WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.220 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:03.220 --> 00:00:04.463 align:middle line:90% 00:00:04.463 --> 00:00:05.630 align:middle line:90% Thank you very much, indeed. 00:00:05.630 --> 00:00:08.223 align:middle line:84% It's a great honor for me to be here, 00:00:08.223 --> 00:00:09.640 align:middle line:84% particularly on a day when there's 00:00:09.640 --> 00:00:14.440 align:middle line:84% a bit of snow in Tucson, makes me feel, when Snow was general 00:00:14.440 --> 00:00:15.820 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] over Tuscon. 00:00:15.820 --> 00:00:18.010 align:middle line:90% Makes me feel very much at home. 00:00:18.010 --> 00:00:20.980 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read for about 15 minutes or so. 00:00:20.980 --> 00:00:25.390 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read from, right the way through these eight 00:00:25.390 --> 00:00:28.420 align:middle line:84% books that Allison mentioned in her wonderfully 00:00:28.420 --> 00:00:29.980 align:middle line:90% generous introduction. 00:00:29.980 --> 00:00:32.650 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read a few new poems on [INAUDIBLE].. 00:00:32.650 --> 00:00:34.180 align:middle line:90% And I begin with a new one. 00:00:34.180 --> 00:00:37.720 align:middle line:84% In fact, the one that's there and then a little brochure 00:00:37.720 --> 00:00:39.640 align:middle line:90% for the Poetry Center. 00:00:39.640 --> 00:00:44.480 align:middle line:84% And this is a poem set in New Jersey, where I live 00:00:44.480 --> 00:00:47.170 align:middle line:90% for the most part these days. 00:00:47.170 --> 00:00:49.570 align:middle line:84% In a house built-- well, part of it 00:00:49.570 --> 00:00:52.360 align:middle line:84% was built in 1750 or thereabouts. 00:00:52.360 --> 00:00:55.510 align:middle line:90% Part of it in 1810 or 20. 00:00:55.510 --> 00:00:59.950 align:middle line:84% And in New Jersey, anyhow, I'm not 00:00:59.950 --> 00:01:03.070 align:middle line:84% sure about this part of the world, when we're 00:01:03.070 --> 00:01:12.280 align:middle line:84% building a house then they often used horsehair in the plaster 00:01:12.280 --> 00:01:16.150 align:middle line:84% to give it a little bit of, well, what? 00:01:16.150 --> 00:01:17.230 align:middle line:90% Body. 00:01:17.230 --> 00:01:22.390 align:middle line:84% And in some-- I use the word body there in a strange way. 00:01:22.390 --> 00:01:25.330 align:middle line:84% Being inside this house I've thought once or twice 00:01:25.330 --> 00:01:30.940 align:middle line:84% is a little bit like being inside the body of a horse, 00:01:30.940 --> 00:01:34.400 align:middle line:84% though that doesn't really quite come into this poem, 00:01:34.400 --> 00:01:35.825 align:middle line:84% so I'm not sure why I mention it. 00:01:35.825 --> 00:01:36.325 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:36.325 --> 00:01:39.700 align:middle line:84% But it's certainly-- it's a poem about looking out 00:01:39.700 --> 00:01:45.790 align:middle line:84% through a hole in a wall of this house. 00:01:45.790 --> 00:01:49.015 align:middle line:84% But looking, seeing, smelling, the various senses. 00:01:49.015 --> 00:01:51.820 align:middle line:90% 00:01:51.820 --> 00:01:56.470 align:middle line:84% The house overlooks a canal built in the 1830s 00:01:56.470 --> 00:02:00.490 align:middle line:84% by thousands of Irishmen, many of whom 00:02:00.490 --> 00:02:02.950 align:middle line:84% died in the process of building it. 00:02:02.950 --> 00:02:05.460 align:middle line:84% And they get a mention along the way. 00:02:05.460 --> 00:02:07.885 align:middle line:84% And this poem is a strange little refrain. 