I'm going to read not two more poems, but one more poem
because that one took longer than I thought.
This is one I started to read in Richard and Jon's classes
last night.
And I'll finish it tonight.
This is also set in Berkeley from all of the hedonists
in the opening lines.
And I don't know--
I'm still working on it.
I don't really know quite where it came from,
but the feeling that started was this
I was just walking down the street
and it was sort of like a Tolstoyan sense.
I just sort of looking and thought, why?
Why?
"Sunlight on the streets in afternoons and shadows
on the faces in the open air cafes.
What for?
Wrong question.
You knock without knowing that you knocked.
The door opens on a century of clouds and centuries
of centuries of clouds.
The bird sings among the berries in the spring's diligence
of rain.
And then, what?
Hand on your heart.
Would you die for spring?
What would you die for?
Anything?
Anything.
It may be I can't find it and they can.
The spooners of whipped cream and espresso
at the sunny tables, the women with their children
in the stores.
You want to sing, tra-la.
Empty, and he wants to sing.
A pretty river but there were no fish.
Smart fish, they will be feeding for a while.
He wants to sing.
Yes.
Poverty or death.
Piety or death, you meant, you dope?
You fool.
Bloody little fool.
She slammed the door.
He was, of course, forlorn and "lorn," and "afterlorn."
It made a busy afternoon.
The nights were difficult. No doors.
No drama.
The moon ached aimlessly.
Dogs in the morning had their dog masks on.
It did not seem good, the moss.
The apples.
The gold meander in her hair cast one vote then,
sinuous as wrists.
He attended to her earnestness as well.
And the child liked breakfast.
He believed in that.
Every morning was a present he pretended that he brought.
The sun came up.
Nothing to it.
I'll do it again tomorrow.
And it did.
Sundays, he fetched croissants, the frank nipples of brioche
that say it's day, eat up.
The phone will ring.
The mail arrive.
Someone who heard you sing the moss, the apples.
And they were.
For sure they were, and good, though over there.
Gold hair, a lucky guy with the head on his shoulders,
and all heart.
You can skip this part.
The moss, the apples, and the morning news, apartheid,
terror, lesions on the children's skin.
Yes, yes, and justice in tropical climates is appalling.
I knew that I had my own work to do.
The ones who wear the boots and vests decide all that.
He wants to sing one thing so true that it is true.
I cast a vote across the river, skipped another on the pond
and skittered for a while triumphantly, then sank.
And we were naked on the riverbank.
I believed a little in her breast,
the color of the aureoles that afternoon and something
she said about her sister that seemed shrewd.
Afterwards, we watched a woman making masks
mostly with feathers and a plastered cast of face
she glued them to.
The mouths formed circles.
The mouths formed cries.
They were the part that weren't there,
implied by what surrounded them.
They were a cunning emptiness.
I think you ought to start again.
The fish were smart.
They mouthed the salmon eggs, or so you felt.
The boys kept reeling in, casting and reeling in.
You'll never catch a fish that way, you said.
One caught a fish that way.
One perched in a chair, abandoned on the sand,
drank orange soda, watched his rod twitter
in a fork of willow twig.
I'm getting a bite, Dad.
It was the river current or the wind.
In every language in the world, I bet.
Do you believe in that?
Not especially.
It means the race is old.
And full of hope, he wants to sing.
"You bastard," she said and slammed the door.
You've been in this part already.
Say before.
"Before."
She shut the door.
It couldn't have been otherwise.
How sick you were.
The mouth, the apples, the buttons on a blouse.
The bone was pearl and small and very shiny.
Fat child's face was flecked with Santa Rosa plum.
She cried.
Her mother hit her.
Then, it seemed like blood, a flood of tears then.
You remember never to interfere?
It humiliates them.
They beat the child again when they get home.
It's only your own feeling.
You assuage.
You didn't interfere.
Her gold wandering of hair.
She told you that another time.
The father at the County fair was
wailing on the boy with fists.
There was music in the background.
And a clown walked by and looked away.
She told you then, gold and practical advice.
You wanted one and craved the other, saying, mother,
no, say it.
No.
She shut the door.
I wish she had.
I saw the shadow cast there on the floor.
What did you think?
I asked her, actually.
She said she hurt her lip and took a drink or the shadow did.
I didn't think.
I knew she was lying.
A child could see that.
You were a child.
This is the part where he parades his wound.
It is the law of things.
The little billy goat goes first happily.
He's not a morsel for the troll.
Say, Dad, I've got a bite.
That's different.
Then, you say, reel it in.
They're feeling fear and wonder then.
That's when you teach them they can take the world in hand.
You do.
Sometimes I do, carefully.
They beat the child again when they get home.
All right.
Assume the children are all right.
They're singing in the kibbutzim.
The sun is rising.
Let's get past this part.
The kindergarten is a garden, and they face their fears
in stories.
Your voice makes musical.
And then they sleep.
They hear the sirens.
Yes, they hear the sirens.
That part can't be helped.
No one beats them, though.
And there are no lies they recognize.
They know you're with them, and they fall asleep.
What then?
Get past this part.
It is a garden, then they're grown.
What then?
Let's say "groan."
I say what to say.
You don't.
They're all OK and grown.
What then?
Then, then, the truth is--
then, they fall in love.
Oh, no.
Oh, yes.
Big subject.
Big shadow.
I saw it slant across the floor, linoleum, in fact
and very dirty.
Sad and dirty because it lacked intention.
Well, it did lack art.
Let's leave the shadow part alone.
They fall in love.
What then?
I want to leave this too.
It has its songs too many.
I know them all.
It doesn't seem appropriate somehow.
It was summer.
He saw her wandering through a field of grass.
It was the sweetest fire.
Later in the fall, it rained.
You loved her then, in rain?
And gold October?
I would have died for her.
We took long walks.
And once there was a flood, rain swell the creeks
and then the tide came in.
I left her house at midnight.
It was pouring rain.
I hitched a ride which stalled.
The car in front of us had stopped.
The water rose across the road and ran downhill.
You'd forgotten this.
I remember now.
My knee was in a cast.
I hopped the car in front, the one that stalled.
The driver's tongue stuck out a pale, fat, plum.
His eyes bulged, an old man in a gray felt hat.
And the red lids flickered, so he wasn't dead.
What did you do?
I got in, shoved him aside, and tried to start the car.
What did you feel then?
Wonderful.
Like cleaning fish.
Your hands are dirty and you do the job.
It reminds you of a poem now?
Yes, the one about the fall that Basho liked.
The maple leaf becomes a midwife's hand.
The engine skipped and sank twice, then it started.
I drove.
The hospital was just a mile away, but near the creek,
I thought the water might be even higher.
Interesting, of course, this is the part about falling in love.
I left her house.
We were necking, remember, on a soft, green velvet couch.
What then?
I took the downhill road in Florida.
The gush spewed up and blurred the windshield.
I couldn't see a thing.
The car sputtered, surged, sputtered, surged, and died.
And he was dead.
Who was he?
Some old man.
That was the winter that you fell in love?
It was.
Did you feel bad?
No, I tried.
Do you believe in that?
Now, I'm not sure.
He looked like a baby when they got him out.
And raindrops bounced off raindrops on his face.
It didn't cost me anything.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]