Now I want to do a trip to Mexico.
I'm just going to do two more pieces,
and then I'll give you your time back.
You've been very patient.
The first one is just a poem called "Mexico,"
and it's just to sort of get you into Mexico.
And then the second one I will read,
it has to do with the buses.
And the second one is from the new book, The Bus to Veracruz.
It's the title piece.
This is called "Mexico."
Once each year after a warm day in April,
when darkness comes to the desert
uninvited but planning to spend the night,
something hits me like a shovel.
And I am stunned into believing anything is possible.
There is no overture to frenzy.
I simply look up, and see Scorpio.
Most dangerous of friends, with the last two
stars in his tail blinking like lights at the railroad
crossing.
While in one claw, he holds the top of a mountain in Mexico.
And suddenly I know, everything I need
is waiting for me south of here, in another country,
and I have been walking through empty rooms
and talking to furniture.
Then I say to myself, why should I stay home and listen to Bach?
Such precision could have happened to anyone,
to an infinite number of monkeys with harpsichords.
And next morning I start south, with my last chances flapping
their wings, while birds of passage stream over me
in the opposite direction.
I never find what I'm looking for.
And each time I return older, with my ugliness intact.
But with the knowledge that if it isn't there,
in the darkness and the Scorpio, it isn't anywhere.
[APPLAUSE]