WEBVTT

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Well, perhaps I think it's
time for me to finish.

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So I'd like to be the last
poem in this book called

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"Last Words."

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It's a love poem.

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Spike Milligan, an
English comic writer,

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asked me if I knew
Gladstone's last words.

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And I said, "No."

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He said, "I feel better now."

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[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]

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"Last Words."

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"Splendidly, Shakespeare's
heroes, Shakespeare's heroines,

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once the spotlight's
on, enact every night,

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with such grace,
their verbose deaths.

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Then great plush curtains,
then smiling resurrection

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to applause--

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and never their good looks gone.

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The last recorded words
too of real kings,

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real queens, all
the famous dead,

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are but pithy pretenses,
quotable fictions composed

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by anonymous men decades later,
never with ready notebooks

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at the bed.

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Most do not know who
they are when they die

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or where they are,
country or town, nor which

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hand on their brow.

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Some clapped-out actor may
imagine distant clapping, bow,

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but no real queen will
sigh, "Give me my robe,

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put on my crown."

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Death scenes not life-enhancing,
death scenes not beautiful

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nor with breeding; yet
bravo Sydney Carton,

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bravo Duc de Chavost who,
euphoric beside the guillotine,

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turned down the corner of
the page he was reading.

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And how would I wish to go?

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Not as an opera--

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that would offend-- nor
like a blue-eyed cowboy shot

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and short of words, but
finger-tapping still

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our private Morse, "love
you," before the last flowers

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and flies descend."

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[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]

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