I think I'll go to a sort of an older poem.
This is essentially again, one of these poems
that for some stupid reason, it took a long time to complete.
I mean, sometimes the really simplest things.
Especially if you're not very bright,
I mean, it take a long time to see the obvious.
And this one started in California years ago.
I had moved to California, and I used
to get calls from my friends on the East Coast.
And so I was hearing their voices over the great distance.
And they would call me at odd hours
too, because they were people who
didn't know about these things like the time zones.
They were preoccupied with higher things and poetry
things, so--
I'd just heard their lives sort of distinctly over the phone.
And mostly what they did is that,
they complained all the time about their lives.
And I never noticed that before.
I mean, somebody calls you next door, I mean, I don't know.
It doesn't have the same quality as if you
get a long distance call late at night, or early in the morning
or whatever it was.
So but this is how this poem started,
and it really doesn't need this long preface.
The title came first, and then just the rest of it.
And the poem is entitled Great Infirmities.
Great infirmities.
Everyone has only one leg.
It's so difficult to get around, so
difficult to climb the stairs without a cane or a crutch
to our name.
And only one arm, impossible contortions, just
to embrace the one you love.
To cut the bread on the table, to put a coat on in a hurry.
I should mention that we are almost blind, and a little deaf
in both ears.
Perilous to be on the street among the congregations
of the afflicted, with only a few steps committed to memory.
Meekly, we let ourselves be diverted
in the endless twilight.
Blind, seeing eye dogs on our leashes.
And immense stillness everywhere,
with the trees always bare.
The raindrops coming down only halfway, coming so close
and giving up.