00:02:07.885 --> 00:02:12.250 align:middle line:90% 00:02:12.250 --> 00:02:16.480 align:middle line:84% On the edge, perhaps, between sense and nonsense. 00:02:16.480 --> 00:02:20.260 align:middle line:84% I'm sure going over the edge once or twice. 00:02:20.260 --> 00:02:23.500 align:middle line:90% So "The Loaf." 00:02:23.500 --> 00:02:29.470 align:middle line:84% When I put my finger to the hole they've cut for a dimmer 00:02:29.470 --> 00:02:36.850 align:middle line:84% switch, in a wall of plaster stiffened with horsehair, 00:02:36.850 --> 00:02:43.030 align:middle line:84% it seems I've scratched a two-hundred-year-old itch, 00:02:43.030 --> 00:02:49.060 align:middle line:84% with a pink and a pink and a pinkie-pick. 00:02:49.060 --> 00:02:52.270 align:middle line:84% When I put my ear to the hole, I'm 00:02:52.270 --> 00:02:57.040 align:middle line:84% suddenly aware of spades and shovels turning up 00:02:57.040 --> 00:03:02.740 align:middle line:84% the gain all the way from Raritan to the Delaware, 00:03:02.740 --> 00:03:08.620 align:middle line:84% with a clink and a clink and a clinky-click. 00:03:08.620 --> 00:03:11.260 align:middle line:84% When I put my nose to the hole, I 00:03:11.260 --> 00:03:17.470 align:middle line:84% smell the floodplain of the canal after a hurricane, 00:03:17.470 --> 00:03:22.030 align:middle line:84% and the spots of green grass where thousands of Irish 00:03:22.030 --> 00:03:29.410 align:middle line:84% have lain, with a stink and a stink and a stinky-stink. 00:03:29.410 --> 00:03:35.950 align:middle line:84% When I put my eye to the hole, I see one holding horse dung 00:03:35.950 --> 00:03:41.590 align:middle line:84% to the rain, in the hope, indeed, indeed, 00:03:41.590 --> 00:03:47.710 align:middle line:84% of washing out a few whole ears of grain, with a wink 00:03:47.710 --> 00:03:53.170 align:middle line:90% and a wink and a winkie-wink. 00:03:53.170 --> 00:03:58.600 align:middle line:84% And when I do at last succeed in putting my mouth 00:03:58.600 --> 00:04:03.700 align:middle line:84% to the horsehair-fringed niche, I 00:04:03.700 --> 00:04:12.760 align:middle line:84% can test the small loaf of bread he baked from that whole seed, 00:04:12.760 --> 00:04:17.334 align:middle line:84% with a link and a link, and a linky-lick. 00:04:17.334 --> 00:04:20.269 align:middle line:90% 00:04:20.269 --> 00:04:22.550 align:middle line:84% People come into this house, and there's 00:04:22.550 --> 00:04:24.900 align:middle line:90% a painting on one of the walls. 00:04:24.900 --> 00:04:28.850 align:middle line:84% And they say, who on Earth is that? 00:04:28.850 --> 00:04:34.490 align:middle line:84% It's a painting of a very stern woman whose eyes seem 00:04:34.490 --> 00:04:37.760 align:middle line:90% to follow one around the room. 00:04:37.760 --> 00:04:42.390 align:middle line:90% Very, very frightening creature. 00:04:42.390 --> 00:04:45.845 align:middle line:84% And we, of course, say that is the ancestor. 00:04:45.845 --> 00:04:49.430 align:middle line:90% 00:04:49.430 --> 00:04:52.190 align:middle line:90% "The Ancestor." 00:04:52.190 --> 00:04:56.480 align:middle line:84% The great-grandmother who bears down on us, 00:04:56.480 --> 00:05:00.020 align:middle line:84% as if beholding the moat in our eye 00:05:00.020 --> 00:05:04.910 align:middle line:84% from a nineteenth-century Hungarian portrait 00:05:04.910 --> 00:05:09.530 align:middle line:84% on our library wall is no relation. 00:05:09.530 --> 00:05:12.350 align:middle line:90% Not even remote. 