Our town is haunted by many good deeds that
reappear like a country cousin or a truth
when language falters these days trying to lie.
Because Aunt Mabel an old lady gone now
would accost even strangers to give white flowers away quick
as a strike.
It's deeds like this have weakened
me shaken by intermittent trust, stricken with friendliness.
Our Senator talked like war and Aunt Mabel said, he's
a brilliant man but we didn't elect him that much.
[LAUGHTER]
Everyone's resolve weakens toward evening
or in a flash when a face melts, a stranger's even.
Reminded for an instant between menace and fear.
There are Aunt Mabels all over the world,
or their graves in the rain.
Now, I wanted to try to make a point about what
happens in a grandiose way I see an art
or a small way what I'm trying to do.
Critics, teachers, all of us ascribe ideas and art
accomplishments to various irrelevant impressive sources.
We speak about the great person who
must have produced the book or speech or policy.
We're impressed by emphasis, a good voice, confidence,
et cetera.
But the essential element in accomplishment, the arts
seems to me is a simple and unassertive
as one of these little balances that weighs eggs.
Possibilities roll across the attention and one
goes one way one another.
If that balance is off nothing else can redeem the process.
Moreover, results grow from the process itself.
Language, ideas, the tangle and richness of images.
These when in operation bring about new combinations.
It is the action that brings the new creative product.
We can't stand back and describe accomplishment
to anything not deriving from the action.
Writing for instance, creates literature,
dismal as this idea is.
So the involvement of a person in the experiments
and other processes of science makes a scientist
and his action with the materials that
results in creative work there.
People are afraid to believe that their most
precious accomplishments come from experience
and that experiences maybe can judge and establish
laws, religions, philosophies, arts, or so I would say.