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Bill Kushner reading Quack

Last Saturday, September 4, when the traffic got too noisy at Saint Mark’s, Bill and I walked a few blocks across 14th Street to Stuyvesant Park, on the west side of Second Avenue, sat down on a bench where I continued to video him reading some of his poems. Quack, a favorite of mine, is one of them.


Quack

It’s only frustrating because we know what
It should be & it’s not. I went to a shrink
Once & he said maybe you’re better off not seeing
Beyond your nose. Maybe you’re better off kid
Digging your ditches writing your poems going home
For what are poems but these disturbances of silence
These disturbing glimpses of other forms of lives

As for instance, a duck has to make a connection
For whatever reason, with another duck. So what’s
The duck do? Quack. He goes Quack my name is
Donald & I’m lonely. Quack my name is Donald &
I’m going crazy. & beyond my lake’s the valley
& I Donald I see the mountains & the spacious skies
And beyond that this sexy silence. Quack I kiss you, silence.

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