Now, I want to go back for the rest of the reading
and read chronologically starting
with a few poems from The Lice.
I'm not going to read everything from every book.
But sometimes, even now, someone will come and say,
that one's concerns-- that my concerns writing poetry
have a lot to do with ecology.
So you're into ecology--
that things like that interest you.
Do you-- sort of like and what do you do, I mean--
do you collect stamps?
Anything like that.
It always seemed to me rather strange
because I couldn't imagine.
I thought that if you weren't interested in these things,
you were hoping that you were going to grow up to the point
where you were.
I mean, I can't imagine living in a world
and not wanting the whole world.
I think that to be--
specietal chauvinism is as bad as any other kind
of chauvinism.
To think that human kind can survive alone
among all forms of life, which seems
to be fairly widespread assumption,
is a really weird one.
And I'm happy to find--
I just can't think that it would be possible to write poetry
without loving the world.
And I would think that you would realize somehow
that the world was all one.
And that you couldn't be a matter of indifference
whether there were trees around as well as whether there
were people around.
Besides which, I can remember being
upset about trees when I was very small
and getting very angry when one was cut down.
Obviously, I've been feeling-- having this prejudice
for a very long time.
I want to start by reading a poem that
has to do with, I suppose, it's trees.
I don't know what it is.
They behave like trees, anyway.
I think of that line of Stevens, before you
come to the last black cataracts and trees that
lack the intelligence of trees.
This poem is called "The Last One."
"Well, they've made up their minds
to be everywhere, because why not?
Everywhere was theirs because they thought so.
They with two leaves, they whom the birds despise.
In the middle of stones, they made up their minds.
They started to cut.
Well, they cut everything, because why not?
Everything was theirs because they thought so.
It fell into its shadows.
And they took both away, some to have, some for burning.
Well cutting everything, they came to the water.
They came to the end of the day, there was one left standing.
They would cut it tomorrow.
They went away.
The night gathered in the last branches.
The shadow of the night gathered in the shadow on the water.
The night in the shadow put on the same head,
and it said, now.
Well, in the morning they cut the last one.
Like the others, the last one felt into its shadow.
It fell into its shadow on the water.
They took it away.
Its shadow stayed on the water.
Well, they shrugged.
They started trying to get the shadow away.
They cut right to the ground.
The shadow stayed whole.
They laid boards on it.
The shadow came out on top.
They shone lights on it.
The shadow got blacker and clearer.
They exploded the water.
The shadow rocked.
They built a huge fire on the roots.
They set up black smoke between the shadow and the sun.
The new shadow flowed without changing the old one.
They shrugged.
They went away to get stones.
They came back.
The shadow was growing.
They started setting up stones.
It was growing.
They looked the other way.
It went on growing.
They decided they would make a stone out of it.
They took stones to the water.
They poured them into the shadow.
They poured them in.
They poured them in the stones, vanished.
The shadow was not filled.
It went on growing.
That was one day.
The next day was just the same.
It went on growing.
They did all the same things.
It was just the same.
They decided to take its water from under it.
They took away water.
They took it away.
The water went down.
The shadow stayed where it was before.
It went on growing.
It grew onto the land.
They started to scrape the shadow with machines.
When it touched the machines, it stayed on them.
They started to beat the shadow with sticks.
Where it touched the sticks, it stayed on them.
They started to beat the shadow with hands.
Where it touched the hands, it stayed on them.
That was another day.
Well, the next day they started about the same.
It went on growing.
They pushed lights into the shadow.
Where the shadow got onto them they went out.
They began to stomp on the edge.
It got their feet.
And when it got their feet, they fell down.
It got into eyes.
The eyes went blind.
The ones that fell down, it grew over and they vanished.
The ones that went blind and walked into it, vanished.
The ones that could see and stood still,
it swallowed their shadows.
Then it swallowed them too and they vanished.
Well, the others ran.
The ones that were left went away
to live if it would let them.
They went as far as they could, the lucky ones
with their shadows.