WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.470 align:middle line:84% Well, I'm going to read a few more minutes 00:00:04.470 --> 00:00:08.189 align:middle line:84% and then we'll have a 5 minute break. 00:00:08.189 --> 00:00:11.880 align:middle line:84% Then I'll come back and read again. 00:00:11.880 --> 00:00:14.820 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read a different sort of a poem now, 00:00:14.820 --> 00:00:16.335 align:middle line:84% some poems that touch on politics. 00:00:16.335 --> 00:00:21.920 align:middle line:90% 00:00:21.920 --> 00:00:27.710 align:middle line:84% We've known for a long time that poetry can touch on nature. 00:00:27.710 --> 00:00:31.910 align:middle line:84% That's been the discovery, when humanity 00:00:31.910 --> 00:00:35.630 align:middle line:84% lived, as it did for thousands of years, in nature. 00:00:35.630 --> 00:00:37.310 align:middle line:84% That there's an intimate, and secret, 00:00:37.310 --> 00:00:41.060 align:middle line:84% and mysterious connection between certain emotions 00:00:41.060 --> 00:00:42.870 align:middle line:90% we have and nature. 00:00:42.870 --> 00:00:45.620 align:middle line:84% And then also, we found out that there's 00:00:45.620 --> 00:00:48.170 align:middle line:84% a connection between poems, poetry and love 00:00:48.170 --> 00:00:53.060 align:middle line:84% that's [INAUDIBLE],, so that love poems are done again and again. 00:00:53.060 --> 00:00:57.050 align:middle line:84% But there's no reason that the politics and the political life 00:00:57.050 --> 00:01:00.620 align:middle line:84% of the nation is just as natural a subject for poems 00:01:00.620 --> 00:01:02.840 align:middle line:90% as either love or nature. 00:01:02.840 --> 00:01:05.209 align:middle line:90% It surrounds us in the same way. 00:01:05.209 --> 00:01:07.340 align:middle line:84% There's a certain political mood, 00:01:07.340 --> 00:01:10.580 align:middle line:84% there's a substance just as real as a leaf or a tree, that 00:01:10.580 --> 00:01:12.330 align:middle line:90% surrounds you all the time. 00:01:12.330 --> 00:01:16.150 align:middle line:84% And that's the psyche of your own nation. 00:01:16.150 --> 00:01:21.310 align:middle line:84% And the psyche has changed, in turn like fools you have this-- 00:01:21.310 --> 00:01:25.490 align:middle line:84% they're not the same now as they were 10 years ago. 00:01:25.490 --> 00:01:26.920 align:middle line:90% Something's changed. 00:01:26.920 --> 00:01:28.900 align:middle line:90% Their eyes look different. 00:01:28.900 --> 00:01:30.850 align:middle line:84% So I remember the Second World War very well, 00:01:30.850 --> 00:01:31.600 align:middle line:90% I was in the war. 00:01:31.600 --> 00:01:33.880 align:middle line:84% I thought it was a just war, I enlisted. 00:01:33.880 --> 00:01:38.260 align:middle line:84% And I remember the pride that we felt at the end of that war. 00:01:38.260 --> 00:01:41.890 align:middle line:84% And I think it has something to do with-- the number of poets 00:01:41.890 --> 00:01:43.990 align:middle line:84% we have in this generation-- has something to do 00:01:43.990 --> 00:01:45.805 align:middle line:90% with the pride we did feel. 00:01:45.805 --> 00:01:48.670 align:middle line:84% There's no poet right without tremendous pride 00:01:48.670 --> 00:01:50.258 align:middle line:90% in his own country. 00:01:50.258 --> 00:01:52.300 align:middle line:84% And all of the poets I knew at the end of the war 00:01:52.300 --> 00:01:53.950 align:middle line:90% felt that pride. 00:01:53.950 --> 00:01:57.130 align:middle line:84% But now that's changed, I don't feel that pride anymore, 00:01:57.130 --> 00:01:59.230 align:middle line:84% in what the United States is doing. 00:01:59.230 --> 00:02:01.450 align:middle line:84% And it began about seven or eight years ago, 00:02:01.450 --> 00:02:04.330 align:middle line:84% and something dark just started to come in 00:02:04.330 --> 00:02:05.860 align:middle line:90% and it started to change. 00:02:05.860 --> 00:02:08.590 align:middle line:84% A certain kind of despair began to come into the United 00:02:08.590 --> 00:02:12.190 align:middle line:90% States, a harshness. 00:02:12.190 --> 00:02:14.980 align:middle line:84% So this is a poem that talks about that. 00:02:14.980 --> 00:02:18.190 align:middle line:84% "Come with me into those things that have 00:02:18.190 --> 00:02:21.970 align:middle line:90% felt this despair for so long. 00:02:21.970 --> 00:02:26.510 align:middle line:84% Those who removed Chevrolet wheels that 00:02:26.510 --> 00:02:30.100 align:middle line:84% howled with a terrible loneliness, 00:02:30.100 --> 00:02:33.790 align:middle line:84% lying on their back in the cindery dirt, 00:02:33.790 --> 00:02:39.130 align:middle line:84% like men drunk and naked, staggering off down a hill 00:02:39.130 --> 00:02:42.990 align:middle line:90% to drown, at last, in the pond. 00:02:42.990 --> 00:02:47.160 align:middle line:84% And those shredded inner tubes, abandoned 00:02:47.160 --> 00:02:52.310 align:middle line:84% on the shoulders of throughways, blast and collapse. 00:02:52.310 --> 00:02:58.130 align:middle line:84% Soldiers who tried, and burst, and were left behind. 00:02:58.130 --> 00:03:02.660 align:middle line:84% And those pearly steel shavings, scattered 00:03:02.660 --> 00:03:06.140 align:middle line:90% about on garage benches. 00:03:06.140 --> 00:03:08.450 align:middle line:90% Sometimes still warm. 00:03:08.450 --> 00:03:11.150 align:middle line:90% Gritty when we hold them. 00:03:11.150 --> 00:03:15.290 align:middle line:84% Who have given up, and blame everything on the government. 00:03:15.290 --> 00:03:19.910 align:middle line:84% And those roads in South Dakota, that 00:03:19.910 --> 00:03:24.040 align:middle line:90% feel around in the darkness."