00:05:12.350 --> 00:05:16.670 align:middle line:84% The straw-hatted man in a daguerreotype. 00:05:16.670 --> 00:05:22.010 align:middle line:84% Though he and I may share the trait of putting two fingers 00:05:22.010 --> 00:05:26.060 align:middle line:84% to the little carbuncle on our right chin, 00:05:26.060 --> 00:05:33.210 align:middle line:84% is no more of my blood than I am consanguineous with Cromwell. 00:05:33.210 --> 00:05:37.400 align:middle line:84% Our Webster's is inscribed "Philip. 00:05:37.400 --> 00:05:39.770 align:middle line:90% Best uncle." 00:05:39.770 --> 00:05:46.400 align:middle line:84% Our napkins bear an unfamiliar monogram. 00:05:46.400 --> 00:05:50.840 align:middle line:90% Yet how familiar all become. 00:05:50.840 --> 00:05:55.670 align:middle line:84% Shaving mug, gymkhana rosette, five 00:05:55.670 --> 00:05:59.180 align:middle line:90% charms from a charm bracelet-- 00:05:59.180 --> 00:06:04.310 align:middle line:84% all those heirlooms to which we're now the heirs 00:06:04.310 --> 00:06:12.260 align:middle line:84% are at once more presentable and more present than our own. 00:06:12.260 --> 00:06:16.430 align:middle line:84% This great-grandmother with folded arms 00:06:16.430 --> 00:06:21.650 align:middle line:84% who lurches and looms across the library 00:06:21.650 --> 00:06:26.700 align:middle line:84% may not be so unreasoning in her reprimand. 00:06:26.700 --> 00:06:30.660 align:middle line:90% 00:06:30.660 --> 00:06:32.490 align:middle line:84% Let me go back and read a few poems 00:06:32.490 --> 00:06:36.030 align:middle line:84% set in the area where I was brought up. 00:06:36.030 --> 00:06:38.640 align:middle line:84% And this, in fact, I'll read the poems 00:06:38.640 --> 00:06:44.890 align:middle line:84% from which the titles of these books came along the way. 00:06:44.890 --> 00:06:50.400 align:middle line:84% And this first one, which I wrote when I was a teenager, 00:06:50.400 --> 00:06:53.490 align:middle line:84% I suppose was influenced by Robert Frost in a way 00:06:53.490 --> 00:06:58.920 align:middle line:84% that I wasn't quite conscious of, I think, I was writing it. 00:06:58.920 --> 00:07:03.150 align:middle line:84% A poem of his called "Tree At My Window," which 00:07:03.150 --> 00:07:07.500 align:middle line:84% the one which ends up with your head being so full 00:07:07.500 --> 00:07:11.460 align:middle line:84% of your ardor, with inner weather. 00:07:11.460 --> 00:07:15.510 align:middle line:84% So that part of that lurking about there. 00:07:15.510 --> 00:07:19.605 align:middle line:84% Also, an Irish triad, one of those three, 00:07:19.605 --> 00:07:25.260 align:middle line:84% you know, a series of three witty sayings in Gaelic. 00:07:25.260 --> 00:07:37.590 align:middle line:84% It went [SPEAKING GAELIC] It had a little internal rhyme. 00:07:37.590 --> 00:07:42.510 align:middle line:84% Two thirds of sickness happens at night. 00:07:42.510 --> 00:07:48.090 align:middle line:84% Two thirds of wind happens around trees. 00:07:48.090 --> 00:07:50.130 align:middle line:84% The third bit of it I could never remember. 00:07:50.130 --> 00:07:53.210 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] [INAUDIBLE] 00:07:53.210 --> 00:07:55.550 align:middle line:84% You only remember two thirds [INAUDIBLE].. 00:07:55.550 --> 00:07:58.840 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:07:58.840 --> 00:08:00.260 align:middle line:90% 00:08:00.260 --> 00:08:02.660 align:middle line:90% "Wind and Tree." 00:08:02.660 --> 00:08:07.640 align:middle line:84% In the way that most of the wind happens where there are trees, 00:08:07.640 --> 00:08:12.470 align:middle line:84% most of the world is centered about ourselves. 