What happened after that was, again, the poems came in spurts
and fits and I began writing poetry
I began to refer to as the Paradise Poems
because they were all--
the setting of all these poems wasn't paradise, either
lost or bound to be lost, and of course, I
can look at it now and say yes, these
were the poems about losing a house
and trying to rebuild one's life.
But at that time, I was working through the metaphors of them.
I'd like to read you one-- actually we're
very close to this day now, called "All Souls."
"All Souls."
"Starting up behind them, all the
voices of those they had named; mink, gander, and marmoset,
crow and cockatiel.
Even the duck-billed platypus, of late so quiet in its bed,
sent out a feeble cry signifying grief and confusion, et cetera.
Of course the world had changed for good,
as it would from now on every day,
with every twitch and blink.
Now that change was de rigeur, man
would discover desire, then yearn
for what he would learn to call distraction.
This was the true loss.
And yet, in that first unchanging instant,
the two souls standing outside the gates, no more than a
break in the hedge; how had they missed it?--
were not thinking.
Already the din was fading.
Before them, a silence larger than all their ignorance
yawned, and this, they walked into until it
was all they knew.
In time they hunkered down to business,
filling the world with sighs--
these anonymous, pompous creatures,
heads tilted as if straining to make up
the words to a song played long ago, in a foreign land."