I want to begin by reading a sestina.
And as many of you, I'm sure, know,
a sestina is composed of six six-line stanzas,
then with a three line coda or envoi.
And the same end words are repeated
at the end of each stanza, but they're
permuted according to a particular pattern.
And what's nice about that is that they end up finally
back in the order that they started out in.
I got a letter from a friend a few years ago
about another poem that I had mailed to him.
He said, "Oh, yes, I like this poem.
It's kind of nice because it gives me the sense about poetry
that you can say anything you want
to so long as when you're all done you put the words back
where you got them."
And I think that's my sense of what I like about sestinas,
or how they work.
So "Sestina."
Then everything was said and done, yet he remained.
He continued to remember her final words.
You can keep your fucking necklace.
Sit here and listen to the ticking of the clock,
or try to drown your misery in a book.
You'll remember every single thing I've
said when I've disappeared.
Then she had closed the door and disappeared.
He counted the things that remained.
Here and there about the apartment
lay a book, each filled with thousands
of somebody else's words.
On the mantel tick the large insistent clock, beside it
she had dropped the necklace.
He winced as his glance fell on the necklace.
It was the last thing she touched before she disappeared.
Better to close his eyes and listen
to the clock, which told very clearly the long humdrum
portion of the narrative that remained,
like a story concocted of entirely predictable words
so that the reader would soon grow tired and close the book.
Sleeping, the reader would dream the unread contents
of the book.
Through its pages there flickered
a necklace of small, bright pearls
like single syllable words.
As the story continued, the drama disappeared,
only cardboard characters remained.
The words continued like the ticking of an unheard clock.
Waking, the reader heard the ticking of an actual clock.
Beside him on the bed lay the still open book.
He had no wish to read the pages that remained.
He had no need to avert his glance now from the necklace
for it had disappeared, swallowed up
by the story, an irritant around which formed a pearl of words.
It must have been he himself who was mouthing those words.
Their whisper obscured and blurred
the ticking of the clock.
The speaker of those words had disappeared,
yet phrases rustled like the pages of a book.
A book in which nobody mentioned a necklace and nobody
spoke, since no one at all remained.
What remained were only some words--
necklace, clock, book.
Now they too have disappeared.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.