WEBVTT

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I'm going to take off my John
Irving autograph model sport

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coat.

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He borrowed this for the
"Time" magazine cover.

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There are three long
poems in this book.

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By long, I mean 100 lines.

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They're each divided
into four sections.

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I'm going to read
two of them tonight.

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And I'm going to
read one of them now.

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I'll just pause
between the sections.

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"Sex" is the title of the poem.

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"Sex"

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After Earth finally
touches the sun,

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and the long explosion stops
suddenly like a heart run down,

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the world might
seem white and quiet

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to something that watches
it in the sky all night,

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so something feels small
and feels nearly human pain.

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But it won't happen again,
the long nights wasted alone,

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what's done in doorways
in the dark by the young,

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and what could
have been for some.

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Think of all the
lovers and the friends!

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And in the middle
of everything, a man

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still turns to
himself as to a wall,

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leaning completely into
a stiff, rough wall.

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Sex eased through everyone, even
when slipping into middle age

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as into a lover's skin,
and prying out again

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to find the body slumped
with flesh, muscles gone,

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and bones readied
for the turn to dust.

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Then no one minds when
one lover holds another,

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like an unloaded sack.

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But the truth enters
at the end of life.

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It enters like oxygen into
every cell and the madness

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it feeds there in some is only
a lucid metaphor for something

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long burned to
nothing, like a star.

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No one gets over his desire.

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No one hurries out of each
desire like ponderous clothes,

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one at a time, until
what's underneath is known.

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We knew genitals as
small things and we

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were ashamed they led us around,
even if the hill where we'd

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lie down was the same
hill the universe unfolded

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upon all night.

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Watching the stars when,
for once, our breathing

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seemed to blend.

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Each time, from that
sweet pressure of hands,

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or the great relief
of the mouth,

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a person can be
led out of himself.

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Isn't it lonely in the body?

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The myth says we
ooze about as spirit

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until there's a body
made to take us,

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and only flesh is
created by sex.

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That's why we enter
sex so relentlessly,

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toward the pleasure that
comes when we push down far

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enough to nudge the
spirit rising to release,

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and the pleasure is
pleasure of pure spirit,

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for a moment all together again.

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So sex returns us to
beginning, and we moan.

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It's not over yet.

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Let us know.

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I will.

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I'll go like this, OK?

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That's from a WC Fields
movie, by the way.

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Og Ogglesby walks into the
bank and he says, do this

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if you don't recognize me.

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Pure sex becomes
specific and concrete

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in a caress of breast
or slope of waist.

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It flies through
itself like light,

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it sails on nothing
like a wing, when

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someone's there to be touched,
when there's nothing wrong.

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So the actual is touched in sex,
like a breast through cloth,

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the actual rising plump and
real, the mind darting about it

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like a tongue.

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This is where I wanted to be
all along, up in the world,

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in touch with myself.

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Sex, invisible priestess of a
good God, I think without you

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I might just spin off.

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I know there's no
keeping you close,

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as you flick by underneath
a sentence on a train,

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or transform the last
thought of an old nun,

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or withdraw for
one moment alone.

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Who tells you what to
do or ties you down!

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I'd give up the rest
to suck your dark lips.

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I'd give up the rest to fix
you, exact in the universe,

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at the wildest edge, where
there's no such thing as shape.

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What a shame I am, if reaching
the right woman in a dim room,

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pure sex holds
itself apart from us

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like an angel in an afterlife,
and, with the ideas no one

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has even dreamed, it wails
its odd music for pure mind.

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After there's nothing,
after the big blow-up

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of the whole shebang, what
voice from what throat

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will tell me who I am?

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Each throat on which I would
have quietly set my lips

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will be ripped
like a cheap sleeve

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or blown apart like the
stopped-up barrel of a gun.

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What was inside them all
the time I wanted always

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to rest my mouth upon?

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I thought most
everything stuck dartlike

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in the half-dome of my
brain, and hung there

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like fake stars
in a planetarium.

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It's true that things
there changed into names,

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that even the people I
loved were a bunch of signs,

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so I felt most often alone.

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This is simply the way we
live and nothing to bemoan.

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We know it the first
time we extend an arm,

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the body reaches
so far for so long.

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We grow and love to grow,
then stop, then lie down.

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I wanted to bear inside
me this tender outcome.

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I wanted to know if
it made sex happen,

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does it show up equally
in touch and talk?

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Does it leak from the mind
as heat from the skin?

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I wanted my touching
intelligent,

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like a beautiful song.

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