This next poem doesn't have a recognizable landscape at all,
except that it's meant to take place right here, right
now at the end of the world, which has already happened.
And it starts with the title that is a date.
"August Zero"-- "young trees the bright green
of a moonless night.
Lawns, the red of scorpion.
A pleasure dome drops, a drill ceases, and a mower resumes.
It hides the spectacle of the mountains and jolts us.
It's been a long time, since we've had
a little space to ourselves.
Just the same in spite of everything,
we are made to live in the air, which
involves a certain number of mental operations,
the full force of a bow.
A revision of the notion of history,
oddly imitating animals when I think about it,
doubling back, appearing to be shot or struck.
And celestial sounds, not sound itself, rock the bare Earth,
packed hard and nailed to the tune of the unconscious,
which we regret to understand, don't get me wrong.
There's still a knowledge of freedom,
possession of a child's heart, a handshake, even an air.
Language is a cross between an appetite and a mouth.
I'm not hungry when I'm lonely.
Like all the lead and neon, which has been forgotten,
I forget that people have died forever, no one knows you
and the ideal place is a dome with horses' shadows,
the shade of steel gin.
And what formerly acceded to a view, constitutes love.
A pear.
Remember now, future became present.
A pair in a kitchen and two rooms in orbit,
pins the horizon with its pony body and elk head.
And we enact where we first made love
the camellia of our beloved.
We can't touch exactly, but attempt a profound correlation,
we grip the skeleton of a river, and the sun kisses it
like one's own throat.
This is the Earth my love, all of us
have a chunk on our backs.
You are an angel and I am an ancient
who are cast from 2 and 1/2 billion cars a day
into one copter night.
And closure is that windmill through a wall in the circle,
drifting like the once innocent oil spills in the Pacific,
drifting like conversation."
[APPLAUSE]