00:08:12.470 --> 00:08:16.370 align:middle line:84% Often where the wind has gathered the trees together 00:08:16.370 --> 00:08:24.200 align:middle line:84% and together, one tree will take another in her arms and hold. 00:08:24.200 --> 00:08:29.570 align:middle line:84% Their branches that are grinding madly together and together, 00:08:29.570 --> 00:08:31.800 align:middle line:90% it is no real fire. 00:08:31.800 --> 00:08:35.150 align:middle line:90% They are breaking each other. 00:08:35.150 --> 00:08:39.500 align:middle line:84% Often I think I should be like the single tree, 00:08:39.500 --> 00:08:46.700 align:middle line:84% going nowhere, since my own arm could not and would not 00:08:46.700 --> 00:08:49.700 align:middle line:90% break the other. 00:08:49.700 --> 00:08:57.120 align:middle line:84% Yet by my broken bones, I tell new whether. 00:08:57.120 --> 00:08:58.370 align:middle line:90% Here are a few poems. 00:08:58.370 --> 00:08:59.300 align:middle line:90% I mentioned Frost. 00:08:59.300 --> 00:09:04.730 align:middle line:84% These are a few poems set on the Homer Noble Farm, which 00:09:04.730 --> 00:09:06.950 align:middle line:84% was the farm that Frost lived on, 00:09:06.950 --> 00:09:11.090 align:middle line:84% of course, between 1939 and the end of his life, where 00:09:11.090 --> 00:09:13.220 align:middle line:90% he spent the summers. 00:09:13.220 --> 00:09:16.790 align:middle line:84% I do a little teaching for the Bread Loaf school of English, 00:09:16.790 --> 00:09:19.140 align:middle line:84% which is connected to Middlebury College. 00:09:19.140 --> 00:09:25.730 align:middle line:84% One of the perks is to get to live on the Homer Noble Farm 00:09:25.730 --> 00:09:28.040 align:middle line:84% for six or seven weeks in the summer, which 00:09:28.040 --> 00:09:34.940 align:middle line:84% for me is a great perk, because I'm just so fond of Frost. 00:09:34.940 --> 00:09:40.310 align:middle line:84% So these are a few little snapshot haiku-like. 00:09:40.310 --> 00:09:43.790 align:middle line:90% 00:09:43.790 --> 00:09:46.610 align:middle line:84% I was-- I met somebody, who was it, 00:09:46.610 --> 00:09:49.400 align:middle line:84% the other day in New York, the president of the Haiku 00:09:49.400 --> 00:09:51.620 align:middle line:90% Society of America. 00:09:51.620 --> 00:09:53.840 align:middle line:84% And I was talking about these haiku. 00:09:53.840 --> 00:09:57.230 align:middle line:84% And I was saying, unfortunately, I said, mine rhyme. 00:09:57.230 --> 00:09:59.620 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:09:59.620 --> 00:10:04.880 align:middle line:90% 00:10:04.880 --> 00:10:08.000 align:middle line:90% Anyway, I read them nonetheless. 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:09.260 align:middle line:90% They're a little-- 00:10:09.260 --> 00:10:14.810 align:middle line:84% I was reminded of someone today, actually had the great pleasure 00:10:14.810 --> 00:10:23.720 align:middle line:84% to go out with Adam Childs to the Museum of the Desert, 00:10:23.720 --> 00:10:25.290 align:middle line:90% or the Desert Museum. 00:10:25.290 --> 00:10:28.220 align:middle line:90% Had a great time out there. 00:10:28.220 --> 00:10:32.720 align:middle line:84% Little hummingbirds and all, shrugging their, 00:10:32.720 --> 00:10:36.740 align:middle line:84% you know, gathered into themselves. 00:10:36.740 --> 00:10:40.920 align:middle line:90% 00:10:40.920 --> 00:10:46.430 align:middle line:84% So these are little snapshots, mostly of the fauna 00:10:46.430 --> 00:10:48.710 align:middle line:90% there in Vermont. 