WEBVTT

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This poem is called "Listen."

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"Cage's quartet number
one, really, it's

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a thoughtful, and engaging,
and quite delightful work,

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and not a bundle of cliches
as once was thought.

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So turn out the light,
listen, the storm outdoors

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accompanies everything tonight.

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Wind drones in the television
antenna on the roof, sleet

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crashes against the windows.

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The refrigerator
kookilates as usual,

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and the furnace does its
booming and strutting below.

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Inside the man's head, along
with incessant yearning

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for one more beautiful poem, and
one more good look at a woman's

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nakedness, is the perpetual
noise caused by deteriorating

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aural nerves,
high-pitched, a baby cicada

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wailing in its shell, Let me
out, you fuckers, let me out.

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And would anyone deny
such a reasonable desire?

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Well, really all of us
would, and confinement

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is part of the deal,
wailing is part of the deal.

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The cicada splits,
and sings, and dies,

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as every artist
must go on, always

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to dying, to what is new,
repudiating what has been done

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already, those remarkable and
reasonable accomplishments

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repudiating us.

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But still one wishes that Cage
had left Orientalism, which

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at best is a kind of rot
in the American mind,

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to the academic
musicians and had

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continued to give us this
confined mellow music

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of suffering.

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Listen, the wind makes its
triads, the chilling nerve,

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it's E above high C, and the
cello drones in the night."

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[APPLAUSE]

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