Not very long ago, the early books of poems were reprinted
and it was an odd experience for me to read the proof on them.
I hadn't looked at them for so long.
And now friends make references to them
and I've been asked to read a few of them tonight and I--
now that sounds apologetic and I don't mean it that way.
It's just that they're very far away.
And so they are like somebody else's poems, which
I'm not very familiar with.
This is a poem from the first book.
I've got the wrong one.
[INAUDIBLE]
There's a poem called Song.
Mirrors we lay wherein desire traded
by dark conceits of fire.
As gardened minds whose delicacy could neither close with flesh
nor flee.
Who watched by fire a bush inflect what flame
a window could reflect.
Where dark and distance were controlled.
So the leaves burned yet rested whole.
But flesh dark forest to the mind
took at our breaths repeated wind.
And from our eyes and equal glare.
Our distance broke and burned us there.
In married dark these fevers learn alternate loss.
The bodies worn indefinite attend together nights
pleasure and the press of weather.
I'm thinking that must have been written about--
oh, back in the '40s.
So.