And this poem is about simply the desire to write.
I mean, this sort of very private desire
to be remembered, not to be entirely forgotten.
To leave something behind and it endures, I
guess that's a primary desire.
But it's also a [INAUDIBLE] desire
to remember other things, and keep things
you admire alive as well.
"Fear of the Dark."
Fear of the dark stays with me, but not the shame.
And the worry that my story won't reach the light where
other stories wait and be understood no longer
seems a weakness I should overcome.
So what if it does to others?
To the few who require only themselves
to fill their theaters.
For them, it's a mystery why even
a Hamlet, no lover of the world, is anxious, dying for the world
to get the facts right
and makes Horatio promise to retell the play;
why even the dead in hell cry out
to Dante to carry their stories back,
why Dante, banished from Florence, promises.
No need for anyone who doesn't ask to be heard,
to hear the dead of Sodom crying for an audience.
Though it's likely some good men died in that fire, fathers
to widows and orphans, friends to the poor.
After the ashes settled, the scribes
blackened the name of the charred walls
to keep God's name pure.
It won't be easy to say enough, to get those ghosts to rest
in the dark as Troy rests, its ashes
content with Homer's account of its long war and fiery fall.
Beautiful Troy, city beloved of Zeus,
whose altars day and night smoked with offerings.
Could you lower--