WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.680 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.680 --> 00:00:04.005 align:middle line:90% So two new poems. 00:00:04.005 --> 00:00:09.770 align:middle line:90% 00:00:09.770 --> 00:00:15.423 align:middle line:90% No music, I feel really naked. 00:00:15.423 --> 00:00:17.090 align:middle line:84% Could you believe he could make that out 00:00:17.090 --> 00:00:18.560 align:middle line:90% of all that out of that guitar? 00:00:18.560 --> 00:00:22.790 align:middle line:90% 00:00:22.790 --> 00:00:24.410 align:middle line:90% I'm staying in the cottage. 00:00:24.410 --> 00:00:26.820 align:middle line:84% I walked in the cottage two days ago. 00:00:26.820 --> 00:00:29.180 align:middle line:84% And the first thing I saw on the wall of the cottage 00:00:29.180 --> 00:00:31.760 align:middle line:84% is this great, big, beautiful broadside 00:00:31.760 --> 00:00:33.490 align:middle line:90% from William Merwin, WS Merwin. 00:00:33.490 --> 00:00:36.565 align:middle line:90% 00:00:36.565 --> 00:00:38.690 align:middle line:84% I've spent the last two days in the cottage working 00:00:38.690 --> 00:00:41.270 align:middle line:84% on an article that I have to read next week in LA 00:00:41.270 --> 00:00:43.040 align:middle line:90% on William Merwin. 00:00:43.040 --> 00:00:44.150 align:middle line:90% So that's kind of cool. 00:00:44.150 --> 00:00:46.160 align:middle line:90% The ghosts are everywhere. 00:00:46.160 --> 00:00:48.560 align:middle line:90% The ghosts are everywhere. 00:00:48.560 --> 00:00:50.540 align:middle line:84% This poem is called Peril Sonnet. 00:00:50.540 --> 00:00:53.015 align:middle line:84% It starts with a phrase from Merwin. 00:00:53.015 --> 00:00:56.120 align:middle line:90% 00:00:56.120 --> 00:00:56.990 align:middle line:90% Peril Sonnet. 00:00:56.990 --> 00:01:00.360 align:middle line:90% 00:01:00.360 --> 00:01:04.800 align:middle line:84% Where do you suppose they've gone, the bees, 00:01:04.800 --> 00:01:08.010 align:middle line:84% now that you don't see them anymore? 00:01:08.010 --> 00:01:14.770 align:middle line:84% Four-winged among flowers, low sparks in the clover. 00:01:14.770 --> 00:01:18.520 align:middle line:84% Even at nightfall, are they fanning? 00:01:18.520 --> 00:01:21.130 align:middle line:84% Have they gone another place, blued 00:01:21.130 --> 00:01:25.960 align:middle line:84% with pollen, stuck to their bristles, waiting beyond us? 00:01:25.960 --> 00:01:29.920 align:middle line:84% Spring dwindle is what we call it. 00:01:29.920 --> 00:01:37.030 align:middle line:84% Collapsing neonicotinoids, high level in pneumatic corn 00:01:37.030 --> 00:01:42.760 align:middle line:84% exhaust, loss of habitat, or disappearing disease in the way 00:01:42.760 --> 00:01:45.745 align:middle line:90% of our kind, so to speak. 00:01:45.745 --> 00:01:48.320 align:middle line:90% 00:01:48.320 --> 00:01:51.680 align:middle line:84% What do you think they would call it? 00:01:51.680 --> 00:01:55.330 align:middle line:90% Language older than our ears. 00:01:55.330 --> 00:02:00.385 align:middle line:84% Were they saying it all along even at daybreak? 00:02:00.385 --> 00:02:16.910 align:middle line:90% 00:02:16.910 --> 00:02:22.850 align:middle line:84% This one is for my father who's 7 million years old. 00:02:22.850 --> 00:02:25.580 align:middle line:90% He's hanging in there. 00:02:25.580 --> 00:02:27.710 align:middle line:90% Last summer, he fell. 00:02:27.710 --> 00:02:29.840 align:middle line:84% So you know you're 89 and you fall. 00:02:29.840 --> 00:02:32.090 align:middle line:90% That's an event. 00:02:32.090 --> 00:02:34.190 align:middle line:84% I spent time back home in Missouri, 00:02:34.190 --> 00:02:39.530 align:middle line:84% going back and forth between the hospital, and the rehab place, 00:02:39.530 --> 00:02:42.200 align:middle line:90% and the old house. 00:02:42.200 --> 00:02:47.030 align:middle line:90% 00:02:47.030 --> 00:02:50.180 align:middle line:84% There's a line in a Lowell poem, my favorite Lowell poem, 00:02:50.180 --> 00:02:51.140 align:middle line:90% "Epilogue." 00:02:51.140 --> 00:02:54.020 align:middle line:84% A line says, why not say what happened? 00:02:54.020 --> 00:02:57.910 align:middle line:90% 00:02:57.910 --> 00:02:58.780 align:middle line:90% That's just hard. 00:02:58.780 --> 00:03:02.110 align:middle line:90% 00:03:02.110 --> 00:03:04.660 align:middle line:90% Why not say what happened? 