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I'm going to close
with the last poem

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in In the Badlands
of Desire, which

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turned out to be the title poem,
which I didn't know it was.

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But this is the closest thing
I have to a poem I think is

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appropriate for Groundhog
Day, or as I wrote in the book

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in the poetry cottage,
"Grounddog Day."

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A little dyslexia there.

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It's called "In the
Badlands of Desire."

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"If there is the statue
of a saint whose toes are

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worn smooth from old
women kissing, if there

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is an animal whose name is
sleep, if there is a hill whose

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bones are broken, I will
remember me in the next life.

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If there is an onion with
100 smaller and smaller faces

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of wet light, if there is a
mirror whose shoulders drift,

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the museum of shoulders, if
there is a spider like a dud

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star which catches the
empire from table leg

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to corner, if there
are communists,

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and useless lingerie, and rubies
snatched at night from jeweler's

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windows, I will be the
butcher's white paper,

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the hook raving in frost.

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If there is a tongue still
moving toward its mother

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silence, mint still breaking
its unimaginable green fist

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through old aqueducts where
the drunk meet to be lonely,

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and violet as nets, sieving
the shine of nothing,

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if there is a plaza in a town
where the stones break out

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like hives from the
plaster, and pigeons blow

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their cool oboes
of love, I will be

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the look given to a door
when it closes by itself.

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After it closes, wondering
was it some hand, some wind.

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And if it is painted blue, like
the faded grip of old hours,

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if a wolf bares its teeth
to its tail on the doorstep,

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there will be a hard
winter, a demon spring."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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