I mean the link between those 3 and the next one is exactly
the subject of that last one.
But the next one is a poem, which is-- in which the--
where the mythology if you want--
for want of a better word I keep going back to that one
comes from is less important than how it happens
in the history of our time.
And it's a poem about a kind of exile, a moral exile which
is something--
which is another development of what I was talking about.
Feeling of being a part of the place where
the most appalling things and the most crucial sacrifices
are going on together.
And the one is connected with both of them
but is helpless to prevent the one or to help the other.
The poem is called "Banishment in Winter."
And I think I should say a few things
about some of the images.
I don't think they're hard but they're
the kind that might make you stop them and go fooling around
so that you get lost and pick yourself
up three or four lines later on wondering where you were.
The image at the beginning is one of the northern lights.
And it's that scene as something which is already
becoming part of human manipulation
that is the image that moves into the poem that way.
Yes.
And also I should say that it is a winter thing
and it's looking into the North, which is not
only the idea of being able to see things over some pole
as you sometimes would have in this--
if you're very far away from the place
you come from, a place where polar flights would come from.
But also North in the biblical sense one
is in the fallen world.
And the world is ruled by Lucifer.
And Lucifer in the Bible as you remember,
comes down from the sides of the North.
And one can go into that little why
Lucifer comes from the North and go into that until midnight.
He does anyway.
So the cold in the poem is all part of the dread
and the connection with that.
But one as I said it's called "Banishment in Winter."
From the North the ones the long questions of light
descend among us from my country even by day.
And their discoveries are recorded beyond the silence.
Blue eyes watch needles.
Oh little by little it will be seen
who remembers the cold dusk crossing the pastures.
The black hay ridged along the darkness, the color of snow
at night.
So even by day, the ones reach toward the outer river,
toward the deep shadows inquiring.
And above us like stars and a slow negative
the migrants, the true migrants, the true migrants
will be immeasurably far.
The dark migrants, the souls move out toward into the cold.
But will it ever be dark again in my country
where hanging from lampposts the good fill
the streets with their steady light.