almost of poems about turning 30 and 40 and so
on.
These poems are all the same poem essentially.
They're very gloomy, and they're kind of riddled with self pity
of the poet you know regards to the milestone solemnly
and kind of squints into the future a little tentatively.
And I wanted to get kind of the source of all this gloom.
And so the poem I wrote is called "On Turning Ten."
[LAUGHTER]
"On Turning Ten-- the whole idea of it
makes me feel like I'm coming down with something, something
worse than any stomachache or the headaches
I get from reading in bad light, a kind of measles
of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche, a disfiguring chicken
pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four, I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible by drinking
a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven, I was a soldier.
At nine, a Prince.
But now, I am mostly at the window,
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then, it never fell so solemnly
against the sight of my tree house.
And my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today, all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
This is the beginning of sadness,
I say to myself, as I walk through the universe
in my sneakers.
It is time to say goodbye to my imaginary friends, time
to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing
under my skin but a light.
If you cut me, I would shine.
But now, when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees.
I bleed."
[APPLAUSE]