WEBVTT

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This book, My Alexandria, does
not have a title poem, per se,

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but I want to read
you the poem in which

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the title phrase arises.

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It's a love poem to
the city of Boston

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and, by extension, I think,
to cities in general.

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It refers to several
different artists.

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One of them is the American
impressionist painter,

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Maurice Prendergast, who
did extraordinary monotypes

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of the Public Garden in Boston.

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And these pictures look at first
like drips and drabs of paint.

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And as you look at them, they
resolve into images of people

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enjoying themselves in the
park on summer afternoons.

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Very beautiful.

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The poem also refers to
the great Greek poet,

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Constantine Cavafy, the patron
saint of memory and longing.

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Cavafy's city was
Alexandria, in northern Asia,

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and he saw that city as a kind
of a vast repository of memory

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and desire.

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He was an extraordinary
character.

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E. M. Forster once described him
as "a short Greek man in a straw

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hat standing at a slight angle
to the rest of the universe."

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He didn't care if his
mother knew he was gay,

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but he didn't want her
to know he was a poet.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It's really quite remarkable.

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And there's a quotation from one
of his poems in Edmund Keeley

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and Philip Sherrard's
translation in this poem.

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And finally, Rodgers and Hart
get in here a little bit, too.

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Poem's called "Chanteuse."

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"Prendergast painted
the Public Garden.

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Remembered, even at
a little distance,

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the city takes on
his ravishing tones.

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Jots of color resolve,
massed parasols

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above a glimmering
pond, the transit

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of almost translucent swans.

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Brilliant bits.

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Jewels?

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Slices of sugared fruit?

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Bloom into a clutch of
skirts on the bridge

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above the summer boaters.

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His city's essence, all the
hues of chintzes or makeup

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or Italian ices, all the
sheen artifice is capable of,

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our city's lavish paint box.

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Name the colors.

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Light turning to rose, a
suspended glow, late afternoons

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in the air above the avenues.

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As if the houses themselves
were remembering,

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their brick-tinted memory
a warm haze above the taxis

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and the homebound cars.

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Almost the color of the glow,
evenings, at the end of April,

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when one lamppost positioned
exactly right on Marlborough

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Street would shine to
the unfurled petals

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of a blossoming
magnolia, marbling

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a corner mailbox, an iron
gate, a tract of sidewalk.

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Light, stained by the skin of
flowers, the shadows of bloom.

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I loved that city.

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The two of us,
traversing that light.

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Name the colors, the frothing
pink evidence of tulips beheaded

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in the garden, patinated
rainstreaked green

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of Dover Station's
backstreet pagoda rusting

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over the moon windows
of the Premier Diner,

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the surplus clothing
store of Harry the Greek--

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the Geek, everyone called
him-- his windows painted over

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with the prices of
socks and trousers.

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What was our city
but wonderful detail?

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A scaffolding's wrought iron
tiara, the evening's violent

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smolder over the avenue's
noise and happy taxis.

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Lit windows, possible futures
with their parchment glow,

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intimate interiors.

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And then the brilliant red
snow of firecracker wrappings,

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Chinese New Year's scatter
of bright applause, hammered

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copper carp rising in a tank.

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Bean cakes in the baker's
window glazed in sugar water.

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A tangle of crated squid.

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Flares, sparks shaking
the avenue awake,

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the tumbling, fiery
bolts of blazing silk.

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Name the color, the
one you've been saving.

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Memories, glimmering,
spotlight and sequin.

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Once, upstairs, in
a nearly empty room

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over a crowded bar, a
beautiful Black drag queen

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perched on the
edge of the piano.

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Under a blue spot, her legs
crossed in front of her

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so that the straps of
her sparkling ankle shoes

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glimmered, sang only to us.

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The song was Rodgers and Hart.

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'My romance doesn't have to have
a moon in the sky,' and she was

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perfect.

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The piano's slow unfolding,
her smoke-burnished, entirely

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believable voice, the
sequins on her silver bolero

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shimmering ice blue.

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Cavafy ends a poem of
regret and desire--

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he had no other theme than
memory's erotics, his ashen

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atmosphere--

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by going out onto a balcony.

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'To change my thoughts at least,
by seeing something of this city

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I love, a little movement
in the streets, the shops.'

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That was all it
took to console him,

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some token of Alexandria's
anarchic life.

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How did it go on
without him, the city

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he'd transformed into feeling?

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Hadn't he made it
entirely into himself?

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High windy blue, I wrote, in
one of those old notebooks one

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never really reads again,
burning over the balconies.

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Whose city was it?

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Prendergast's?

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Cavafy's?

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Ours?

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The rapt singer who caught us
in the glory of her artifice?

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One Christmas, when the day
broke every record for warmth,

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we pried open our long-shut
windows above Beacon Street,

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and the wind pouring into
that high-ceilinged room

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swept every flake of
paper snow from the tree.

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We were awash in a
studio-sized blizzard.

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Snow on your sleeves
and hair, and anything

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that divided us then was bridged
by the sudden graceful shock

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of being inside
the warmest storm.

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That is how I would describe
her voice, her lyric, that

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becomes, now, my city.

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Torch, invitation,
accomplishment.

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'My romance doesn't need a
blue lagoon standing by.'

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As she invented herself, memory
revises and restores her,

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and the moment she sang.

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I think we were perfected
when we became her audience,

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and maybe from
that moment on, it

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didn't matter so much exactly
what would become of us.

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I would say, she was memory.

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And we were restored
by the radiance

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of her illusion, her
consummate attention to detail.

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Name the colors, her song,
my Alexandria, my romance,

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my magnolia,
distilling lamp light,

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my backlit glory of the wig
shops, my haze and glow,

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my torch, my skyrocket,
my city, my false,

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my splendid chanteuse."

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thanks.

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