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A friend, a fine young poet--

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that's how I got to
know him-- but a friend

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named Bruce Cohen asked
me to read a poem.

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It's sort of a difficult poem,
but I think I'll try it anyway.

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It's a very talky kind
of meditative poem

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with very little imagery in it.

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So you just have to allow it to
unwind, I guess, and follow it.

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It's called "Exile."

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And what the poem
is involved with

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is something that I think
almost everyone goes through,

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and that is the times
when we need to withdraw

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from the world in some way.

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We find ourselves distant
from almost everything.

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And it's a psychic
need, one that often

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confuses other people, I think.

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And I know it confuses me when
I go through it, because I

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can't do for other people
what they want of me.

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But a necessary one.

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"Exile."

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And there's an epigraph to it
from Richard Howard's writing,

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of all things, and you
can understand this.

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"The exile that belongs to
oneself, the interior exile."

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"We must have some
statement from it,

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for now we are keeping
smaller ones, circumspect,

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as when a man in the
midst of self-argument

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turns bitterly aside.

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The countenance lost in
itself will languish a while,

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as if memory were a buoyancy
stunned, and then sank.

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He begins a descent,
as into experience--

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his inner space, or solitude.

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Nothing so private as
this resting place.

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From it the heart
rises, a red wet planet

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contracting in space as if in
pain or opposition to itself.

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Meanwhile we, in a weak external
light, infer second-thought;

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or if unsure we assume
his sudden distancing

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complementary to our own.

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Thus friendship like the
moon releases its pull

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and we slide back
into our own lives.

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Wrongly inspired by the
indifference we assume,

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is it possible our
lives, sustained

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at last only by
deep concentration

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and by the conversations we
fear might be running down,

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can be understood?

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Formerly we noticed experience.

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It did not accurately repeat,
but our latest responses

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are now generalized.

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Eventually we choose
exile and self-descent.

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If that inner
universe, objective

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and in distant accord, affords
some patience sometimes

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we see a man emerge,
wholly himself.

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Or ourselves choose love,
a kind of concealment

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so private we can hardly speak."

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