I wonder if anybody wants to ask a question or something.
I don't plan these out, you know.
Also, if it's not pompous to say, and I am afraid of it--
I don't mean in a pompous way.
If there was somebody here who knows a poem of mine,
or even if you don't know the title,
they say in the music business, we
do requests if there's something you'd like me to read.
I'd be happy to do it.
I'm not assuming that you say-- oh, yes, Pinksy is,
but if you want to.
And also, if you'd like to chat about anything
I've read or anything like that.
"Immortal Longings."
"Immortal Longings?"
OK.
A short poem.
I suppose if you're in any business
as poetry readings can get to be,
a thing you see often that you're
privileged to see by the generation
you're in is an experience you have,
is the experience of coming back down to Earth from high up.
And this is that.
"Immortal Longings".
"Inside the silver body, slowing as it banks
through veils of cloud.
We float separately in our seats like the cells
or atoms of one creature, needs and states of a shuddering God.
Under him, a thirsty brilliance pulsing or steady.
The fixed lights of the city and the flood
of car lights coursing through the grid.
Delivery, arrival, departure, whim, entering, and entered,
touching, and touched.
Down the lit boulevards over the bridges
and the river like an arm of night--
book, cigarette, bathroom, thirst, some of us are asleep.
We tilt roaring over the glittering Zodiac
of intentions."