The next poem I'm going to read-- the last from the book--
I wrote for a printer friend who did the hand-setting of all
of my chapbooks And poets don't get much
in the way of fame and fortune.
But what we get is the object--
the book to hold in our hands.
And it really is important to many of us what it looks like.
And so, I've always been very grateful
to this particular printer and learned a lot about printing
when I was writing it.
The Printer, for Roland Hoover.
Baskerville, Perpetua, Garamond--
I thought you were naming a dance.
But the only minuet is typeface moving across the page.
And you and your apron bowing.
Journeyman to the letter, apprentice to the word.
The smell of ink like the smell of bread signifies morning--
a bleeding of color at the horizon.
The horizon itself a line of bold face too distant to read.
In this world, there are as many letters
as leaves, as birds, as flecks of ash, whole armies
of alphabet march across margins of pavement, margins of snow.
Now, there's a smudge on your forehead
where your hand strayed making those architectural gestures.
The pleasure of our company is requested.
The ceremonial announcement of birth or death.
Your press is as fruitful as a wine press.
The sound of its motion like surf--
hour after hour, reams of paper spreading their decal
edged foam.
At night, you distribute the type as carefully as
if you were placing your daughters in their beds.
Dark enters-- a time before language.
But the sky is printed in white indelible stars
with God's own signature--
that thumbprint of moon, like the printer's colophon
on heaviest Mohawk superfine.
[APPLAUSE]