Well I'm having a problem, so I can't read "Brighton Rock"
by Graham Greene," which is a new poem I like.
Read that one.
Read that one?
OK.
A Graham Greene fan, huh?
All right, we'll go through it really quick.
I like the poem.
What?
It's the poem we're fans of.
Oh, the poem, all right, all right.
We'll go through it really fast, so follow along
in your hymn books here.
[LAUGHTER]
"Brighton Rock by Graham Greene."
"Pinkie Brown must marry Rose Wilson
to keep her mouth shut about the murder which the cops don't
know wasn't no accident--
Peggy has a straight razor for slashing,
a vial of acid for throwing into, a snitch's face.
He dies in the end.
The end of the book, I mean-- where, on the last page,
Rose shuffles home from church, praying that her Pinkie has
left her pregnant.
Now this kid-- if he was ever born--
joined a skiffle group in '62 called Brighton Rockers,
didn't make it big, though, just local dances and do's.
Rose, pink, brown, all nonelemental colors,
shades of shame, melancholy, colors which,
if you get caught loving too much,
you get set up to do time--
time, that crime you didn't, couldn't commit!
Even if you were or weren't born--
and even and if your dad he died with his sneer--
unshaken his punk's pure soul, unsaved--
Every Sunday now in church Rose slices--
Every Sunday now in church Rose slices her ring-finger off,
onto the collection plate.
Once the sextons have gathered enough bodily parts
from the congregation, enough to add up to an entire being,"
You know how they do that in the Roman Catholic Church.
I'm a good Protestant, but I know what goes on in there.
[LAUGHTER] You know, bloodletting and all sorts--
The priest takes that entire being made of all the parts,
slash, cut off themselves by the congregation.
--"the priest substitutes that entire being for the one
on the cross--
they bring Him down in the name of brown and rose
and pink, sadness, and shame, His body, remade,
is yelled at and made to get a haircut, go to school,
study, to do each day like the rest of us crawling
through this igloo of hell, and laugh it up,
show pain a good time, and read Brighton Rock by Graham
Greene."
That's one of the painful--
reading that is one of the painful--