I want now to do something that's
gotten to be fairly traditional with me.
And that is read a poem.
I usually read a poem either to, or for, or about my wife.
And I have a lot of them to choose from.
I call them left handed love poems, because it is not
fashionable to write love poems to your wife
after you've been married 20 years.
This one goes back a little ways.
It's so it's kind of a longish poem.
It's called "The 14th Anniversary."
And since we've been married about 22 years,
you can figure out how far back it goes.
It is not an occasional poem.
It was not written necessarily for the occasion
of our 14th wedding anniversary.
I wrote the poem, and then found the occasion to suit it.
It has an epigraph.
From the Bible, as many of my epigraphs are.
And that epigraph says, "And Jacob served seven years
for Rachel.
And they seemed unto him but a few days for the love
he had to her."
Genesis 29:20.
It may seem strange that that seven year
thing occurs on a poem about the 14th anniversary.
But if you know the story, you know
that Jacob didn't get Rachel after seven years.
He was tricked.
And his father-in-law gave him Leah, her sister.
And he had to serve another seven years for Rachel.
So by the time he got Rachel, he had served 14 years.
That's the significance of the epigraph.
"The 14th Anniversary."
"In winter, when each day is harvested,
we come out of the darkness into the light of a fire built
from what is left over.
With our decisions postponed and our shadows no longer
wearing their daytime shoes.
It is as if we have something to say to the fire.
But we keep forgetting.
Later, when you are asleep, I walk
through these rooms adjusting my mask to the silence.
The fire is dying.
And outside the moon is a knock waiting with no door.
We came out of childhood into a room with all its vases
waiting for flowers, into a luxury of absent flowers.
And the light was different.
How easily the moon insinuates herself among the clouds.
How shyly she undresses.
And how quickly she reclines.
With my hands reaching to lock the door, which was opening,
in the moment it was opening, I noticed the simplicities
I had removed from my pockets and left on a table
by the wrong bed for everyone to see.
These things have never been resolved.
Will never be resolved.
Do not believe what they say about me.
It is true, but it is not the truth.
The truth is hidden in the brain of a green bird who cannot
sing.
The truth is one seed of a pomegranate
hidden among thousands of pomegranates.
The truth is on the moon's white lips
as she sinks into the sea, strange, silent lady.
Worshipped by men who lie in the mud beneath her slender foot.
Finding they cannot walk on water, some men sink,
while others go into the desert and never return.
The sea is willing.
The sea accepts everything.
But those who walk in the desert travel in circles,
and never arrive at the same place.
With Dawn close behind them, trailing frail light
as if it were hair.
Walking in the desert I have begun
to see into my body's rivers.
Whose banks are ivory and pearl, with bridges of muscles
stretching above them.
Pulsing in time to the music of the nerves.
Inside the bones, the light is failing.
But I see small things crawling over the floor
on urgent business.
Like beetles on strings.
I see into my sex.
And it is not a jewel.
It is a small fire tended by old men who are dying.
A small fire in a great dark house
where the wind comes through the walls, and a book
turns its pages carefully so as not to miss anything.
I read in the book.
But all the glory of the kings I Have not known,
and all the beauty of the queens,
will die when that fire dies.
Then I take my tongue to your body.
Letting it wander blind over your ribs
as if each were one string of a harp, leaving no string
untouched.
We reach our hands deep into one another.
And if they come up at all, they come up full of poetry.
The moon.
A few stars.
And a silence rinsed in blood.
Who dares speak against that silence, let him speak.
I have loved you honestly with all my crooked heart.
As darkness comes to water, and in passion with the storm.
Of all the nothings I have ever said, one word remains.
I wear it as a wafer on my tongue.
It is your name.
Bind up the sagging breasts of morning, oh, my darling.
Let the light in.
Your hair is more beautiful than dawn.
We have arrived, years later, at the starting place.
Now we shall begin again.
[APPLAUSE]