How many requests for the last poem?
This side.
I'm up for grabs.
Alison knows.
So much stuff.
I should choose that.
OK.
All right.
That's what I'll do.
Last poems are so important.
All right.
Well, I'm thinking of the last poem,
I'll read you a short poem here.
This is a poem that comes from my curiosity about the Hindu
tradition of assigning to the Godhead, God, divine
intelligence.
Both fatherly and motherly attributes.
That is in the motherly attribute
it's the divine mother.
And Heavenly Father.
And in our Judeo-Christian thing we
have this very stern, you know, patriarchal image of God.
And I've always-- I was in India some years ago
and I was very moved by how that affects
a culture, having that two faceted idea of the divine.
And this is a poem about that.
It's called "A Hymn to Her."
Like some swollen swaying samba under pressure to behave,
you are wild and without number, neither principal nor wave.
Can your dance subdue its dancers
when we dancers are the song?
Can your slow half whispered dancers
float us back where we belong?
Everything we long or ache for is within soothing reach.
It seems you surround us with your wakefulness.
You astound us in your dreams.
The guy that translates my work into Italian put--
I was in Italy in February and he put a tape in my bag
and he's a musician also and he actually put music to that.
And see if I can take it out and get a hit.
Get somebody to record it.