This guy did that kind of installation piece,
he did it in the Great Salt Lake.
And he also did it in the DMZ in Korea
on the edge of a deer park.
And I'm not sure how he got himself so covered with salt,
but apparently he was naked.
And he came out and he was covered with salt.
And he sat there in the field on the edge of the deer park
in utter quiet until the deer came to him
and found the salt that they needed on his body.
OK, "Rope."
Is this about-- yeah, rope--
about time, I think.
I spent summers on a little island
off the coast of Eastern Canada.
It's a fishing island, a working island.
It's suffering, like all places that depend on the sea are.
But one weird thing happens up there.
Every man I've ever gone to the island with
picks up these old scraps of rope on the beach.
I mean, there's all this rope because it comes off
the fishing boats.
It's a washed up.
And men just have to pick it up and take it home.
So I decided I better write a poem about this--
"Rope."
The man gathers rope every summer
off the stone beaches of the North.
There's no sand in this place where the Labrador current runs
like an artery through the body of the Atlantic,
channeling particles that once were glacial ice
and now are molecules, making not one promise to anyone.
The man gathers rope with his hands, both the rope
and the hands worn from use.
The rope-- from hauling up traps and trawl lines.
The hands-- from banging into rocks, rusted nails, fish
knives, and winch gears, and bark.
The rope starts to pull apart, fiber by fiber,
like the glacial ice.
And the man wishes he could find a way to bind it back together,
the way a cook binds syrup or sauce with cornstarch.
The rope lies in the cellar for years, coiled,
stinking of the sea and the fish that once lived in the sea,
and the sweat of the man who wishes
he could save one strand of the world from unraveling.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]