I want to read a poem, another elegy.
Poets they love each other, but the truth
is they say things like, how's Phil Levine doing these days,
how's his health?
And Adrienne Rich, she's OK?
I got the elegy partly done.
I wrote it 20 years ago, just in case.
It's terrible, you know?
The human soul is a mixed thing.
[LAUGHTER]
Badly mixed in some cases.
But this is a poem I want to read
for a marvelous American poet, Larry Levis.
I don't know, I hope you study him here.
He died at the age of 50, in 1996, suddenly.
And I wrote this poem for him, taking
a walk in Iowa City: "Down the street, my morning walk".
And at the end, there's a mention of New Orleans,
and the connection with New Orleans
as far as Larry and I was concerned
was that I had the privilege and joy of introducing him
to that city.
Had never seen it, and he was so excited.
Jumping around the way he did.
"The color of life is an almost pale white robin's
green that once was bluer when it was in the nest,
before the jay deranged the straw and warm flesh was
in the shell.
I found it while doing my 45 minute walk between two doors
beside some bushes and flowers.
I put it in one of my pockets, keeping some space around it
to protect the pale green, an idiot carrying
a dead child inside him, something
that might have broken out anyway, a blue afterbirth,
shoved out of the nest.
I laid my dead like eggs on the table, 12 tombstones to a box.
I buried dread that way, my telephone calls and letters,
and on the way I walked into a side yard
and straightened a brick--
for it was May--
and chased a gartersnake into his rainspout.
And since it was morning and it was hot
already I put the eggshell under a leather chair
and thought of our trip to New Orleans
and used the end of a broom to prop up a rosebush,
the way we do, sweet Larry."