00:10:48.710 --> 00:10:51.560 align:middle line:84% And I think you'll recognize many of them 00:10:51.560 --> 00:10:52.800 align:middle line:90% in this part of the world. 00:10:52.800 --> 00:10:56.960 align:middle line:84% It's called "News Headlines from the Homer Noble Farm." 00:10:56.960 --> 00:11:01.910 align:middle line:84% I've been thinking actually, and it should perhaps 00:11:01.910 --> 00:11:06.020 align:middle line:90% be called "Deep Thoughts." 00:11:06.020 --> 00:11:07.020 align:middle line:90% Some of them. 00:11:07.020 --> 00:11:07.940 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:11:07.940 --> 00:11:09.935 align:middle line:90% Anyway, that number. 00:11:09.935 --> 00:11:11.060 align:middle line:90% I'm not going to read them. 00:11:11.060 --> 00:11:12.643 align:middle line:84% I'm not going to give you the numbers. 00:11:12.643 --> 00:11:15.710 align:middle line:90% But this is number one. 00:11:15.710 --> 00:11:18.260 align:middle line:90% That case-hardened cop. 00:11:18.260 --> 00:11:21.660 align:middle line:90% 00:11:21.660 --> 00:11:25.920 align:middle line:84% A bull moose in a bog hole brought him to a stop. 00:11:25.920 --> 00:11:29.820 align:middle line:90% 00:11:29.820 --> 00:11:34.440 align:middle line:84% From his grassy knoll, he has you 00:11:34.440 --> 00:11:38.865 align:middle line:84% in his crosshairs, the accomplice mole. 00:11:38.865 --> 00:11:42.400 align:middle line:90% 00:11:42.400 --> 00:11:43.840 align:middle line:90% Here's a deep one. 00:11:43.840 --> 00:11:47.050 align:middle line:90% This sword once a share. 00:11:47.050 --> 00:11:51.850 align:middle line:90% This forest a fresh-faced farm. 00:11:51.850 --> 00:11:54.835 align:middle line:90% This stone once a stair. 00:11:54.835 --> 00:11:57.990 align:middle line:90% 00:11:57.990 --> 00:12:02.400 align:middle line:84% The birch crooks her arm, as if somewhat more 00:12:02.400 --> 00:12:05.055 align:middle line:90% inclined to welcome the swarm. 00:12:05.055 --> 00:12:08.440 align:middle line:90% 00:12:08.440 --> 00:12:15.370 align:middle line:84% He has, you will find, two modes only, the chipmunk-- 00:12:15.370 --> 00:12:18.225 align:middle line:90% fast forward, rewind. 00:12:18.225 --> 00:12:21.850 align:middle line:90% 00:12:21.850 --> 00:12:27.250 align:middle line:84% The smell, like a skunk, of coffee about to perk. 00:12:27.250 --> 00:12:28.285 align:middle line:90% Thelonious Monk. 00:12:28.285 --> 00:12:31.460 align:middle line:90% 00:12:31.460 --> 00:12:35.510 align:middle line:84% They're the poker work of some sort of woodpecker, 00:12:35.510 --> 00:12:37.175 align:middle line:90% these holes and the bark. 00:12:37.175 --> 00:12:41.540 align:middle line:90% 00:12:41.540 --> 00:12:49.710 align:middle line:84% My new fact checker claims that pilus means "pestle." 00:12:49.710 --> 00:12:52.530 align:middle line:90% 00:12:52.530 --> 00:12:56.610 align:middle line:90% My old fact checker. 00:12:56.610 --> 00:12:58.190 align:middle line:84% This poem appeared in The New Yorker. 00:12:58.190 --> 00:13:02.580 align:middle line:84% And you can imagine how they went to town on that. 00:13:02.580 --> 00:13:05.370 align:middle line:90% The Rose and Thistle. 00:13:05.370 --> 00:13:13.560 align:middle line:84% Where the hummingbird drops in to whet his whistle. 00:13:13.560 --> 00:13:16.800 align:middle line:84% Behind the wood bin a garter snake 00:13:16.800 --> 00:13:21.264 align:middle line:84% snaps itself, showing us some skin. 00:13:21.264 --> 00:13:23.040 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:13:23.040 --> 00:13:28.650 align:middle line:84% Like most bits of delf, the turtle's seen at his bed-- 00:13:28.650 --> 00:13:32.955 align:middle line:84% at its best on one's neighbor's shelf. 