WEBVTT

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So "In June, the Labyrinth."

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I'm just going to read the poem.

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So I'll give you a
little context to open.

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I went through a period
of two years, in which I

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lost quite a few friends.

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And the year-- the two
year time was capped off

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by burying my mother.

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And so it was intense, and
that became a mythopoetic poem

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with a composite figure at the
center, whom I called Elle.

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E-L-L-E, Elle.

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And there's two strands
to the narrative.

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One is Elle's quest
for wisdom and love,

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and the other is
the narrator's quest

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for healing,
understanding, which

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is symbolized by walking
the labyrinth, an old symbol

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of the journey of life.

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I call it this because
it so happened--

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it happens that every
summer we go to France.

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And in these years in which I
was losing friends, and then

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family members, I had
the odd experience

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of going to Chartres
Cathedral, where there

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is a labyrinth--
one of the very few

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that survived the
French Revolution.

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And I discovered that there
is also a Black Madonna there.

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And I didn't know that.

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I'm not Catholic, and
yet I found myself

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lighting candles, and
walking the labyrinth,

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and praying for my friends.

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And three times this happened.

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I would get back, and
there would be news

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that my friend had died.

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Once, even while I was
walking the labyrinth.

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So it just became a journey.

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So this very personal
book, I distanced a bit

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by making it this story,
this kind of mythic story.

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Two epigraphs-- "The
narrative is genealogical,

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but it does not simply
amount to an act of memory.

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It witnesses in the manner of
an ethical or political act

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for today and for tomorrow."

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Jacques Derrida,
The Gift of Death.

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And a slightly revised Borges--

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"The purpose which guided
her was not impossible,

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though it was supernatural."

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From Labyrinths.

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"One.

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F's gift from his rose
garden and the rosette

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in the labyrinth
center like a promise.

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A promise.

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The real rose closed tight,
stuck, as an afterthought,

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in a glass of water,
which, overnight, opened,

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as if the window sash were up--

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everything perfumed.

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A journey.

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Ellle, ill, prayed
for a miracle I

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did not know, but
dreamed she'd go,

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and forth went without obstacle.

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To journey to the
labyrinth, hours

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through hilly countryside,
and village like nothing

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I remembered.

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Spires rising in a
golden wheat field.

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Possibly a photograph or
film, my mind not recalling

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the source.

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The image gaining
heft in thought,

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but from the car, train
tracks, tree alleys, all signs

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overhead--

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in the town, we couldn't
find the cathedral

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with the labyrinth.

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The houses were low,
of ancient wood,

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slightly aslant and
crooked, weathered overhangs

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for old times slops.

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A few cobbled streets.

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We were hungry and ate.

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Your lips smacked between
bites and I dabbed my mouth.

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Then it was there.

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