In keeping with the subject of body language, I'll read one or two poems to begin with that have to do with my conviction that our bodies are, among other things, haunted--and what they're haunted by, of course, is history. The shape of my body, my face, my genetic makeup is the result of thousands and thousands of years of ingenuity, rape indubitably--everybody is descendent from a rape, just as everybody is descendent from royalty if you go back far enough. And the artifacts that I associate with my body also are haunted by a tremendous past, never more haunted than when I'm unaware of it. So, if two students on the street say:
"What are you doing tonight?"
"I don't know, you going to the library?"
"I think I'll stay home."
But you can understand the conversation, the accents, the body pierce, the garments, the nature of their hair, the way they groom it, how it grows naturally. You could understand the entire universe from those bodies and what those bodies did.