Yeah if you take the dust jacket off I’ve never seen a book with a poem on the cover like this. And I’m particularly fond of this poem. It had been published in an adult journal maybe ten years ago.
But I thought they wanted to include it in the book but they thought it was a little too old, so I thought that was the end of it, and yet they decided to put it on the front cover. But most people, most people aren’t going to take off the dust jacket. But that doesn’t matter to me, I mean maybe at some point they’ll see it, who knows?
Yeah you can tell that it’s for an older age group, but it’s called Instructions Found After the Flood.
Let the red fox quicken the seasons. Let the zebra buck and clatter in the cage of his skin. Leave the glass lagoons to the blue heron whose eye is steady. Let jungles whisper jaguar whose paw is velvet. Let the worm explore the globe, his apple.
Let the spider embroider the air. Let tongue and belly be called reptile. Let the bat acrobats tumble till down. Let the lowly slug parole the foot paths of Asia Minor. Let seagulls snow down the harbors of the east. Let the panther surround the quiet panic she has made. Let the hippo squat and the antelope lope. Let the rhino bully the bush.
Let the turtle be. Let the snail nod in the hush of her mushroom room. Leave the deserts to the one and two humped emperors. And let the black kite brown the morning mustard fields. Leave afternoons for music, the bees drilling in the lindens. Let owls be your night lanterns, geese your compass, skunks your caution.
Well anyway, a poem that is likely not to be seen by too many people, but that’s all right, that’s all right, I was pleased to have it there.
Yeah it’s good too if you have a certain knack for reading. You know, I’m not saying I’m Dylan Thomas or anybody like that, but that poem I think contains emotions that ought to come out in spoken English. And so I try to read that with a great deal of emotion. And some people are good readers, and some people aren’t, they just — you know you can’t fault them for it, they may be wonderful poets but they can’t read their poems very well, so, thank you.