00:13:32.955 --> 00:13:35.850 align:middle line:90% 00:13:35.850 --> 00:13:41.880 align:middle line:84% Riding two abreast on their stripped-down souped-up bikes, 00:13:41.880 --> 00:13:44.670 align:middle line:90% bears in leather vests. 00:13:44.670 --> 00:13:46.830 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:13:46.830 --> 00:13:48.480 align:middle line:84% I discovered as I was writing this 00:13:48.480 --> 00:13:51.450 align:middle line:84% that the shrike is a bird, which many of you will know, 00:13:51.450 --> 00:13:54.030 align:middle line:84% as many of you will know, impales 00:13:54.030 --> 00:13:56.610 align:middle line:90% its victims on its beak. 00:13:56.610 --> 00:14:02.250 align:middle line:84% So the middle line of this is a great tabloid headline. 00:14:02.250 --> 00:14:07.530 align:middle line:90% The eye shaded shrike. 00:14:07.530 --> 00:14:13.710 align:middle line:84% BIRD BODIES BURIED IN BOG'S a headline he'll spike. 00:14:13.710 --> 00:14:16.470 align:middle line:90% 00:14:16.470 --> 00:14:21.540 align:middle line:84% Steady, like a log, riding a sawmill's 00:14:21.540 --> 00:14:24.690 align:middle line:90% spillway, the steady coydog. 00:14:24.690 --> 00:14:28.420 align:middle line:90% 00:14:28.420 --> 00:14:32.860 align:middle line:84% The cornet he plays was Bolden's, then Beiderbecke's, 00:14:32.860 --> 00:14:34.810 align:middle line:90% this lonesome blue jay. 00:14:34.810 --> 00:14:38.140 align:middle line:90% 00:14:38.140 --> 00:14:41.800 align:middle line:90% Some fresh auto wreck. 00:14:41.800 --> 00:14:44.480 align:middle line:90% Slumped over a horn. 00:14:44.480 --> 00:14:46.840 align:middle line:90% Sump pool. 00:14:46.840 --> 00:14:50.245 align:middle line:90% The frog's neck-braced neck. 00:14:50.245 --> 00:14:53.410 align:middle line:90% 00:14:53.410 --> 00:14:55.150 align:middle line:90% Brillo pads? 00:14:55.150 --> 00:14:56.890 align:middle line:90% Steel wool? 00:14:56.890 --> 00:14:59.470 align:middle line:84% The regurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgitations, 00:14:59.470 --> 00:15:04.390 align:middle line:90% what, of a long-eared owl? 00:15:04.390 --> 00:15:06.640 align:middle line:90% The jet with the jot. 00:15:06.640 --> 00:15:10.390 align:middle line:84% The drive-in screen with the sky. 00:15:10.390 --> 00:15:14.320 align:middle line:90% The blood with the blot. 00:15:14.320 --> 00:15:20.410 align:middle line:84% How it all seems to vie, not just my sleeping 00:15:20.410 --> 00:15:23.450 align:middle line:90% laptop with the first firefly. 00:15:23.450 --> 00:15:27.860 align:middle line:90% 00:15:27.860 --> 00:15:31.240 align:middle line:84% Here's the title poem of the second book I did, 00:15:31.240 --> 00:15:39.010 align:middle line:84% and it began with a documentary film, some sort of footage 00:15:39.010 --> 00:15:39.940 align:middle line:90% from Korea. 00:15:39.940 --> 00:15:45.668 align:middle line:90% 00:15:45.668 --> 00:15:49.590 align:middle line:90% It's about mules. 00:15:49.590 --> 00:15:54.570 align:middle line:84% Should they not have the best of both worlds? 00:15:54.570 --> 00:15:58.320 align:middle line:84% Her feet of clay gave the lie to the star 00:15:58.320 --> 00:16:01.530 align:middle line:90% burned in our mare's brow. 00:16:01.530 --> 00:16:06.840 align:middle line:84% Would Parsons' jackass not rest more assured that cross 00:16:06.840 --> 00:16:10.440 align:middle line:90% wrenched from his shoulders? 00:16:10.440 --> 00:16:13.320 align:middle line:84% We had loosed them into one field. 