Somebody asked me, yesterday in Tucson,
I was being asked some questions about being a poet laureate,
and what it was like being in Washington.
And there was surprise when I told him
that I didn't write any poems.
And I once was on a panel with four other poetry
laureates, ex-poetry laureates, to the United States.
And we found out that no one wrote any poems during our time
as poet laureates.
You're so busy, as poet laureate.
In those days, they ask for correspondence.
I mean, people send letters.
You get a letter from the poet laureate of Arkansas,
who is 95 years old, and written in kind of old zinc pen.
And you got to write back.
So but who wants to, then, you go home and write a poem?
So we're all stuck.
And Billy Collins said, "I got it.
It's a government conspiracy to prevent American poets
from writing poetry."
[LAUGHTER]
So that's as good an explanation as any.
But after I left, there were poems about Washington.
This is called "Cherry Blossom Time."
"Grey sewage bubbling up out of street sewers after the spring
rain with the clear view of hawkers
of quack remedies and their customers
swarming on the Capitol steps.
At the National Gallery the saints' tormented faces
suddenly made sense.
Several turned their eyes on me as I stepped
over the shiny parquetry.
And who and what was I, if you please?
A minor provincial grumbler on a holiday,
with hands clasped behind his back nodding to every stranger
he meets as if this were a 1950s Fall of the Roman Empire movie
set, and we the bewildered, absurdly costumed,
milling extras among the pink cherry blossoms."