This next piece is set in Berkeley, California.
Some of the landmarks there, I think you'll know in the poem.
The San Francisco Art Institute is also mentioned,
and Telegraph Avenue, one of the main
drags there, which is such a fascinating street
to be on in any era.
This poem-- well, I'll say no more,
except that it's a love poem.
"Destiny."
"I'm eating cold Chinese in Joy's friend's flat.
I have been trafficked like a drug planted
by a child in Oaxaca.
Like this story, you are happy without me, a lie,
I believe, you believe.
And I am traveled like the mercies
on Telegraph, the street lamps burning down
the throat of this thoroughfare in Berkeley, where
I lived in the 60s, and now see my book in a window,
and find its theme useless in the act.
Where, had I not been so privileged then,
I might have had hope well humped
for a quantity of uncut drugs.
Out of the city on Joy's cocaine,
where it's always the freeway in the hour
the bars close, and no English spoken.
Where men chained to each other as to an idea say,
that prayer is as useful as a condom
against the current cancer.
Here is the black Mercedes of an acquaintance,
top down and with the stars tight against my body
like a drunk, I'm singing.
Because in a war, you taught me your people
flaunt the joyous will.
How is it fair?
You who have raised fairness to an exquisite pitch that
sounds like the wrong gear, to go on
as the ever-present red light we run
parts its mouth for a tongue.
Three queens high on Stevie Wonder crying,
where were you when I needed you last winter?
Now that it is summer, and the only person
I know drives by in his cab, my name on his red lips, the sun.
I call back every minute of the hours, of the days of summer.
Friend, not naming him, remembering his name,
and that's how it's been, one with the universe.
Blanking out at the Art Institute,
that expensive drug cleared to black and white,
like a spaceship to another galaxy, MTV.
While you are happy with someone somewhere
there is the same crying and laughing.
Two peasants, the one you are, and I become, one day when
we aren't dead to each other.
I hear the story of a stripper from her mother,
how she'd studied with the National Ballet,
that when the lights go on, you don't pretend you're alone.
I love you."
[APPLAUSE]
Thanks.