00:03:04.660 --> 00:03:11.050 align:middle line:84% This terrible breaking, this blow, then slow. 00:03:11.050 --> 00:03:15.190 align:middle line:84% The dogwood strewn like tissue along the flat road. 00:03:15.190 --> 00:03:16.540 align:middle line:90% No. 00:03:16.540 --> 00:03:20.140 align:middle line:84% The busy pollinators, the breeze in the pine shadows 00:03:20.140 --> 00:03:23.170 align:middle line:84% in the aftermath where I drove back there. 00:03:23.170 --> 00:03:25.630 align:middle line:84% And two bones of smoke lifting a head 00:03:25.630 --> 00:03:29.410 align:middle line:84% along the shoulder in the high, new green weed bank running 00:03:29.410 --> 00:03:31.630 align:middle line:90% beside the asphalt. 00:03:31.630 --> 00:03:32.800 align:middle line:90% No. 00:03:32.800 --> 00:03:34.930 align:middle line:90% I had come from my father. 00:03:34.930 --> 00:03:36.940 align:middle line:90% Nothing more common. 00:03:36.940 --> 00:03:39.040 align:middle line:90% Nothing more than such. 00:03:39.040 --> 00:03:43.810 align:middle line:84% There was something deadly, she said, in it. 00:03:43.810 --> 00:03:48.310 align:middle line:84% I could not breathe for the longest time over and again. 00:03:48.310 --> 00:03:54.670 align:middle line:84% Of the genus bhutto as bee Harlan, as Harlan's red tail, 00:03:54.670 --> 00:03:59.350 align:middle line:84% blocky in shape, goes the book, blood or brick red. 00:03:59.350 --> 00:04:02.350 align:middle line:84% But white, I am sure, underneath, white 00:04:02.350 --> 00:04:05.350 align:middle line:84% along its wing, which was not smoke, 00:04:05.350 --> 00:04:09.550 align:middle line:90% but rising now, one bird. 00:04:09.550 --> 00:04:12.310 align:middle line:84% I was coming back and couldn't breathe. 00:04:12.310 --> 00:04:17.829 align:middle line:84% And him bruised, torn, bedridden, tubed, 00:04:17.829 --> 00:04:22.840 align:middle line:84% taken to the brink by his body and carried aloft. 00:04:22.840 --> 00:04:25.840 align:middle line:90% There he had fallen. 00:04:25.840 --> 00:04:29.590 align:middle line:84% This is what happened, said the medical team. 00:04:29.590 --> 00:04:34.270 align:middle line:84% Fallen and ripped aortic stenosis 00:04:34.270 --> 00:04:37.160 align:middle line:90% in the process of their repair. 00:04:37.160 --> 00:04:38.320 align:middle line:90% No. 00:04:38.320 --> 00:04:41.380 align:middle line:84% The white bird strained as trying 00:04:41.380 --> 00:04:45.470 align:middle line:84% to lift to a slight dihedral, the deepest deliberate wing 00:04:45.470 --> 00:04:45.970 align:middle line:90% beats. 00:04:45.970 --> 00:04:49.570 align:middle line:84% And barely above the Snow White lipped grasses 00:04:49.570 --> 00:04:52.420 align:middle line:84% and the shoulder, until I thought I would hit it, 00:04:52.420 --> 00:04:56.740 align:middle line:84% it happened, or it did not in my way of thinking. 00:04:56.740 --> 00:05:04.180 align:middle line:84% And now why I saw two lengths of snake, helical and alive 00:05:04.180 --> 00:05:07.060 align:middle line:84% in the talons, heavy there, writhing. 00:05:07.060 --> 00:05:11.470 align:middle line:84% So the big bird strained for the length of time that it takes 00:05:11.470 --> 00:05:16.810 align:middle line:84% like the oiled inner organs of a live thing, heaving in shreds. 00:05:16.810 --> 00:05:21.340 align:middle line:84% The dogwoods, the doctors, and did I say the horrible winds? 00:05:21.340 --> 00:05:22.810 align:middle line:90% Oh, before. 00:05:22.810 --> 00:05:28.210 align:middle line:84% Now the air after storm, the old road, empty, 00:05:28.210 --> 00:05:32.200 align:middle line:84% swept white by blossoms, by headlights. 00:05:32.200 --> 00:05:34.930 align:middle line:90% My father hovering still. 00:05:34.930 --> 00:05:37.270 align:middle line:90% Why it flew so close? 00:05:37.270 --> 00:05:40.300 align:middle line:90% Why it was so terribly slow? 00:05:40.300 --> 00:05:44.140 align:middle line:84% I think I hoped it would tear me to pieces. 00:05:44.140 --> 00:05:52.670 align:middle line:84% Lift me of my genus helpless as wretched and drop me away. 00:05:52.670 --> 00:05:55.590 align:middle line:90% I turned back to the animal. 00:05:55.590 --> 00:05:56.430 align:middle line:90% No. 00:05:56.430 --> 00:05:59.270 align:middle line:90% It turned its back to me. 00:05:59.270 --> 00:06:01.000 align:middle line:90%