Two more to go, here.
The first is called "Song."
It's also based on a painting.
And, as it happens, really, purely by chance,
it's based on the same painting that Charles Simic read a poem
about two weeks ago.
And if you were there, that's fine.
And if you weren't, I don't want to tell you
which one it was because part of the pleasure
is figuring out which painting it is.
And if you don't know the painting, I'm sorry.
[LAUGHTER]
In the poem, various characters get to speak in turn
and, in a sense, announce pretty much who they are.
And the idea for that came really from a class
that I was taking a long time ago with Kenneth Koch
involving imitation of older poetries.
And we had been reading and imitating the Miracle Plays,
where the characters will come forward one at a time and say,
I am the Virgin Mary, or I am the baby Jesus,
or I am the father Joseph, and then go about their business.
And in this poem, the characters do not all announce themselves
immediately, but I think it's rather clear who's speaking.
I won't announce who it is but simply pause between each one.
There's one unidentified or disembodied voice
that speaks very briefly toward the end.
I do need to say, I guess, that the poet gets
the first word here.
He speaks first but not, in a sense, the last word.
"Song."
"Hello, lion.
Hello, lady.
Hello, kaftan.
Hello, lute.
Hello, white mountain, sand, and jug.
Hello, nine stars.
Let's talk together a while.
Oh, lion, why does the tip of your tail
jut up like a tulip or the eternal flame?
Oh, lady asleep on the dune, why are you smiling?
Like the Madonna lady, are you dreaming of a child
who is not beside you?
Oh, dune, I am feeling troubled.
Do you understand why dark green waters
lie restless and spellbound behind you?
This is not an oasis.
Am I wrong to address you this way, dune?
Are you a dune?
Oh mountain, you are white like ice.
Are you feeling chilly?
Are you really an iceberg melting calmly and invisibly
like a good lesson?
Oh, lady, why are you sleeping on the dune?
Oh, lute with bright red rim like painted lips which
frame a wailing mouth, you disturb the opaque air
not at all.
Your lady lies sleeping.
Where is your song now, lute?
Oh, moon, looking down, erased face
in the deep blue sky, faded toward brightness
where you are.
Do you compose it?
Do you keep it safe forever?
Is it held in a slower gaze than the lion's moon-shaped eye
congealing its dull red gleam in its center?
Who made the lion, moon?
Was it you?
Did you fill the red clay vessel tucked into its corner
too with water or wine?
Oh, moon, your gaze seems different from mine.
Oh, speak to me, moon.
No, I am the lady.
I am dreaming.
The stripes of my kaftan pale near the stripes of my pillow
where my head lies.
I play my lute with six strings but pegs for nine.
I am sleeping.
My lute lies cradled in sand at my side.
It fills the spheres with music in my dream.
I see no lion in my dream.
I will dream of you now, moon, held
floating like a child's toy in icy water.
Know, lady, I see you, your strong right arm
crooked rigidly in your sleep, your left arm
under the folds of your kaftan unrendered.
Your right hand holding your staff
could hurt me if you woke up and flailed me
or thrashed in your sleep, a dream of a lion
with moon-red eye reflecting you.
Lady, I watch you in your sleep.
Know I hold the stillness of my lady's sleep.
Silent and full of water, unfiltered by dreams,
I am the jug.
I have been dipped in the ice cold lake behind the sand.
My outside is dry now.
My inside is cool and dark.
I hold no moonlight.
These same hands fashioned me.
Know these same hands plucked my strings.
I am the lute, but here you should call me oud.
The moon composed my song before I was made to voice it.
It hung in the vacant night like an unseen star.
The stars danced, spinning, trying to hear it.
These same hands woke me to play it.
Now all nine visible stars crepitate slowly
where they are.
No they vibrate here on me.
I am something but cannot say what.
Grown cold, I can barely feel light sliding along
my distant and dumb extremities.
They tell me nothing of what I am.
Tomorrow, the sun will remind me,
though it may cost me dearly.
Now moonlight seems to be trying to tell me what I have been.
I fell from the heavens.
I was the moon's sister.
She loves me still.
She washes me with light.
No she's in my grains of light.
But in me she is warmer.
I'm warmer.
I am the sand.
The moon lent me my light but did not make me.
I make a bed for the lady.
I make a pediment for the lion's immobility.
Molded and contoured into a negative shape,
I am ductile like a reliable friend,
except when I fly about frantically,
scared by the storm.
But here there is no storm, nor shall be moon.
The lady lies in sand.
The lion stands and watches her.
Oh moon, what lies behind your eye?
Are all things what they seem?
O moon, are you the dreamer of the dream?
No I am the star to the left of the moon.
As you look at me, I also seem to lend my light to the scene.
The lady lies very far from me on the sand.
No I am the star to the right and just below the moon.
Oh poet, who made you?
Poet, I do not see you.
Who made your voice?
Where is it?
Poet, where does your song hang, shining in the unseen
depth behind the night?