WEBVTT

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There's no sex in
the sonnet then.

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It's just panting
and tail wagging.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And blandishments.

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[LAUGHTER]

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This poem is called
"Osso buco," which is

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this the dish you get in some--

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you find it on menus of
Italian restaurants often.

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And it is, as you
probably know, it means

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the bone or the empty bone.

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And it's the bone of the little
animal called the veal I think,

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and that's your small
nocturnal animal--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--known as the veal.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And it is vegetarians'
nightmare.

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[LAUGHTER]

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But to me a source of pleasure.

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And the poem is basically
a difficult subject

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to write about--
it is contentment.

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Since the ties that
connect serious art

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and misery are
time-honored and fast.

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And it's difficult
to break out of that

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and write poems about pleasure.

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But I would go headlong
into this and attempt it.

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So the poem is called

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"Osso buco."

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"I love the sound of the
bone against the plate

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and the fortress-like
look of it lying

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before me in a moat of risotto.

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The meat-- soft as the leg
of an angel who has lived

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a purely airborne existence.

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And best of all,
the secret marrow--

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the invaded privacy
of the animal

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prised out now with a
knife and swallowed down

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with cold exhilarating wine.

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I am swaying now in
the hour after dinner,

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a citizen tilted back
on his chair, a creature

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with a full stomach--

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something you don't hear
much about in poetry--

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that sanctuary of
hunger and deprivation.

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[LAUGHTER]

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You know, the driving rain,
the boots by the door,

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small birds searching
for berries in winter.

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But tonight, the
lion of contentment

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has placed a warm
heavy paw on my chest.

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And I can only close
my eyes and listen

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to the drums of woe
throbbing in the distance,

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and the sound of
my wife's laughter

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on the telephone
in the next room.

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The woman who cooked
the savory osso

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buco, who pointed to show the
butcher the one she wanted.

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She who talks to
her faraway friend

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while I linger here at the table
with a hot companionable cup

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of tea, feeling like one
of the friendly natives--

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a reliable guide, maybe even
the chief's favorite son.

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Somewhere, a man is
crawling up a rocky hillside

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on bleeding knees and palms--

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an Irish penitent
carrying the stone

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of the world in his stomach.

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And elsewhere, people of all
nations stare at one another

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across a long empty table.

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But here, the candles
give off their warm glow.

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The same light that Shakespeare
and Isaac Walton wrote by.

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The light that lit and
shadowed the faces of history.

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Only now, it plays on the blue
plates, the crumpled napkins,

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the cross knife and fork.

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In a while, one of
us will go up to bed

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and the other one will follow.

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Then we will slip below
the surface of the night

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into miles of water,
drifting down and down

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into the dark soundless bottom
until the weight of dreams

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pulls us lower still.

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Below the shale
and layered rock,

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beneath the strata of
hunger and pleasure,

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into the broken
bones of the Earth

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itself, into the marrow of
the only place we know."

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[APPLAUSE]

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