You have to tell me if this is loud enough.
I'm going to read two short poems and one very long poem.
The first poem is called "To the Dead."
And it mentions a movie, The Gorilla, G-O-R-I-L-L-A.
And it stars the Ritz Brothers.
And people in general, don't seem to know the Ritz brothers
anymore.
So they are a comedy team-- were a comedy team.
Not quite as sophisticated as the Marx Brothers.
But they had their virtues, a kind of seedy burlesque energy.
And in any case, in this film, they played detectives.
You can imagine what kind of detectives they are.
"To the Dead."
"What I hope, when I hope, is that we'll
see each other again.
And again, reach the vein in which we loved each other.
It existed.
There is a night within the night.
For like the detectives, the Ritz Brothers in The Gorilla,
once we'd been battered by the gorilla,
we searched the walls, the intricately carved
impenetrable paneling, for a button,
lever, latch, that unlocks the secret door.
That reveals at last, the secret chambers, corridors
within walls.
The disenthralling, necessary, dream structure
beneath the structure we see that is
the house within the house.
There's a night within the night.
There were, for example, months when
I seemed only to displease, frustrate, disappoint you.
Then something triggered a drunk lasting for days.
And as you slowly and shakily sobered up,
sick, throbbing with remorse and self-loathing,
insight like ashes clung to, useless, hated.
This was the viewing of the power of the waters
but the waters were asleep.
Secrets, histories of loves, betrayals, double-binds, not
fit you thought, for the light of day.
There's a night within the night.
For there are times at night still,
we inhabit the secret place together.
Is this wisdom?
Or self-pity?
The love I've known is the love of two people staring,
not at each other, but in the same direction."