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I'll read one or two
other poems from this book

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and then go to the new book.

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And this one is kind
of continuing the mood.

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It's a little more pissed off.

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I'm sure that everybody in
here knows someone who's--

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this is analogy for
someone who's not dead,

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who's just blowing their life.

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And I think we all
probably qualify.

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I don't think it's probably
possible to really completely

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do otherwise.

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But this is somebody who is
sort of actively doing so

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and the grief in it comes to
me both from contemplating

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this person I love's life and
also thinking about Mandelstam,

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who's very present in this poem.

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And many other poets
oppressed and therefore

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destroying themselves.

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But also the people
in Sierra Leone

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this week whose hands cut off.

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It's titled "In The Pasture."

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"What am I supposed to put now
into the sea of fulfillment.

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The broken record of
swaying platitudes.

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I press out hard along the
hurt, the campaign road.

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I press my thoughts,
my tiny informers.

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The Earth curves more than
I had thought at first.

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My mind, my thoughts
in uniforms.

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I press them out like
little hieroglyphs

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onto the mudslide where the
clods and lips are moving now.

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Who will you be?

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What will you say
when it says, repeat

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after me and you can't
hear it for the din

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the black soil makes.

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You come with your ploughshare
there in your mouth.

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It is sharp.

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It works for free,
which sharpens it.

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It cuts into any distance
freely thinking how good to die.

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Half out of their mind the
words run fast and hard

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over the muddy fields,
seeking out boundaries,

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splendid declivities.

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Who will you be when
it comes your turn?

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When I look up, I see
the body of my friend

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climb up over the hilly
rise and re-descend.

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There is an other side,
my mind knows this.

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I see my friend climb down,
straight down into the open

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where there once was pasture.

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I see the sunlight
beat him down.

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I see how hard it beats
with its clean sticks.

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I see him going in--

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it's down of course--

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under such loving into the
mound it has prepared for him,

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this golden freedom with
its filamentary sticks.

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Later at night, the
fires on the horizon line

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make clear, splendidly clear,
who we must be, and who

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(I sleep so badly now) they are.

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You have to live,
something keeps

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whispering by day, in sun, under
its army's yellowest of boots.

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And you, it is so
prominent the way

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you walk over this
soil, your soil.

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Your mind held up there
in its fiery cavity

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even the day before
yesterday still sparkling

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like oxygen in the air.

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How much room you carry
about you over this field--

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I'm sorry-- how
much room you carry

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about in you over this field.

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And tell me, did you volunteer?

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Are you the last free man alive?

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Are you so full of
life, billowing dresses

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on the lines, blousy hypotheses
the butterflies can make over

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their field.

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Can you pick your way among the
among, and the illustration of,

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and the once still
architecture of the grandeur

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of the sensible.

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The obvious.

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The inevitable.

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The true.

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The chestnut trees.

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The clean white napkins
folded under there.

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The stars in the day sky.

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The petticoat of morning mist
and the great coat of frost.

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What is it my friend will
have to find, breaking

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down and breaking down.

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The Earth curves more
than we had dreamed.

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The slope cannot be staved
against rain waters.

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The day before,
the syllable that

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grows its root into
some tiny sleeping God

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and makes that great
sleep shudder back awake.

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The last slaves, when
will they be alive?

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The space in the heart, when
will it be planted shut,

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tamped down, choked off
with root, with growth.

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That final
thirst-less silencing.

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My friend is lying in the Earth.

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No, my love is in the Earth.

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He's weathering gingerly
the hurt of its down slope.

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So I can't see him
anymore from here.

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Materiality has dwindled.

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What is it, muddy God, that
has increased therefore

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according to your lore?

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The day before, the
day before yesterday

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appears spruced up
here in my cavity.

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My hole, my grandest
architecture of syllabled form

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building, clean,
numb, lidded gaze.

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A book is lying in the
dust where we last lay.

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The grass is bloody under it
but that's a whim of blood,

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you know, a tiny thirst.

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What does Paris look like now.

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The eye darkens and
the great cities kneel.

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The monster of the
mind moves easily

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among its morals, its
constant inward sucking curl.

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The day is measured
out in grams of light.

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The monster measured out
in grams of light moves

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gently over the playing field.

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Dragons of changes
and adjustments,

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mightiness of redefining
and refinement.

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I love the uniforms my
thoughts are wearing.

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The heels.

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The sleeves.

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The black where
nothing disappears.

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I love the stitching in each
breath thread hard and tight

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into each breath holding
the great coat on

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that we'd be better
looking elegant informers,

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so well dressed as to
be almost transparent.

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Tender like the pasture.

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Thick and clear like a hole
that can be jumped into.

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Oh Earth, voice,
string, gardener, lens,

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hear the hard damp in
these our syllables.

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We dare not pray.

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Hear us as the
cloth, the needle.

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The low buzz of the trees
in constant wind terrifies.

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The leader here has
cheeks shaved clean

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and can't misfire
because he is enslaved

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and as God's son is
not allowed to miss.

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Someone bites his cigarette.

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Someone bites hard
and lets himself

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go thinking how much he'd
like to measure and to draw

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this hole he's forced into.

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How much he loves the
soil they're shoving now.

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Lovers of poems, of
flowering, of all

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miss delivered messages
down his wide throat."

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