Thom Gunn, 1974 in Bolinas, reading "Jack Straw's Castle" -The Poetry Center

Full-program video with downloadable audio option at Poetry Center Digital Archive: diva.sfsu.edu/...
The Poetry Center presents Thom Gunn, on November 20, 1974, reading from his poetry in Bolinas, California. Gunn reads here the second half of "Jack Straw's Castle" (parts 9-11, entire poem on the full-program video). The full-program video features Gunn's complete reading plus readings by Joanne Kyger and Nathaniel Tarn, with introductions by Poetry Center director Kathleen Fraser. The event takes place at the Bolinas home of Margot Patterson Doss and John Doss.
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THOM GUNN
The J Car
Last year I used to ride the J CHURCH Line,
Climbing between small yards recessed with vine -
Their ordered privacy, their plots of flowers
Like blameless lives we might imagine ours.
Most trees were cut back, but some brushed the car
Before it swung round to the street once more
On which I rolled out almost to the end,
To 29th Street, calling for my friend.
He'd be there at the door, smiling but gaunt,
To set out for the German restaurant.
There, since his sight was tattered now, I would
First read the menu out. He liked the food
In which a sourness and dark richness meet
For conflict without taste of a defeat,
As in the Sauerbraten. What he ate
I hoped would help him to put on some weight,
But though the crusted pancakes might attract
They did so more as concept than in fact,
And I'd eat his dessert before we both
Rose from the neat arrangement of the cloth,
Where the connection between life and food
Had briefly seemed so obvious if so crude.
Our conversation circumspectly cheerful,
We had sat here like children good but fearful
Who think if they behave everything might
Still against likelihood come out all right.
But it would not, and we could not stay here:
Finishing up the Optimator beer
I walked him home through the suburban cool
By dimming shape of church and Catholic school,
Only a few, white, teenagers about.
After the four blocks he would be tired out.
I'd leave him to the feverish sleep ahead,
Myself to ride through darkened yards instead
Back to my health. Of course I simplify.
Of course. It tears me still that he should die
As only an apprentice to his trade,
The ultimate engagements not yet made.
His gifts had been withdrawing one by one
Even before their usefulness was done:
This optic nerve would never be relit;
The other flickered, soon to be with it.
Unready, disappointed, unachieved,
He knew he would not write the much-conceived
Much-hoped-for work now, nor yet help create
A love he might in full reciprocate.