And I would like to start with--
I'm just going randomly --
when I prepare for a reading I write down
lists of-- if I read all the poems on this list,
we'd be here til one in the morning so I spare you that.
I just go down the list and see what
appeals to me at that moment.
I sort of judge your intelligence and so.
[LAUGHTER]
So I'm going to read some old chestnuts and chestnuts.
"The dog".
When I was-- I wrote this poem in Tuscaloosa
where I was for a short while.
Came across a dead dog on the road.
And I was a kind of specialist in dead animals at the time.
And so the poem is sort of a self mockery of sorts.
"What I was doing was my white teeth exposed like that",
the dog is talking.
"On the side of the road, I don't know.
And I don't know why I lay beside the sewer
so that lover of dead things could come back
with his pencil sharpened and his piece of white paper.
I was there for a good two hours,
whistling dirges, shrieking a little.
Terrifying hearts with my whimpering
cries before I died by pulling the one leg up and stiffening.
There is a look we have with the hair of the chin
curled in midair.
There's a look with a belly stuffed
in the midst of its greed.
The lover of dead things stoops to feel me.
His hands are shaking.
I know his mouth is open and his glasses are slipping.
I think his pencil must be jerking
and the terror of smell and sight is overtaking him.
I know he has that terrified faraway look that death brings,
he is contemplating.
I want him to touch my forehead once and rub my muzzle
before he lifts me up and throws me into that little valley.
I hope he doesn't use his shoe for fear of touching me.
I know where he used to know the grasses down there.
I think I knew a hundred smells.
I hope the dog's way doesn't overtake him,
one quick push barely that in the mind
freed something else, some other thing to take its place.
Great heart, great human heart, keep loving me as you lift me.
Give me your tears, great loving stranger.
Remember the death of dogs.
Forgive the yapping.
Forgive the shitting.
Let there be pity.
Give me your pity.
How could there be enough?
I've given my life for this.
Emotion has ruined me.
Oh lover, I've exchanged my wildness little tricks
with the mouth and feet with a tail.
My tongue is a parrot's.
I have a rampant horse.
I am a lion.
I wait for the cookie.
I snap my teeth because you have taught me.
So distant and brilliant and lonely."
[APPLAUSE]