00:16:13.320 --> 00:16:18.690 align:middle line:84% I watched Sam Parsons and my quick father tense 00:16:18.690 --> 00:16:22.050 align:middle line:84% for the punch below their belts, for what was 00:16:22.050 --> 00:16:26.310 align:middle line:90% neither one thing or the other. 00:16:26.310 --> 00:16:29.130 align:middle line:84% It was as though they had shuddered 00:16:29.130 --> 00:16:36.420 align:middle line:84% to think of their gaunt, sexless foal, dropped tonight 00:16:36.420 --> 00:16:39.540 align:middle line:90% in the cowshed. 00:16:39.540 --> 00:16:44.310 align:middle line:84% We might yet claim that it sprang from earth, 00:16:44.310 --> 00:16:50.370 align:middle line:84% were it not for the afterbirth trailed like some fine, silk 00:16:50.370 --> 00:16:55.575 align:middle line:84% parachute, that we would know from what heights it fell. 00:16:55.575 --> 00:16:59.210 align:middle line:90% 00:16:59.210 --> 00:17:03.770 align:middle line:84% And it seemed for a long time that if one was even dreaming, 00:17:03.770 --> 00:17:13.579 align:middle line:84% you know, even remotely hoping to write a poem in Ireland, 00:17:13.579 --> 00:17:17.949 align:middle line:84% that poem almost certainly had to do with pig killing. 00:17:17.949 --> 00:17:20.060 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:17:20.060 --> 00:17:24.148 align:middle line:84% There's a whole genre of stuff, I was about to say a subgenre. 00:17:24.148 --> 00:17:25.190 align:middle line:90% But I think it's a genre. 00:17:25.190 --> 00:17:26.925 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:17:26.925 --> 00:17:27.425 align:middle line:90% Often. 00:17:27.425 --> 00:17:33.330 align:middle line:90% 00:17:33.330 --> 00:17:35.220 align:middle line:84% But as Alison was saying in her introduction, 00:17:35.220 --> 00:17:36.900 align:middle line:90% you have to break the mold. 00:17:36.900 --> 00:17:39.270 align:middle line:84% So this is a poem about pig gelding. 00:17:39.270 --> 00:17:41.114 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:17:41.114 --> 00:17:42.960 align:middle line:90% 00:17:42.960 --> 00:17:49.830 align:middle line:84% Ned Skinner was a 'barbaric yawp', if you took Aunt Sarah 00:17:49.830 --> 00:17:51.540 align:middle line:90% at her word. 00:17:51.540 --> 00:17:55.590 align:middle line:84% He would step over the mountain of a summer afternoon 00:17:55.590 --> 00:18:00.660 align:middle line:84% to dress a litter of pigs on my uncle's farm. 00:18:00.660 --> 00:18:04.830 align:middle line:84% And Sarah would keep me in, taking me on her lap 00:18:04.830 --> 00:18:06.930 align:middle line:90% till it was over. 00:18:06.930 --> 00:18:10.920 align:middle line:84% Ned Skinner wiped his knife and rinsed his hands 00:18:10.920 --> 00:18:13.830 align:middle line:90% in the barrel at the doorstep. 00:18:13.830 --> 00:18:16.950 align:middle line:90% He winked and gripped my arm. 00:18:16.950 --> 00:18:19.770 align:middle line:84% 'It doesn't hurt, not so's you'd notice, 00:18:19.770 --> 00:18:24.300 align:middle line:84% and God never slams one door, but another is lying open. 00:18:24.300 --> 00:18:28.200 align:middle line:84% Them same pigs can see the wind.' 00:18:28.200 --> 00:18:32.400 align:middle line:84% My uncle had given him five shillings. 00:18:32.400 --> 00:18:37.500 align:middle line:84% Ned Skinner came back while my uncle was in the fields. 00:18:37.500 --> 00:18:41.160 align:middle line:90% "Sarah,' he was calling, "Sarah. 00:18:41.160 --> 00:18:44.910 align:middle line:84% You weren't so shy in our young day. 00:18:44.910 --> 00:18:48.690 align:middle line:84% You remember yon time in Archer's loft?' 00:18:48.690 --> 00:18:52.570 align:middle line:84% His face blazed at the scullery window. 