WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.970 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.970 --> 00:00:10.340 align:middle line:84% I'll read a poem called "Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock." 00:00:10.340 --> 00:00:14.540 align:middle line:84% The title comes from those Japanese series 00:00:14.540 --> 00:00:21.950 align:middle line:84% of poems and pictures called "oxherding pictures" where 00:00:21.950 --> 00:00:26.540 align:middle line:84% somebody goes in search of an ox which, 00:00:26.540 --> 00:00:29.930 align:middle line:84% at the end, when he finds the ox it 00:00:29.930 --> 00:00:33.560 align:middle line:84% may be just a blank white circle that he 00:00:33.560 --> 00:00:38.210 align:middle line:84% finds because in some way he's been pursuing the absolute. 00:00:38.210 --> 00:00:46.340 align:middle line:90% 00:00:46.340 --> 00:00:51.440 align:middle line:84% But this poem is not pursuing the absolute, but rather 00:00:51.440 --> 00:00:53.960 align:middle line:90% the art. 00:00:53.960 --> 00:00:58.550 align:middle line:84% And the 10 parts of the poem can be thought of as 10 moments 00:00:58.550 --> 00:01:01.220 align:middle line:90% in climbing this mountain. 00:01:01.220 --> 00:01:04.360 align:middle line:90% 00:01:04.360 --> 00:01:06.700 align:middle line:90% "I can support it no longer. 00:01:06.700 --> 00:01:11.290 align:middle line:84% Laughing ruefully at myself for all I claim to have suffered, 00:01:11.290 --> 00:01:12.470 align:middle line:90% I get up. 00:01:12.470 --> 00:01:14.680 align:middle line:90% Damned nightmarer. 00:01:14.680 --> 00:01:16.930 align:middle line:90% It is New Hampshire out here. 00:01:16.930 --> 00:01:19.000 align:middle line:90% It is nearly the dawn. 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:22.090 align:middle line:84% The song of the whippoorwill stops and the dimension 00:01:22.090 --> 00:01:24.674 align:middle line:90% of depth seizes everything. 00:01:24.674 --> 00:01:27.400 align:middle line:90% 00:01:27.400 --> 00:01:30.010 align:middle line:84% The song of a peabody bird goes overhead 00:01:30.010 --> 00:01:34.030 align:middle line:84% like a needle pushed five times through the air. 00:01:34.030 --> 00:01:38.260 align:middle line:84% It enters the leaves and comes out little changed. 00:01:38.260 --> 00:01:41.170 align:middle line:84% The air is so still that as they go off 00:01:41.170 --> 00:01:44.620 align:middle line:84% through the trees the love songs of birds 00:01:44.620 --> 00:01:45.925 align:middle line:90% do not get any fainter. 00:01:45.925 --> 00:01:48.730 align:middle line:90% 00:01:48.730 --> 00:01:54.160 align:middle line:84% The last memory I have is of a flower which cannot be touched, 00:01:54.160 --> 00:01:58.695 align:middle line:84% through the bloom of which, all day, fly crazed, missing bees. 00:01:58.695 --> 00:02:02.020 align:middle line:90% 00:02:02.020 --> 00:02:05.110 align:middle line:84% As I climb sweat gets up my nostrils. 00:02:05.110 --> 00:02:08.320 align:middle line:84% For an instant I think I am at the sea. 00:02:08.320 --> 00:02:12.700 align:middle line:84% One summer off Cap Ferrat we watched a black seagull 00:02:12.700 --> 00:02:14.410 align:middle line:90% straining for the dawn. 00:02:14.410 --> 00:02:17.170 align:middle line:90% We stood in the surf. 00:02:17.170 --> 00:02:20.110 align:middle line:84% Grasshoppers splash up where I step. 00:02:20.110 --> 00:02:22.820 align:middle line:84% The mountain laurel crashes at my thighs. 00:02:22.820 --> 00:02:26.080 align:middle line:90% 00:02:26.080 --> 00:02:29.690 align:middle line:84% There is something joyous in the elegies of birds. 00:02:29.690 --> 00:02:33.050 align:middle line:84% They seem caught up in a formal delight, 00:02:33.050 --> 00:02:37.520 align:middle line:84% though the mourning dove whistles of despair. 