WEBVTT

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I flew through the Grand Canyon
last year in a small plane.

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I did not fly myself through.

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This really requires
a specialist

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as a lot of the
newspaper accounts

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of the accidents that I'm
sure you've been reading

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will suggest to you.

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And I ended up writing a very
lush transcendental rhapsodic

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essay that went on
forever and ever about it

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and also a poem in what I think
is pretty Spartan language.

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I don't know why it sorted
itself out that way.

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But I thought I would
read the poem to you.

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"Grand Canyon."

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"Geologic in their
repose, memories lie,

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carmeled by sunlight
and captive as the river

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far below the shale
blossoms of canyon wall.

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Each with cutting edge
and sandy flux, each

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the hem and panorama
for the next,

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laid out like so many
bolts of light fabric.

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One's ocean and lava,
one's lightning and fossil.

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How regular, how
explicable, even dull

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was the frenzy when ruts
glistened and flooded,

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pinnacles jutted up,
continents gave way,

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and tawny limbs of Earth
crashed together and held.

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Now the emptiness is larger
than anything that defines it.

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Larger than tantrums
of shadow and heat,

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larger than the other
canyons whose sunlight

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is image, whose
rivers are misgiving,

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in which donkeys also walk
slender pathways to the floor

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despite the froth of rapids,
despite the ancient hurling

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which set all in motion, despite
the oily black reflections

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of the birds whose open
wings are lifted eyebrows,

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despite the sunlight
swarming across the valley

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in immaculate
crimson, unforgettable

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in the stale glare
of reflection."

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