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And this is "Clamming."

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I go digging for clams
once every two or three

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years just to keep my hand in.

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I usually cut it.

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And I'm sure that
whenever I do so,

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I tell the same story of
how, at the age of four,

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I was trapped by the tide
as I clammed the sandbar.

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It's no story at all, but
I tell it and tell it.

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It serves my small
lust to be thought

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of as someone who's lived.

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Really.

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I have a war, too, to fall back
on, and some years of flying,

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as well as a high quota
of drunken parties, a wife

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and children.

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But somehow the
clamming thing gives me

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an image of me that
soothes my psyche like none

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of the louder events--

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me helpless, alone
with my sand pail

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as fate in the form of
soupy Long Island Sound

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comes stalking me.

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I have a son now at that age.

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He's spoiled.

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He's been sickly.

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He's handsome and bright,
affectionate and demanding.

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I think of tides
when I look at him.

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I'd have him alone and
seagirt, poor little boy.

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The self, what a brute it is.

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It wants, wants.

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It will not let go of its
even most fictional grandeur,

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but must grope, grope
down in the muck

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of its past for some
little squirting life

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and bring it up tenderly to
the lo and behold of death,

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that it may weep and pass on the
weeping, keep the thing going.

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Son, when you clam,
watch out for the tides

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and take care of yourself,
yet no great care,

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lest you care too much
and talk of the caring,

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and bore your best friends,
and inhibit your children,

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and sicken at last into
opera on somebody's sandbar.

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When you clam, son, clam.

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[APPLAUSE]

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