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And this one's
called "The Lanyard."

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It's about what kids
do in the summertime.

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I gave a reading in Italy
this time last year.

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Couple of readings
there, because I

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had this lovely guy that has
translates some of my poems.

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And we went around to a few
places in the north of Italy,

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and he would read the poem in
Italian, I'd read in English.

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And before I thought--

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before, I thought,
well, they don't--

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lanyards, making lanyards
in the summertime,

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is sort of an
American thing to do.

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But indeed, Italian children
make these things as well.

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Only they're-- in Italian,
they're called Scooby Doo.

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So he would read
this poem, and he'd

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say [SPEAKING ITALIAN]
Scooby Doo.

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[LAUGHTER]

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That wasn't the sound
I was getting at.

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So just forget you
ever heard Scooby Doo.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"The Lanyard."

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"The other day as I was
ricocheting slowly off

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the pale blue
walls of this room,

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bouncing from
typewriter to piano,

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from bookshelf to an
envelope lying on the floor.

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I found myself in the L
section of the dictionary

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where my eyes fell
upon the word lanyard.

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No cookie nibbled
by a French novelist

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could send one more
suddenly into the past--

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the past where I sat at
a workbench at a camp

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by a deep Adirondack
lake learning how to

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braid thin plastic strips into
a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

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I had never seen anyone
use a lanyard, or wear one,

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if that's what
you did with them,

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but that did not keep me from
crossing strand over strand

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again and again until I had made
a boxy red and white lanyard

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for my mother.

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She gave me life and
milk from her breasts,

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and I gave her a lanyard.

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She nursed me in
many a sick room,

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lifted teaspoons of
medicine to my lips,

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set cold face-cloths
on my forehead,

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and then led me out
into the airy light

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and taught me how
to walk and swim,

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and I, in turn, presented
her with a lanyard.

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Here are thousands of
meals, she said, and here

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is clothing and
a good education.

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And here is your
lanyard, I replied,

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which I made with a little
help from a counselor.

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Here is a breathing body
and a beating heart,

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strong legs, bones, and
teeth, and two clear eyes

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to read the world,
she whispered,

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and here, I said, is the
lanyard I made at camp.

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And here, I wish to say to
her now, is a smaller gift--

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not the archaic truth that you
can never repay your mother,

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but the rueful
admission that when

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she took the two-tone
lanyard from my hands,

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I was as sure as a boy could
be that this useless, worthless

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thing I wove out
of boredom would

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be enough to make us even."

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