I should say that the last poem that I read and this one
were published in Ironwood.
And that wasn't just any magazine.
I didn't mean what I said about magazines about Ironwood.
But then it doesn't exist anymore,
which is why it's great.
"From the New World."
In this poem, in the second stanza,
there's a phrase, "should You be keeping track,"
and that y in the you is a capital Y.
It's the only time in the poem though that's the case.
You all might remember there was a trial of a man named Ivan who
lived in Cleveland and was tried for crimes committed
during the Holocaust, was tried in Israel.
And it was reported extensively on television in this country.
"Has to do with the story about the girl who
didn't die in the gas chamber, who came back
out asking for her mother.
Then the moment-- the next coil--
where the guard, Ivan, since the '50s,
an auto worker in Cleveland, orders a man
on his way in to rape her.
Then the narrowing, the tightening, but not in hunger.
No, the witness recollecting this on the stand
somewhere in Israel in February '87,
should You be keeping track.
Has to do with her coming back out, asking for her mother?
Can you help me in this?
Are you there in your stillness?
Is it a real place?
God knows I too want the poem to continue.
I want the silky swerve into shapeliness
and then the click shut.
And then the issue of sincerity, the glossy, diamond-backed skin
will you buy me?
Will you take me home?
About the one who didn't die.
Her face still there on the new stalk of her body
as the doors open.
The one who didn't like her relentless treble
coming back out right there into the thing we call daylight.
But which is what now?
Unmoored.
The one time I knew something about us,
though, I couldn't say what.
My grandmother then already ill took me
by the hand asking to be introduced.
And then, no, you are not jury.
But thank you for saying you are.
No, I'm sure I know her, you see.
I went into the bathroom, locked the door,
stood in front of the mirrored wall, not so much to see in,
not looking up at all, in fact.
But to be held in it as by a gas.
The thing which was me there in its chamber.
Reader, they were all in there.
I didn't look up.
They were all in there.
The coiling and uncoiling billions,
the about-to-be-seized.
The about to be held down.
The about to be held down a bit clean-shaped.
And the other ones too, the ones gone back out,
the ending wrapped around them, hands up to their faces.
Why?
I don't know.
And the about to be stepping in.
One form at a time stepping in as if to stay clean.
Stepping over something to get into here,
something there on the floor now dissolving.
Not looking down, but stepping up to clear it,
and clearing it.
Stepping in without existence and then with existence.
Then into the clearing as it clamps down all around.
Then into the fable as it clamps down.
We put her in a Home, mother paid.
We put him in a Home, mother paid.
There wasn't one that would take both of them we could afford.
We were right.
We put them down the road, it's all there.
There was a marriage of 50 years.
You know this already, don't you?
Fill in the blanks.
They never saw each other again.
Paralyzed on his back the last few years,
he bribed himself a private line.
He rigged the phone so he could talk, et cetera.
You know this.
We put her in X. She'd fallen out, we put her back in.
There, in her diaper sitting with her purse
in her hands all day, every day asking, can I go now?
Meaning, him-- meaning, the apartment by then
long since let go.
You know this, don't you?
Shifting wind, sorting, and resorting the stuff--
flesh.
Now the sun struck field beyond her window.
Now her hands on the '40s sunburst, silver clasp.
The white patent leather pocketbook.
I stood there.
Let the silver down all over my shoulders.
The sink, the gold speck formica.
The water uncoiling.
Then the click like a lock being tried.
Then the hollow caressing the back of my neck.
Then the whole thing like a benediction.
You can't shake off.
And the eyes, unfastening, nervous as
if they smelled something up there and had to go,
don't wait for me.
The eyes lifting up into the decoration.
The eyes looking.
Poor thing as if real, as if in the place.
The twitch where the eyes meet the eyes.
A blush.
You see, it's not the matter of her coming back out alive,
is it?
It's the asking for the please, isn't it?
Then the man standing up, the witness, screaming, it's him,
it's him.
I'm sure your honor, I'm sure.
Then Ivan coming up to him, and Ivan, you
saw this, offering his hand.
Click, whoever he is.
And the old man getting a dial-tone, friend,
and old whoever clicking and clicking the clasp,
the silver knobs, shall we end on them?
A tracking shot?
A close up on the clasp, a two-headed beast it turns out
made of silvery leaves.
Where would you go now?
Where?
Screaming, it's him.
It's him.
At the point where she comes back out, something begins.
Yes, something new.
Something completely new.
But what?
They're underneath the screaming.
What?
Like what?
I wonder, to make the bodies come on, to make room.
Like what?
I whisper.
Like, which is the last new world.
Like, like, which is the thin young body
before it's made to go back in, whispering please."
[APPLAUSE]