And I'll finish with this poem called "Wild is the Wind"
as I was also sharing in this class that
had amazing questions and observations today.
It is a song, "Wild is the Wind."
And it's a song that has been done by David Bowie
and by Cat Power, probably other--
oh, Johnny Mathis somebody told me once.
But I know it is the Nina Simone song
after they played at the end of an episode of Mad Men.
And I thought, huh, that's pretty good.
Nina Simone.
So it's about fragility of love and all of that.
And that's why it's called that.
And I guess that's maybe why the book is called that.
And here is this poem.
Oh, it mentions metaphysical poets.
Don't be afraid.
[LAUGHTER]
You don't have to know anything.
And I like the idea that, yes, on one hand,
there are metaphysical poets.
There's also a mechanical ball early on.
So it all works out.
[LAUGHTER]
And thanks for staying here.
And it's been nice.
Oh, except I guess I'm staying here and doing
a Q and A or something.
Oh, so, you know--
I know.
No.
[LAUGHTER]
Wild is the wind.
Here's what it is.
About what's past, hold on when you can, I used to say.
And when you can't, let go as if memory
were one of those mechanical bulls,
easily dismountable should the ride turn rough.
I lived in those days at the forest's edge,
metaphorically, so it can sometimes seem now.
Though the forest was real, as my life beside it was.
I spent much of my time listening
to the sounds of random, unknowable things
dropping or being dropped from, variously,
a middling height or a great one,
until, by winter, it was just the snow falling.
Each time like a new, unnecessary taxonomy or syntax
for how to parse what's plain.
Snow from which the occasional lost hunter would
emerge every few or so seasons.
And just once, a runaway child, whom I gave some money to and
told no one about, having promised.
You must keep what you've promised
very close to your heart.
That way, you'll never forget it.
It's what I've always been told.
I've been told quite a lot of things.
They hover, some more unbidden than others,
in that part of the mind where mistakes and torn wishes
echo, as in a room that's been newly cathedraled so that the
echo surprises.
Though, lately, it's less the echo itself
that can still most surprise me about memory.
It's more the time it takes going away.
A mouth opening to say, I love sex with you too.
It doesn't mean I want to stop my life for it, for example.
Or just a voice, mouthless, asking, since when
does the different indifference of the body's stance
when we're alone, unwatched, in late light amount to cruelty?
For the metaphysical poets, the problem
with weeping for what's been lost
is that tears wash out memory, and by extension,
what we'd hoped to remember.
If I refuse increasingly to explain,
isn't explanation, at the end of the day,
what the sturdier truths most resist?
It's been my experience that tears
are useless against all the rest of it that, if I could,
I'd forget.
That I keep wanting to stay should
count at least for something.
I'm not done with you yet.
Thanks very much.
Thanks.