With my poet friend Sarah Reeves, I spent all of the day listening to wonderful poets read their work: Charles Simic, Mark Wunderlich, Martin Espada, David Ferry, Louise Glück. A gourmet feast!
Among the poems that especially touched me was Mark Wunderlich's "Coyote with Mange."
Coyote with Mange
O, Unreadable One, why
have you done this to your dumb creature?
Why have you chosen to punish the coyote
rummaging for chicken bones in the dung heap,
shucked the fur from his tail
and fashioned it into a scabby cane?
Why have you denuded his face,
tufted it, so that when he turns he looks
like a slow child unhinging his face in a smile?
The coyote shambles, crow-hops, keeps his head low,
and without fur, his now visible pizzle
is a sad red protuberance,
his hind legs the backward image
of a bandy-legged grandfather, stripped.
Why have you unhoused this wretch
from his one aesthetic virture,
taken from him which kept him
from burning in the sun like a man?
Why have you pushed him from his world into mine,
stopped him there, and turned his ear
toward my warning shout?
from The Earth Prevails, Graywolf Press, 2014.
And, I will never forget Martin Espada's reading of "Alabanza", his tribute for the 43 kitchen workers at the Windows on the World restaurant at the World Trade Center, who lost their lives on 9/11:
http://www.martinespada.net/Alabanza_UNJT.html
Among the poems that especially touched me was Mark Wunderlich's "Coyote with Mange."
Coyote with Mange
O, Unreadable One, why
have you done this to your dumb creature?
Why have you chosen to punish the coyote
rummaging for chicken bones in the dung heap,
shucked the fur from his tail
and fashioned it into a scabby cane?
Why have you denuded his face,
tufted it, so that when he turns he looks
like a slow child unhinging his face in a smile?
The coyote shambles, crow-hops, keeps his head low,
and without fur, his now visible pizzle
is a sad red protuberance,
his hind legs the backward image
of a bandy-legged grandfather, stripped.
Why have you unhoused this wretch
from his one aesthetic virture,
taken from him which kept him
from burning in the sun like a man?
Why have you pushed him from his world into mine,
stopped him there, and turned his ear
toward my warning shout?
from The Earth Prevails, Graywolf Press, 2014.
And, I will never forget Martin Espada's reading of "Alabanza", his tribute for the 43 kitchen workers at the Windows on the World restaurant at the World Trade Center, who lost their lives on 9/11:
http://www.martinespada.net/Alabanza_UNJT.html