Thank you all so much for coming and staying and everything.
I'm disappointed, too, but I'm really excited to be here.
It's great.
I brought this, which I'm tempted
to read from the entire time, but I'm not going to.
I think I do want to read a poem for Robert Creeley, though--
well, not for him, by him--
first and then one for him because I just
can't think of a poet that has influenced or inspired me more
as you say about this fair and utterly important verse
that he's written as I'm sure you all know already.
So I'm going to read a poem, "The Rain"
by Creeley, that I've just always loved so much.
So "The Rain."
"All night, the sound had come back again,
and again falls this quiet, persistent rain.
What am I to myself that must be remembered,
insisted upon so often?
Is it that never the ease, even the hardness, of rain falling
will have for me something other than this, something not so
insistent.
Am I to be locked in this final uneasiness?
Love, if you love me, lie next to me.
Be for me like rain, the getting out
of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-lust
of intentional indifference.
Be wet with a decent happiness."
I love that poem.