One more poem from old work.
When I got a job in Athens, Ohio,
which is down near West Virginia, near coal
mining country.
Very, very beautiful country.
About four or five years ago, a man,
who was to become a friend, who was a writer there,
by the name of Stan Plumley, rented us a house.
And when we arrived there, we didn't know what to expect.
And discovered that the house was a beautiful, quaint log
cabin situated out in the country on a dirt road.
With two big hills beside it, a willow
tree, and woods all around it, and so on.
And plumbing also.
[LAUGHS]
It was a fantastic place to live,
but because I'd grown up in the suburbs, and lived in the city,
and so on, I only had this strange romantic vision
of nature.
I didn't know what to do with it while I was there.
A lot of times I'd notice it would
be when I went out to piss in the backyard,
because it was more fun than in the house.
And I'd stand there with nothing to do.
And look around and say, I live here.
[LAUGHTER]
I live here.
One of the hills beside the house,
it had a huge, huge stone in the top of it.
That had been used by the Indians
to make signal fires when they saw barges going down the Ohio
River.
Which was very close to it.
The poem is about a real experience.
But it's an experience that, at least, the heart of the poem
is an experience that really only took about two seconds.
And I think it's the experience is concerned with the desire
to just to set out away from one's life.
In a physical way.
To just walk away from it forever.
In Autumn.
At day's light, I dressed my cold body and went out.
Calling the dogs, I climbed the west hill through cut wood,
down to the road for hauling.
Done, there was a kind of exaltation
that wanted to go on.
I made my way up through briars and vines
to a great stone that rises at the hills brow.
Large enough to stand on.
The river below was a thick, dark line.
My house was quaint.
I sat, not thoughtful, lost in the body a while.
Then came down the back way, winding through stands
of cedar and pine.
I can tell you where I live.
My grief is that I bear no grief.
And so I bear myself.
I know I live apart, but have had
long evenings of conversation.
The faces of which betrayed no separation
from a place or time.
Now, in the middle of my life, a woman of delicate bearing
gives me her hand.
And friends are so enclosed within my reasoning,
I am occasionally them.
When I had finally stood high above the house, land,
my life's slow dream.
For a moment, I was required to turn
to those deep rows of cedar, and would have
gone on walking endlessly in.
I understand by the body's knowledge,
I will not begin again.
But it was October.
Leaves in the yellow light were altered and familiar.
And we who have changed, and have no hope of change,
must now love the passage of time.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]