Alison told you that I've been hanging around Provincetown
for a while so I'll read a couple of Provincetown poems.
I'll read one against being immortal.
This one is against fate, against a tragic sense
of a life.
It's called "In Memoriam, for Aurelius Battaglia
and Against His Tragic Sense of Life."
"Aurelius Battaglia, the greatest loudmouth
in the world, has bored everybody to death
and shouted down everybody everywhere,
at cocktail parties and bars and New York, Hollywood, London,
Paris, Rome.
Now when I meet him in Ciro's bar in Provincetown
he can't talk.
He's had an operation for cancer of the larynx.
He can only whisper, constantly spitting in my ear.
He claims it's his fate, his destiny, his comeuppance.
He's being punished for the sin of hubris,
of overweening pride.
He's paying out to all the people
he has pissed off by his immoral shouting
domination of all conversation.
He feels proud of his personal ironic and tragic fate
as the greatest loudmouth ever made silenced
by overuse of his vocal cords resulting in absolutely just
throat cancer.
I try to say Auri, Auri, although he cannot hear me
through his crazy whispering speculative egotistical
logorrhea.
Listen Auri, it's true that you have an appropriate fate,
that you're an offensive loud mouth shut up by throat cancer.
But don't really believe in appropriate fates or tragedies
or just punishment for hubris.
That's just bullshit theory.
It might help you in your merely personal agony
but remember contingency, remember automobile accidents.
Remember the random death of innocent people in wars,
politics, fires, epidemics, plane crashes, you name it.
We live like herds of animals, impersonal personal accidents
happen regardless of personal characteristics, vices,
or virtues.
So listen Auri, when you and I walk out
of Ciro's dead drunk tonight after the bars
close, when we are still arguing this problem,
when you are not listening to me and I am not listening to you,
we could both get hit by one of the drunk drivers around here
and that would not be tragic.
It would not even be fate.
It would just be ridiculous death.
So pace, Auri, pace."
[LAUGHTER]