I'll finish with a poem--
I started this poem out in the spirit of satire, or parody
even.
What I want to make fun of was the habit
poets had about taking their own birthdays a little too
seriously, and writing a middle-- midlife crisis death
poem, especially when their birthdays ended with a zero.
You could put an anthology together,
someone probably has already, of these poems
that are on turning 40, 50, and 60, so on.
And, for some reason, they are gloomier
as the number gets bigger.
[LAUGHTER]
Why that is--
But in this poem, I wanted to get
a sense of the source of all this sadness, and so the poem
started out in that vein.
It's called "I'm Turning Ten."
[LAUGHTER]
"The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something, something
worse than any stomach ache or the headaches I get
from reading in bad light, a kind of measles
of the spirit, a mumps of the psyche, a disfiguring chicken
pox of the soul.
You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible by drinking
a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today, all the dark blue speed drained out of it.
[LAUGHTER]
This is the beginning of sadness,
I say to myself, as I walk through the universe
in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends, time
to turn the first big number.
It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing
under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees.
I bleed."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]