And this one's called "The Lanyard."
It's about what kids do in the summertime.
I gave a reading in Italy this time last year.
Couple of readings there, because I
had this lovely guy that has translates some of my poems.
And we went around to a few places in the north of Italy,
and he would read the poem in Italian, I'd read in English.
And before I thought--
before, I thought, well, they don't--
lanyards, making lanyards in the summertime,
is sort of an American thing to do.
But indeed, Italian children make these things as well.
Only they're-- in Italian, they're called Scooby Doo.
So he would read this poem, and he'd
say [SPEAKING ITALIAN] Scooby Doo.
[LAUGHTER]
That wasn't the sound I was getting at.
So just forget you ever heard Scooby Doo.
[LAUGHTER]
"The Lanyard."
"The other day as I was ricocheting slowly off
the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor.
I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past--
the past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake learning how to
braid thin plastic strips into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard, or wear one,
if that's what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand
again and again until I had made a boxy red and white lanyard
for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me how to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said, and here
is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones, and teeth, and two clear eyes
to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now, is a smaller gift--
not the archaic truth that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when
she took the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be that this useless, worthless
thing I wove out of boredom would
be enough to make us even."