WEBVTT

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So this afternoon, I had a
little discussion session

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with a number of students
at the Poetry Center.

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And one person there
asked me to read a poem

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that I had read after the
tennis tournament in 1978.

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So I said I would.

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It's called "The Bear" and I
used to read it quite a lot.

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And I think I imprinted
it on my memory,

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so I believe I can say it now.

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But I may have to open
the book and start again

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if I get into trouble.

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Do you want to sit
down somewhere?

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Plenty of seats.

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Well, I have to find out how
it begins and then I think--

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[LAUGHTER]

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Line two, thank you.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Well, if I had as good a memory
as you, I would relate to it.

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Well, I'll hold it
open here in case.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"The Bear."

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"In late winter, I
sometimes glimpse

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spits of steam coming up from
some fault in the old snow,

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and bend close and see
it as lung-colored,

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and put down my nose and
know the chilly enduring

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odor of bear.

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I take a wolf's rib and
whittle it sharp at both ends

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and coil it up and
freeze it in blubber

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and place it out on the
fairway of the bears.

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And when it has vanished, I
move out on the bear tracks,

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roaming in circles until I come
to the first tentative dark

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splash on the earth.

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And I set out running,
following the splashes of blood,

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wandering over the world.

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At the cut, gashed resting
places, I stop and rest.

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At the crawl marks
where he lay out

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on his belly to overpass
some stretch of bauchy ice,

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I lie out, dragging
myself forward

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with bear knives in my fists.

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On the third day,
I begin to starve.

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At nightfall, I bent down
as I knew I would at a turd

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supped in blood and hesitate
and pick it up and thrust it

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in my mouth and gnash it down
and rise and go on running.

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On the seventh day, living
by now on bear blood alone,

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I can see his upturned
carcass far out ahead,

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a strangled steamy hulk, the
heavy fur rippling in the wind.

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I come up to him and stare at
the narrow-spaced petty eyes,

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the dismayed face laid back on
a shoulder, the nostrils flared,

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catching perhaps the first
taint of me as he died.

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And I hack a ravine in his
thigh and eat and drink

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and tear him down
his whole length

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and open him and climb
in and close him up

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after me against the
wind and sleep and dream

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of lumbering flat footed over
the tundra, stabbed twice

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from within, splattering
a trail behind me,

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splattering it out no
matter which way I lurch,

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no matter which parabola of
bare transcendence, which

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dance of solitude I attempt,
which gravity clutched

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leap, which trudge, which groan.

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Until one day, I
tatter and fall,

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fall on the stomach that has
tried so hard to keep up,

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to digest the blood as it leaked
in, to break up and digest

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the bone itself.

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And now, the breeze
blows over me,

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blows off the hideous belches
of ill-digested bear blood

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and rotted stomach.

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And the ordinary wretched
odor of bear blows

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across my sore,
lolled tongue a song

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or a screech until I think
I must rise up and dance.

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And I lie still.

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I awaken.

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I think marsh lights
reappear, geese

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come trailing again
up the flyway.

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In her ravine under
old snow, the dam bear

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lies, licking lumps of
smeared fur and drizzly eyes

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into shapes with her tongue.

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And one hairy soled trudge
stuck out before me.

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The next groaned out,
the next, the next.

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The rest of my days I spend
wandering, wondering what,

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anyway, was that
sticky infusion,

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that rank flavor of blood,
that poetry by which I lived?"

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[CLAPPING]

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