WEBVTT

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And this last poem,
"What He Thought."

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We're all by ourselves let me
tell you, and then the Italians

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they had assembled these newsmen
and flowers and photographers

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and all this stuff.

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And then big questions
started coming

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at us, universal questions,
philosophical questions.

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Like, what does the American
phrase flat drink mean.

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It turned out that they
were all translating

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contemporary American novels,
so their main interest

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was the little phrases
that they didn't know.

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So they would ask us these
questions like cheap date.

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What does cheap
date mean they asked

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us whereupon we felt
very proud of ourselves.

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I mean, we're in Italy,
and they are asking us

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what cheap date means.

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And so we start to get really--

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start to give big grand
answers, and the more

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we talk the more we
realize that among us,

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the Americans, there was quite
a difference of definition

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between the women and the men.

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That the women tended to see
it as a kind of kindness done

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by women that you didn't
order much or something,

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but the emphasis was a
little more toward that side.

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Whereas for the men
it had more to do

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with the distance
from the dining room

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to the hotel or something.

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I don't know.

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I mean, it was like a whole
different set of terms.

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So then we suddenly
realized it was more

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about another kind
of translation.

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We really needed
translators in the home.

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It wasn't abroad
that was our trouble.

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I didn't speak.

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And I mean, there were a lot of
linguistic hilarities having--

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I mean, if more Americans
knew the languages

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of the lands they went to
these things wouldn't happen.

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But like I was telling the
people today in Phoenix

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that Bob Hatfield, who was one
of the people on that trip,

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was really good at designing
a sentence in English

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for simultaneous translation.

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He knew in advance
there was going

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to be a simultaneous
translator there,

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so he designed the phrases of
his sentence in such a way.

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I mean, this is all
extemporaneous it seems such

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that the first phrase would
be admirable and memorable,

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and the guy could say
it and he could pause.

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I mean I could never pause.

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I would forget the rest
of my life if I paused.

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But he would pause,
the guy would say it,

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then the second
phrase would come.

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It would seem even
more admirable.

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It would build on
the first phrase.

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The guy would translate it, and
then the third and culminating

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phrase would come.

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And people would gasp, and
it would be the right phrase

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to have at the end
of the sentence.

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And everything
would be memorable,

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and I would have these, sort
of, limp phrases dangling off

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at the end.

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Because I had to stop.

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The guy started talking
when I was talking.

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And then I realized they were
asking questions of the men.

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They started to ask
the big questions,

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but they asked them all of
the men like those questions

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about history and the
future and the state

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of art and all those things.

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And the men answered.

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They were handily
disposing of the questions,

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and then the journalist
turned to me and he said

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and what do you
think of feminism.

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Yeah.

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And I said and I thought,
OK, now I can do this the way

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I have to.

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Because of the
extraordinary sacrifices

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made by decades of women
before me who fought,

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who gave their lifeblood, who
gave up everything in order

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that it might be
true, I don't have

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to worry too much
about feminism.

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And then I heard the
guy the translator say--

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and I knew enough
Italian to know

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that he was saying she
doesn't care about feminism.

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Well, I knew this was going
to go out on the wire services

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all over Italy, so
much for design.

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My advice is learn your Italian.

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"What He Thought" is dedicated
to a guy, Fabbio Doplicher,

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to whom I owe the story
of the poem entirely,

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and who deserves much credit.

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I was-- I was too much of a
coward to say this to him.

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My form of making my apologies
for underestimating him

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is to have written
the poem and put

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his name by way of dedication.

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Someday he'll know.

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"What He Thought."

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We were supposed to
do a job in Italy,

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and full of our
feeling for ourselves--

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our sense of being
poets from America--

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we went from Rome to
Fano, met the mayor,

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mulled a couple of matters over.

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How to say cheap date, they
asked us, how to say flat drink.

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Among Italian literati, we could
recognize our counterparts,

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the academic, the apologist,
the arrogant, the amorous,

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the brazen, and the glib.

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And there was one administrator,
the conservative in suit

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of regulation gray,
who, like a good tour

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guide, with measured pace
and uninflected tone,

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narrated sites and histories
the hired van hauled us past.

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Of all, he was most politic
and least poetic so it seems.

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Our last few days in
Rome, when all but three

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of the new world
birds had flown,

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I found a book of poems this
unprepossessing one had written.

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It was there in the pensione
room, a room he'd recommended,

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where it must have been
abandoned by the German visitor.

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Was there a bus of them to
whom he had inscribed and dated

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it a month before?

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I couldn't read Italian
either, so I put the book back

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into the wardrobe's dark.

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We last Americans were
due to leave tomorrow.

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For our parting
evening then, our host

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chose something in
a family restaurant,

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and there we sat and
chatted, sat and chewed,

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till sensible it was
our last big chance

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to be poetic, make our mark,

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one of us asked: what's poetry?

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Is it the fruits and
vegetables and market place

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of Campo de Fiori
or the statue there?

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Because I was the glib one, I
identified the answer instantly.

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I didn't have to think.

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The truth is both.

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It's both, I blurted out.

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But that was easy.

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That was easy to say.

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What followed taught me
something about difficulties.

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For our underestimated host
spoke out all of a sudden

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with a rising
passion, and he said

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the statue represents
Giordano Bruno brought

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to be burned in the public
square because of his offense

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against the authority,
which was to say the church.

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His crime was his belief.

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The universe does not revolve
around the human being.

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God is no fixed point
or central government,

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but rather is poured in
waves through all things.

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All things move.

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If God is not the
soul itself, he

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is the soul of the soul of the
world, such was his heresy.

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The day they brought him
forth to die they feared

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he might incite the crowd.

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The man was famous
for his eloquence.

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So his captors
placed upon his face

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an iron mask in which
he could not speak.

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That is how they burned him.

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That is how he died without
a word in front of everyone.

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And poetry-- we'd all put down
our forks by now to listen

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to the man in gray--

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he went on softly, poetry is
what he thought but did not say.

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[APPLAUSE]

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