Here's the poem that somebody asked me to read from the book.
It's on a lighter level, and it's called The Secret.
It's about a mildly interesting practical joke
that I played on my wife.
And the poem, I think, is more interesting
than the practical joke.
I'd found a small, pretty little Mexican coin.
I don't know, you're sitting there with nothing to do,
you decide to play joke on somebody.
And so I kept putting it in different places in the house,
in the refrigerator, and under the pillow in the bed.
And finally, she just told me later she couldn't figure out
what it was doing anywhere.
And I think maybe she got a little scared and threw it out.
[LAUGHTER]
So there went my romantic, mysterious gesture.
The poem is about such romantic gestures
that we attempt to keep marriage alive.
[LAUGHTER]
The Secret.
"I left a Mexican coin to confuse her.
I left it in the drawer, with her mementos-- letters
to and from the dead, the oval portrait of her sister.
Love must keep its secrets, but not its hidden things.
After dinner, I slid the brass coin
in among the seeds and the lush flesh of a watermelon.
It disappeared.
The lover's version of a magic trick
to resurrect mysterious strangers.
Love must keep its secrets, between bathroom, and kitchen,
and in the marriage chamber.
We try to sleep.
In a dream, she finds the coin wedged between her breasts.
Lovely in my bed, she dreams of other men
and unfamiliar places.
By morning, she needs a bus trip.
She's bored.
I know, I left a Mexican coin to distract her
from love and its mischief.
Eyes making eyes at strangers as we pass.
Across the aisle, I watch her finger it
in her blue jeans pocket, smooth it, make it lucky.
Such wearing down takes years.
The bus stops in Mexico City.
We lie together, two strangers in a painted bed.
'We hardly know each other well enough,' she whispers
'to undress in this humid dark.'
Stars drift above the skylight, the hours pass.
I think I am falling in love with the need for fictions.
The coin glows between us.
The coin knows."
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]