00:02:37.520 --> 00:02:40.100 align:middle line:84% But at last in the thousand elegies 00:02:40.100 --> 00:02:42.440 align:middle line:90% the dead rise in our hearts. 00:02:42.440 --> 00:02:46.190 align:middle line:84% On the brink of our happiness we stop like someone 00:02:46.190 --> 00:02:47.750 align:middle line:90% on a drunk starting to weep. 00:02:47.750 --> 00:02:50.270 align:middle line:90% 00:02:50.270 --> 00:02:52.100 align:middle line:90% I kneel at a pool. 00:02:52.100 --> 00:02:54.950 align:middle line:84% I look through my face at the bacteria 00:02:54.950 --> 00:02:58.760 align:middle line:84% I think I see crawling through the moss. 00:02:58.760 --> 00:03:01.400 align:middle line:90% My face sees me. 00:03:01.400 --> 00:03:03.080 align:middle line:90% The water stirs. 00:03:03.080 --> 00:03:07.100 align:middle line:84% The face, looking preoccupied, gets knocked from its bones. 00:03:07.100 --> 00:03:10.580 align:middle line:90% 00:03:10.580 --> 00:03:13.850 align:middle line:84% I weighed eleven pounds at birth having stayed 00:03:13.850 --> 00:03:16.940 align:middle line:90% on two extra weeks in the womb. 00:03:16.940 --> 00:03:20.720 align:middle line:84% Tempted by room and fresh air I came out 00:03:20.720 --> 00:03:25.910 align:middle line:84% big as a policeman, blue-faced with narrow red eyes. 00:03:25.910 --> 00:03:27.980 align:middle line:84% It was eight days before the doctor 00:03:27.980 --> 00:03:31.190 align:middle line:90% would scare my mother with me. 00:03:31.190 --> 00:03:33.920 align:middle line:84% Turning and craning in the vines I 00:03:33.920 --> 00:03:37.940 align:middle line:84% can make out through the leaves the old, shimmering 00:03:37.940 --> 00:03:39.725 align:middle line:90% nothingness, the sky. 00:03:39.725 --> 00:03:42.860 align:middle line:90% 00:03:42.860 --> 00:03:48.590 align:middle line:84% Green, scaly moosewoods ascend, tenants of the shaken paradise. 00:03:48.590 --> 00:03:51.480 align:middle line:84% At every wind last night's rain comes 00:03:51.480 --> 00:03:53.450 align:middle line:90% splattering from the leaves. 00:03:53.450 --> 00:03:57.500 align:middle line:84% It drops in flurries and lies there, the footsteps 00:03:57.500 --> 00:03:58.760 align:middle line:90% of some running start. 00:03:58.760 --> 00:04:01.430 align:middle line:90% 00:04:01.430 --> 00:04:05.240 align:middle line:84% From a rock, a waterfall, a single trickle 00:04:05.240 --> 00:04:10.460 align:middle line:84% like a strand of wire, breaks into beads halfway down. 00:04:10.460 --> 00:04:14.840 align:middle line:84% I know the birds fly off, but the hug of the earth 00:04:14.840 --> 00:04:18.530 align:middle line:84% wraps with moss their graves and the giant boulder. 00:04:18.530 --> 00:04:21.649 align:middle line:90% 00:04:21.649 --> 00:04:25.010 align:middle line:84% In the forest I discover a flower. 00:04:25.010 --> 00:04:27.860 align:middle line:84% The invisible life of the thing goes up 00:04:27.860 --> 00:04:32.060 align:middle line:84% in flames that are invisible, like cellophane burning 00:04:32.060 --> 00:04:33.920 align:middle line:90% in the sunlight. 00:04:33.920 --> 00:04:35.270 align:middle line:90% It burns up. 00:04:35.270 --> 00:04:37.730 align:middle line:90% Its drift is to be nothing. 00:04:37.730 --> 00:04:41.180 align:middle line:84% In its covertness it has a way of uttering itself 00:04:41.180 --> 00:04:42.920 align:middle line:90% in place of itself. 00:04:42.920 --> 00:04:46.520 align:middle line:84% Its blossoms claim to float in the Empyrean. 00:04:46.520 --> 00:04:51.110 align:middle line:84% A wrathful presence on the blur of the ground. 00:04:51.110 --> 00:04:53.930 align:middle line:90% The appeal to heaven breaks off. 00:04:53.930 --> 00:04:57.950 align:middle line:84% The petals begin to fall in self-forgiveness. 00:04:57.950 --> 00:04:59.450 align:middle line:90% It is a flower. 00:04:59.450 --> 00:05:02.620 align:middle line:84% On this mountainside it is dying." 00:05:02.620 --> 00:05:06.103 align:middle line:90%