And [INAUDIBLE] and I want to thank you all for coming.
I'd like to end with the title poem, "American Smooth."
And American Smooth is technically
a definition of a certain kind of folk dancing.
It's the smooth dances--
the tangos, the waltzes, the foxtrots,
the ones that [INAUDIBLE] but with an American difference.
And that is that, in the international and European way,
the woman is never allowed to leave the man's embrace.
They have to [INAUDIBLE] these things.
Rib to rib.
In the American Smooth version, a woman is allowed to--
allowed to-- may whirl, come back in, and do that Ginger
Rogers thing, you know.
A little bit more freedom, a little bit more [INAUDIBLE]..
But it means more than that, of course.
It's dealing with the poem.
"American Smooth."
We were dancing-- it must have been foxtrot or a waltz,
something romantic but requiring restraint, rise and fall,
precise execution as we moved into the next song without
stopping, two chests heaving above a seven-league stride--
such perfect agony, one learns to smile through,
ecstatic mimicry being the sine qua non of American Smooth.
And because I was distracted by the effort
of keeping my frame--
the leftward lean, head turned just enough to gaze out
past your ear and always smiling, smiling--
I didn't notice how still you'd become until we had done it--
for two measures?
Four?-- achieved flight, that swift and serene magnificence,
before the earth remembered who we were and brought us down.
[APPLAUSE]