And here's a poem which, I don't really
know why I decided to read it.
The moon figures in at the end.
It's some sort of justification for existence.
It's called the "Heaven of the Poor."
Sometimes, we all get down in the dumps,
and we need some sort of justification
for our own existence.
It is about certain kinds of people.
They don't have to be poets.
It can be anything.
But good people.
And it has, again, a biblical epigraph.
The biblical epigraph is, blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 5:3.
Much ink has been spilled over those two lines, what
that means, the poor in spirit.
I don't know, really.
But I've tried to define it, I guess, in this poem.
"The Heaven of the Poor."
Through the needle's eye, we can see
them clamoring to get in, each offering to give up
what he cherishes most, not knowing he has
become what he cherishes most.
We who are here had nothing to give up except our vanity.
And that was not required.
How can a weak man give up his strength
or an ugly woman her beauty?
In the Heaven of the poor, the past keeps going away,
but is never quite gone.
I was young.
I was so young, I thought I would get over it.
And all I have learned is that we never get over anything.
Some of us were born to look for a child who has no legs
and wants only to dance.
And when we find that child, we take it
in our arms and dance and dance.
Among bricklayers and lawyers and even poets,
there are good people who work alone
at honest and difficult professions debauched
by others.
Their reward will be the Heaven of the poor.
When they see the wormholes in the statues
and realize there are kings who need no followers
and have none, they will begin to escape from the world.
Each of them will come to a river,
and how he gets across it, if he gets across it,
will be how he learns to swim.
When he crawls out, wet and exhausted on this side,
he will look back and see the bridges he did not know he had,
burning, burning.
There are no cities in the Heaven of the poor,
no families, no friends.
We do not pray for what we want, nor do we pray for salvation.
We have already been saved, and each night our dreams
show us what we wanted and could never become.
Some of us walk on an empty beach, leaving no footprints.
And others live alone in the desert,
accepting the rain as love.
We do not call it happiness, exactly.
But we have the moon to talk to, and it always answers us.
Do you believe me about the moon?
Do you think I care whether or not you do?
I always wanted to end a poem that way.
It's called taking risks.