I'm going to end with some very new poems.
This one I wrote after seeing the New York City
Ballet perform Orpheus at the Kennedy Center this year.
It was the first time I had seen that ballet,
and it surprised me in various ways.
I've always been enamored of the Orpheus legend.
"Orpheus."
"When Orpheus turned and looked back and knew
that genius wasn't enough, I wonder what he regretted most--
the failure of will, Eurydice lost,
or what it must mean for her to remain a faction of darkness?
Did he still tame animals after that with his songs,
or would it seem a child's game now?
Did he tune his lyre to a minor key,
the last notes falling like darkened leaves
to drift towards Lesbos?
In Balanchine's ballet, the failure
seems Eurydice's fault who tempted his blindfold off,
as if the artist must be absolved,
as if what matters is the body itself--
that instrument stringed with tendon and bone
and making its own music."