[PAPER RUSTLING]
I'm looking for a particular poem.
You know something, there's some poems
I haven't read for a while.
So I'm going to read them.
It's like taking dogs out for a walk.
[LAUGHTER]
Yes, they will do that to you.
This's called, "7 Years From Somewhere."
The American city is Cincinnati.
If you've ever been there, requires no explanation.
If you haven't, don't go.
It takes place in North Africa, most of it,
but then it turns to America.
That's why I said the American city, the end is in America.
"7 Years From Somewhere.
The highway ended and we got out."
We is my wife and I. "The highway ended
and we got out and walked to where the bridge had washed
out, and stared down at the river moving but clear
to the bottom of dark rocks.
We wondered, can we go back into what?
In the hills of the lower Atlas seven years ago,
you pointed to a tall shepherd racing
along the crest of a green hill.
And then there were four, and they came down,
stood before us, dirty, green-eyed Berbers,
their faces open and laughing.
One took my hand and stroked the soft white palm
with fingers as brown and hard as wood.
The sun was beginning to drop below the peaks,
and I said, Fez.
And they answered, in a language we hadn't heard before, Fez.
And with gestures of a man swimming,
one told us to double back, and we would find a bridge.
We left them, standing together in their long robes,
waving and laughing, and went on to Fez, Meknes, Tetouan, Ceuta,
Spain, Paris, here.
I have been lost, since.
Wandering in a bombed-out American city
among strangers who meant me no harm.
Moving from the bars to the streets,
and coming home alone to talk to no one or myself
until the first light broke the sky,
and I could sleep a moment, and waken in the world
we made, and will never call ours.
To awaken to the smell of bourbon and sweat,
and another day with no bridge, no old city
cupped carefully in a bowl of mountains, no one
to take this hand, the five perfect fingers of the soul.
And hold it as one holds a blue egg found in tall grasses,
and smile and say something that means nothing.
That means you are, you are, and you are home."
[APPLAUSE]