This is a prayer for that same earth, I better hurry and say.
"Foundered Star."
"Little fevered island blued to closing.
Boatmen, tidemen, shademen, men of color and of peace,
women of the cabbage, women of the carrot house,
women of the swim, children doe-eyed and able-bodied,
children of chalky dreams and milky lips,
of bugs under glass, come now to the tips of the roofs.
Come now to the lake lip, to the entryway of the tunnels,
to the counting house.
Air the eiderdown, steam the rooms of the lovers,
break the fistfights from their arguments, marry the maid.
Live a little in the afternoon asking, now what do we do?
Because this is how we are alive though we force ourselves out
of a certain nostalgia where we first made love.
The condition of our lives.
A dark room there but only because the shades were drawn.
It was really midday and our clothes stuck to our bodies
like hairy beasts.
We watched the light change in our eyes
as we dug deeper, pulling out embers, remember?
But the word itself is no longer magical.
No longer a living thing.
A weakness in one or two breakers.
Yet there remains an image when you
water the sun and moon, mouths coupling and uncoupling,
kissing along the ridge the poet invented--
coincident, temporal, carnal, all so that others
might be entertained.
Changed a nick or two like a diamond.
Who can say whether better or worse?
Only this I can say, I who am always
writing to you, my earthship, my next life, though no one is now
listening or talking, it's all the same.
Though no one is now laboring or sleeping, is forbidden.
No one yet exploded.
The globe forgives the night sky gone yellow,
the morning sea gone white and all
for little greed, a little light on the wall,
a view of the other side or dipped in ink
where we shall never again believe things about ourselves
that aren't true."
[APPLAUSE]