Some days you don't believe it, that's all.
Some days it's not true.
I have a thing about America--
American's sense of professional--
you know all these--
I mean, half the time, I mean, how
we explain decisions, great governmental decisions
to ourselves, is that they know what we don't know:
that is, it's expertitis, I think we have.
No I mean doctors forget that what their patients feel
is greater than all the Latin things for it
that they've memorized.
I mean they forget sometimes it seems to me
to consult the real authorities.
And again it's expertitis and there's
a sense in what you purchase over
an education is a set of names.
It's exclusivity again too.
A set of exclusive names so that other people
can be the ones who don't know and you
can be the one who knows.
And it's absurd when it comes to the childbirth and these
obstetricians are telling these women, you know--
everybody complains about that and Roy Blount said that
studying literature at Harvard was like studying women
at the Mayo Clinic which--
I'm here to tell you that's true.
And all you need is a heart and a feel for it.
This poem is called Hard.
Suppose you have to move a mountain.
Do you call up All or Nothing Limited
with blasters in battalions to dispatch the under- and the
other- worlds to smithereens?
A moment blows what several thousand years would ease.
Time moves the planet all the time
without demolishing the delicate.
No opposition between powers.
No antipathy of East to West.
The networks go so far and fine we can't conceive them.
Intricacies of a single rock or river, rate of rainbow,
look, I can't get over it.
Let all your big bulldozing eras snore their fast Manhattans
up and down.
Let lovers of the good and quick erect their clever rocks.
The graveyard has its own downtown.
Let bookends come to be the mode and reason for the books.
And men learn only yes and no in other people's language.
Understand no code but cracked.
Perhaps their wills need execution often.
I have harder work to do.
A teardrop at a time until the whole world's stone
works soften.
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