Well, I'd like to read to you a little bit
now from some new work that is really
written in prose sentences.
This first poem begins with the legend of the cross
as it was painted long ago by the painter,
the Italian painter Piero Della Francesca.
He wanted to paint the story of what had happened to the wood
and where the wood came from that eventually ended up
to be the wood that Jesus was nailed on to.
So the poem briefly touches on that story.
I say briefly, I mean, really just one stanza,
and then fasten your seatbelts because we're
going to advance many, many centuries to the present.
And you'll end up in California.
Actually, I hope you recognize it's South San Francisco.
The area just outside of the city
where the ballpark is where the San Francisco Giants play
and where the airport is.
So I thought I'd read this tonight because there are so
many poets in the room.
It's called "The Poet."
"You would procure the oil of forgiveness
from the angel at the doors and get a small branch
for a tree that finds no use until it
becomes a bridge over a river.
You have a premonition while crossing about the wood's fate,
and rather than step further, cross on foot.
The wood lies dormant for centuries until it's dug up,
and 3 victims die on it, scattering the Jews.
Unable to discern the cross from those are the two thieves,
you place them in the pit of the city
and in the early hours hold each above your head with the third
are brought to life zipping between buildings
at high speed, shifting into 5th out some disembodied ramp.
The thrill in the air is sexual.
The ballpark darkened, and the holograph of the shut airport
glowing.
Your headlamps trained on mall light in fog
made more intimate and infinite by the collapse of time.
Cement bits swirling your sealed space
to the strains of violins.
It's the end of an era.
Time does not improve it.
You live in a sunny place and work in a sealed building.
10 miles per hour on interstate 405 by the year 2000.
The 20th century begun in Vienna has ended in California.
Gas meters on your left, electric meters on your right.
Ahead at the end of a passage out in the light,
a flight of concrete stairs.
As you climb, you see the big towers
of the financial district 50 storeys high a few blocks away.
The sense of entering a city nobly,
walking the freeway at night before it's torn down,
hearing Portuguese, German, Japanese,
French, Chinese, seeing views of the Bay
metallic and choppy, and of the suspension
bridge, and the ships.
This is over.
About the demolition, a few warnings
like those about the earthquake.
The clerk in the streets of Vienna, a carriage door
slamming there, and a continuous fountain though far away
seem no further than the broken freeway.
The bells of the tower quiet, the stone smooth and brilliant
in moonlight.
You are in a car with music, and air conditioning, and a phone.
Softly the classical station massages you.
In the back of your head, the best of your creative life
has been siphoned away by a desire for money.
Desire in general and money in comparison with others.
But between one abstraction and another,
you yourself quietly and fiercely
participate in a disappearing place.
One you loved and were prepared to enter with great humility,
bathed in tears and barefoot."
[APPLAUSE]