And just in case you didn't think
I could write a short one in my new book, here's the last poem.
"Small quill poem with no taste for spring."
"In spring, all the poems that need to be written have.
You are neither dejected nor relieved.
Scrape and paint.
Scrape and paint a gray house white.
Feel something, your husband, the one
married to all the appetites shouts to someone up
on a ladder, someone who looks sort of like you,
disinterested, spated, thin as a cloud, it's spring again.
And so the melancholians, and so the fat sharp animals
pace your roof at night, feeding quilled recurrent dreams.
You will never live up to this life.
They will never refer to you as voluptuous.
You can't remember the last time you wore a dress,
you pressed your mouth to the phone."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]