And so that the last poem in the book is the tornada this time.
It's called "Skin," and begins with a large U,
which is reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts.
They would have those large letters,
and there would be little pictures inside them.
And so I wanted this large U to suggest that,
because this goes back to an earlier scene of writing.
Before there was this figure of light happily running forever
and ever-- it could have been inspiration,
it could have been death, it could be the artist,
it could be light itself--
running through that landscape of tissue paper.
This is a very different scene of writing, where the ink is
black and the paper is white.
And the writing surface--
like paper-- was actually made of a skin of-- it
was called vellum.
And in the Middle Ages they would--
because this expensive material was rare,
they would use it and then scrape off the writing
if it was no longer needed and use it again.
And that so the surface is a palimpsest.
That's the word for it.
And I think that's a good metaphor for what
anyone who comes to art has to be prepared
to perform this scraping off.
And at the same time, you cannot live simply by writing
your love down on the page.
So this poem called "Skin."
"Uncurl the sheet of vellum.
There are the obscurely interrupted complex roses,
the letters of English.
The vine with 1,000 ears, the decay of the tempera
and the decay of the vegetative shell.
The decay of addition, of cracking,
and air with its vigor, which grinds or is
perhaps shifted away like the day.
Uncurl the sheets, there is in them
the decay of the trembling recorder,
the decay of the dipping hands of the chant, of the anvil
in the ear.
The decay of the swallow-like bell
tolls bolting from the tower.
Did the scrivener will with one's utter heart the snail's
pace risk catch it in the bell's sound, smell it
in the domicile rain?
To love the thin vellums and the erasure scraping on them.
To love anything, you must be prepared
to rip or bare its trace."
That's how I'll finish.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you so much.
[INAUDIBLE] And my most serious work.
So that's what I wanted to read.
Thanks.