From Herring Cove.
I gave myself to art, which I regret.
I should have given myself to trees or to whales or to soil.
Perhaps I should have pledged my troth to an ennobled horse
toiling with its hay, lifting its dung reverently on a fork.
The problem with art is artists.
[LAUGHTER]
And by artists, I mean poets.
[LAUGHTER]
My second night in New York, aged 21,
I met Allen Ginsberg at a party.
He shook my hand, pulled me in close,
brought his other arm around my back,
and wedged a paw down my pants in the rear.
I kept staring at his tangled beard,
squirmed and laughed like a fool with a little fear.
A finger pressed rough into my bung,
there at the reception in front of everyone.
Did you know Ezra Pound sent his only daughter
to go live with German peasants in the Alps?
There she used her one wooden spoon
to slurp liver dumpling soup from a communal bowl
while her father swanned around Venice in a cape.
Make it new, he threatened.
And so we do.
Pound's grandson lives alone in a castle.
He gave his life to castle upkeep and to a herd of goats,
sweet lizard-eyed creatures browsing on the slopes.
The rest of us are dopes.
[LAUGHTER]