Well, a question of a different sort.
Do we have any optometrists in the audience?
No?
How about dentists?
No dentists?
Dentists don't go to poetry reading?
How about English professors?
They're just like dentists.
They pull teeth all the time.
Knowing this professor-- one over there.
Well, I've always sympathized with people like optometrists
and dentists because, of course, although they're
highly educated and highly skilled,
they do pretty much the same thing day in day out-- drill,
drill, pull, pull, right?
And it must be a little frustrating for them.
So optometrists are on my mind quite a bit.
[LAUGHTER]
And also, I feel sorry because you know yourself
when you go to a doctor or a dentist,
you feel a little nervous and you tend to talk too much.
You feel like you're on stage as your 10 minutes on stage.
And certainly, these people must get very tired
of dealing with people like that who are constantly babbling
and telling them all sorts of things they're not interested.
And I'm also fascinated, as many people are,
by the marvelous structure of the eye.
And if you ever looked in someone's eyes
through one of those weird little machines,
it's a whole world, of course, in there.
So this is my celebration of optometrists.
"Optometrists."
"At night, when I stand out on my front lawn, anaphylactic
again, I can see the porch light, drops of dew exuding
from the houses of my neighbors that will last all night long.
While behind them, they are reading novels,
watching television, celebrating inside their own civilization.
But tomorrow early, standing outside,
they will be amazed at the performance
of the regular sunrise.
Those adobes painted pink and blue, sleeping all night,
but like an old horse, stricken by the daylight,
struggling to its feet again.
And full of themselves, skipping breakfast,
putting on fresh shirts, rush downtown
to complain about their water bills,
wait in a lawyer's office to make out their wills, as
self-righteous and satisfied as someone who once a year
goes to church or buy a newspaper,
then simply sit having their eyes
examined while he dances before them, fascinated
by what is going on in that sloshed world of macula
and phobia.
A woman's womb, the eucalyptus bark that he's always
admired grown around that all day is penlight,
dances, and dances on."