You know, I began by talking about coming back
after that many years.
And I want to read a poem about those returns
and the way one thinks about them.
It's a poem called "History."
Only this one-- this one's a different kind of--
it's not about coming back.
"History."
"Only I never came back.
The gates stand open where I left the barnyard
in the evening, as the owl was bringing
the mouse home and the gold sky at the milking hour.
And I turned to the amber hill and followed along
the gray fallen wall by the small mossed oaks
and the bushes of rusting arches bearing the ripe blackberries
into the long shadow.
And climbed the ancient road through the last songs
of the blackbirds.
Passing the last live farms, their stones running
with dark liquid, and the ruined farms, their windows
without frames, facing away.
Looking out across the pastures of dead shepherds, who
nobody ever knew.
Grown high with the dry flowers of late summer.
Their empty doorways gazing toward the arms
of the last oaks.
And at night, their broken chimneys
watching the cold of the meteors.
The beams had fallen together to rest in brown herds
around the fireplace.
And in the shade of black trees, the houses
were full of their own fragrance at last.
Mushrooms and owls and the song of the cicadas."
There was a note on a page made at the time
and the book was closed and taken on a journey
into a country where no one knew the language.
No one could read even the address inside the cover.
And there the book was, of course, lost.
It was a book full of words to remember.
This
Is how we manage without them.
This is how they manage without us.
I was not going to belong.