WEBVTT

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I want to read you
an unhappy poem

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because I was asked to
write a book of poems,

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I'd been asked to
publish a book of poems

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and the person I had been in
love with for 11 years had died

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and I said no.

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Then I said, well, it'd
make a nice last gift.

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So they made a
lovely little book.

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I said, the real
reason I did it was you

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have to put some of
her poems in the book

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because she'd never
published in English.

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They thought that was crazy
but they agreed to do it.

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And this is one of them.

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But the point I want to make
is I didn't want to write,

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didn't want to make
a funereal book.

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I didn't want to make
a book saying, oh,

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how much I hurt, how much I
miss her, how terrible it is,

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what bad luck.

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I cried for three and 1/2 years.

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It wasn't a small
thing for me, but I

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didn't want to write
a book saying pity me,

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pity me, pity me.

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I wanted to write about what
marriage is like and what

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the death of that marriage is
like and what's left over from

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that marriage, to celebrate
what is and what was,

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not what isn't.

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This poem, though, is in a
way maybe more sad than that.

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Michiko was Japanese,
which you have

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to know to understand
something that happens

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in the book in the poem.

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It's called Married.

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I came back from the funeral and
crawled around the apartment,

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crying hard, searching
for my wife's hair.

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For two months I got them from
the drain, the vacuum cleaner,

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under the refrigerator, and
off the clothes in the closet.

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But after other
Japanese women came,

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there was no way to be sure
which were hers, and I stopped.

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A year later, repotting
Michiko's avocado,

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I find this long, black
hair tangled in the dirt.