WEBVTT

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Now, this takes it in
a different direction.

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I'm going back to the
poem for Tom McGrath, who

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was a great radical
American poet

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with an enormous vocabulary,
a fantastic command of forms,

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and a great heart.

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So the first thing
I'm going to read

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is some little lyric
that he told me once,

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and then I go into
the next section.

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The next section
begins nevertheless.

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So first his little ditty I
think there's a tune for this

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but I don't know what it is.

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It's going to be cold,
colder than a witch's tit,

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colder than a barrel
of penguin shit,

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colder than the hair
on a polar bear's ass,

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colder than the heart
of the ruling class.

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And he laughs shaking his head.

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Nevertheless, on
the green swords

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of the park and the
democratic summer air,

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we gather for an internal
combustion picnic

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before the fireworks
begin on the fourth.

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We call up our rattling,
groaning histories,

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our fled time.

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We mark the anniversaries
of our families

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in the several great
realms of the new world.

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We say again the phrases and
tales we have best remembered.

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The young mother so close that
they nursed each other's babies

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in the old neighborhood.

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Sunday dinners in the
old kitchen, the lawsuit,

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those bills for dad's illness,
sister's great performance,

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but then she gave it up.

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Our causes, our coffee clashes,
the good works on this street

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are that, good persons,
old world always becoming

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new, new world also.

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Our five act dramas are
Chevrolet births and Ford

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divorces.

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We hear a kind of poem in
the noise of the highway,

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in the ocean waves, in the sound
of the shouts in the backfire

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or a gun within the whispering
of the wind in the leaves.

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A poem about the
same rain falling

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on tin roofs and
penthouse terraces,

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on small farm crops and
country clubs, about our flying

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first jobs and our Tylenol
retirements, the pennons

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and etymons of
gladness and despair,

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the little pieces of
the story of it all

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that are our own stories, even
saddening ones that remind us

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of the paths down which we've
come hurrying or hesitating,

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hustling, advancing,
fleeing, wandering.

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Our chosen mothers and fathers
if we can find them helping us

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along or not.

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Some people knocked down by
life, others knocked open.

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APPLAUSE

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You ready?

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Yeah.

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I was going along real good.

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Then you did something
and just took me off, man.

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That's the whole idea.

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Yeah I know.

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I know.

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I can understand that.

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So maybe I'll just switch
it up and do something.

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