Like most of the people in this room now are younger than I am,
so you have to sit through somebody
older talking about things that you don't remember.
Just for a minute, though, because it's over 20 years,
as Lois said, since I first came here.
And the occasions have been very memorable to me.
And there have been some memorable introductions
that I will never forget, and audiences
that were simply incredible, just remarkable occasions.
And it's always a joy to come back to here
and always to find such a richness of people who
care that much about poetry.
This is something that's been made by the Poetry Center
and the people who work there, all of them.
And it seems--
I don't know.
We don't have any name in English for two decades,
for 20 years.
Or, if we do, I don't know it.
Score?
Hmm?
A score?
Yes, but that's a score of years, you see.
Sure, but, all right, let's say a score.
[LAUGHTER]
A score of years.
It's a very remarkable thing to feel
that that cycle is something now that we have to celebrate,
that it's come to an end.
And I want to read--
and there's so many friends in the audience.
And I remember things that they told me about things
that I've written.
And I want to go back and read some poems from earlier,
from the time when I was reading the first time here,
but move rather fast, in chronological order,
so that I can finish with some poems that
have not been in a book yet.
I want to go back to a poem.
In fact, it was written in the late '50s,
well before I came here.
But it's one that, for some reason,
keeps coming up recently.
And it was a poem that was written when the first Sputnik
went up in the space.
It'd be what wasn't yet called the space race.
A.P. Herbert wrote a little poem about this event too.
And the odd thing is that the feeling
about the event in A.P. Herbert's poem and in mine
were not so very different.
His went-- and I remember the whole thing.
He said, "I have not seen it, and I will not try.
I don't approve of garbage in the sky," he said.
[LAUGHTER]
This one is called "Under the Old One."
"Helpless improver, grown numerous and clever rather
than wise or loving.
Nothing is newer than ever under the sun.
Still specious, wanton, venal, your noise
is as dull and smile self-flattering
as was usual under any heaven.
How often before this you went on knees
to moons of your own making, abject, with no peace,
under the old one."