WEBVTT

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I'll make this the last
poem of the evening.

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It's also the last
poem in The Want Bone.

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I'll say in preface to this that
I grew up in a small resort town

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on the Jersey Shore,
where my father had

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been a famous local athlete.

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My father and mother both went
to the same high school, so

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did my brother and sister, my
cousins, my aunts and uncles.

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I had the same homeroom teacher
as my dad, it's really true.

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Miss Scott always got
that part of the alphabet.

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And my grandfather had a
well-known bar, The Broadway

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Tavern in the town.

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When you grow up in such a
place, this idea of possession

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by the past, possession
by the dead in effect

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is easy to have because
it's loaded with stories.

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And the stories are so
ubiquitous that in a way

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you're not sure
if it's your story

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or your father's
or did it happen

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to him or somebody he knew.

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The stories were all
just mixed together,

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these were their stories.

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And you almost don't attach
them to a particular person

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or a provenance.

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And there there's a part of
my town called Pleasure Bay.

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So this will be the last
poem of the evening.

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"At Pleasure Bay."

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"In the willows along the
river at Pleasure Bay,

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a catbird singing never
the same phrase twice.

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Here under the pines a
little off the road in 1927,

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the chief of police and Mrs.
W killed themselves together

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sitting in a roadster.

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Ancient unshaken pilings
and underwater chunks

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of still-mortared brick in
shapes like bits of puzzle

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strew the bottom
where the landing was

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for prices, hotel, and theater.

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And here's where boats blew
two blasts for the keeper

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to shunt the iron swing bridge.

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He leaned on the
gears like a skipper

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in the hut that
housed the works,

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and the bridge moaned and
turned on its middle peer

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to let them through.

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In the middle of the
summer, two or three cars

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might wait for the iron truss
work winching a side with maybe

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a child to notice a name on
the stern in black and gold

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on white.

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Send Piper, Patsy Ann,
do not disturb the idler.

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If the boat was running
whiskey, the bridge

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clanged shut behind it as it
passed and opened up again

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for the Coast Guard
cutter slowly as a Sundial

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and always jammed halfway.

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The roadbed hole that opened
like a switch, the river

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pulling and coursing
between the piers, never

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the same phrase twice.

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The catbird filling the
humid August evening

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near the inlet with borrowed
music that he melds and changes.

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Dragonflies and
sand flies, frogs

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in the rushes, two
bodies not moving

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in the open car among the
pines, a sliver of starry.

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The tenor at Price's
hotel in clown costume

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unfurls the sorrow gathered in
ruffles at his throat and cuffs,

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high quivers that
hold like splashes

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of light on the dark
water, the arias

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closing phrases
changed and fading.

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And after a gap of quiet,
cheers and applause

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audible in the houses across
the river, some in the audience

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weeping as if they had
melted inside the music.

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Never the same.

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In Berlin, the
daughter of an English

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lord in love with Adolf
Hitler whom she has met.

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She is taking possession
of the apartment

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of a couple, elderly,
well-off Jews.

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They survived the war to
settle here in the bay.

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The old lady teaches
piano, but the whole world

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swivels and gapes at their feet
as the girl and a high up Nazi

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examine the furniture,
the glass, the pictures,

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the elegant story
that was theirs

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and now is a part of hers.

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A few months later, the
English enter the war,

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and she shoots
herself in a park.

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An adult, upper
class girl, her life

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that passes into
the lives of others

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or into a place,
the taking of lives.

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The chief and Mrs. W took
theirs to stay together

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as local ghosts.

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Last flurries of kisses,
the revolver's barrel,

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shivers of a story that a child
might hear and half remember,

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voices in the rushes, the
singing in the willows.

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From across the river,
faint quivers of music,

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the same phrase twice and
again ranging and building.

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Over the high new bridge,
the flashing of traffic

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homeward from the racetrack,
with one boat chugging

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under the arches outward
unnoticed through Pleasure Bay

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to the open sea.

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Here's where the
people stood to watch

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the theater burn on the water.

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All that night,
the fire boats kept

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playing their spouts of
water into the blaze.

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In the morning, smoking
pilasters and beams.

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Black smell of char
for weeks, the ruin

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already soaking
back into the river.

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After you die, you hover near
the ceiling above your body

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and watch the mourners a while.

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A few days more, you
float above the heads

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of the ones you knew and
watch them through a twilight.

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As it grows darker, you
wander off and find your way

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to the river and wade across.

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On the other side, night air
willows the smell of the river,

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and the mass of sleeping
bodies all along the bank,

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a kind of singing from
among the rushes calling you

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further forward in the dark.

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You lie down and
embrace one body.

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The limbs, heavy with sleep,
reach eagerly up around you

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and you make love until your
soul brims up and burns free out

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of you and shifts and spills
down over into that other body.

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And you forget the life
you had and begin again

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on the same crossing,
maybe as a child who

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passes through the same place
but never the same way twice.

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Here in the daylight, the
catbird and the willows,

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the new cafe with a terrace and
a landing, frogs and the cat

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tails where the
swing bridge was.

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Here's where you might have
slipped across the water when

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you were only a presence
at Pleasure Bay."

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[CLAPS]

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Thank you.

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Thanks a lot.

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Thank you.

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[CLAPS]

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