So--
[APPLAUSE]
--this next poem is among these new poems
that seem to have come with the long lens of a long life.
If you know as much history as I'd like to forget--
[LAUGHTER]
--join me now in watching on a high battlement of an unnamed
castle what happens when, as the title says,
"A Petal Hangs in the Late Winter Air."
As if a Zen poet, his sandals rough with wear
Had entered a foreign poem
One with an epic shape, battlement walls
An argument to make
A history to record
And the poet, looking up from the parchment on which
heroic sagas were unfolding
Had become transfixed by a single petal
Pink and silken on a moment's breath in the late winter air
And as he gazed,
It was as if the moment opened to a memory of ocean
Of dunes overgrown with wild roses
Pink blossoms alive with the hum of bees
Drawn by the wide open offer of pollen
And he transfixed
Dropping his pen
Forgetting the epic events he had meant
to turn into glorious rhyme
He reached out his hand
For the petal poised on the wintry air
He caught its silk in the cup of his palm
And with a single breath, he blew it away
Into the vacancy of air at the parapet's edge
And leaning over the ledge
He watched it slowly disappear
Into all that emptiness
Then, taking up the parchment that
carried the blood-soaked epic he had meant to turn into song
He tore it into the finest bits
He let the huge air take it
And turn it to a shimmer of sparks
A flurry of bright dust in the sunlight
As if history had found its true shape
[APPLAUSE]
Yeah.