00:18:52.570 --> 00:18:53.520 align:middle line:90% "Remember? 00:18:53.520 --> 00:18:57.060 align:middle line:90% When the hay was won.' 00:18:57.060 --> 00:18:59.970 align:middle line:84% Aunt Sarah had the door on the snib. 00:18:59.970 --> 00:19:02.400 align:middle line:84% "That's no kind of talk to be coming over. 00:19:02.400 --> 00:19:04.890 align:middle line:90% Now go you home.' 00:19:04.890 --> 00:19:05.880 align:middle line:90% Silence. 00:19:05.880 --> 00:19:08.280 align:middle line:90% Then a wheeze. 00:19:08.280 --> 00:19:15.540 align:middle line:84% We heard the whiskey-jug tinkle, his boots diminish in the yard. 00:19:15.540 --> 00:19:18.390 align:middle line:90% Aunt Sarah put on a fresh apron. 00:19:18.390 --> 00:19:21.710 align:middle line:90% 00:19:21.710 --> 00:19:24.080 align:middle line:84% It's a newish poem, and it has to do-- 00:19:24.080 --> 00:19:29.420 align:middle line:84% it mentions along the way AEW Mason's novel, made 00:19:29.420 --> 00:19:33.540 align:middle line:84% into a film at least once, called The Four Feathers. 00:19:33.540 --> 00:19:36.740 align:middle line:84% In fact, I think his book was remade quite recently, 00:19:36.740 --> 00:19:42.056 align:middle line:90% some star of the moment in it. 00:19:42.056 --> 00:19:45.050 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] Do you know it? 00:19:45.050 --> 00:19:47.900 align:middle line:84% I don't know, was it made recently or remade? 00:19:47.900 --> 00:19:48.650 align:middle line:90% I think it was. 00:19:48.650 --> 00:19:49.430 align:middle line:90% I think I saw it. 00:19:49.430 --> 00:19:52.062 align:middle line:84% I think it went straight to video. 00:19:52.062 --> 00:19:54.442 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:19:54.442 --> 00:19:55.870 align:middle line:90% 00:19:55.870 --> 00:19:57.400 align:middle line:84% I don't even know why they bother 00:19:57.400 --> 00:19:59.733 align:middle line:84% remaking these things, because it was such a great movie 00:19:59.733 --> 00:20:02.440 align:middle line:90% to begin with. 00:20:02.440 --> 00:20:03.880 align:middle line:90% Anyway, anyway, anyway. 00:20:03.880 --> 00:20:06.940 align:middle line:84% The Four Feathers, about Harry Faversham. 00:20:06.940 --> 00:20:10.510 align:middle line:84% And Harry is given a feather by four of his-- 00:20:10.510 --> 00:20:14.230 align:middle line:84% well, three of his army, British army colleagues, 00:20:14.230 --> 00:20:18.760 align:middle line:84% and one from his beloved, accusing him of cowardice. 00:20:18.760 --> 00:20:21.550 align:middle line:84% And in the course of the novel cum film, 00:20:21.550 --> 00:20:24.640 align:middle line:84% the feathers are returned to him. 00:20:24.640 --> 00:20:28.720 align:middle line:84% He saves their lives serially, as it were, and gives 00:20:28.720 --> 00:20:32.170 align:middle line:90% the each feather back in turn. 00:20:32.170 --> 00:20:34.630 align:middle line:84% So that's mentioned along the way. 00:20:34.630 --> 00:20:36.520 align:middle line:84% I saw this film on a Saturday night 00:20:36.520 --> 00:20:40.030 align:middle line:90% on television when I was a kid. 00:20:40.030 --> 00:20:41.770 align:middle line:90% And the next morning, I set-- 00:20:41.770 --> 00:20:45.370 align:middle line:90% I went out and built myself-- 00:20:45.370 --> 00:20:47.110 align:middle line:84% well, I should say that the film is 00:20:47.110 --> 00:20:56.350 align:middle line:84% full of great wonderful footage of tribes persons from North 00:20:56.350 --> 00:21:00.040 align:middle line:90% Africa riding around on camels. 00:21:00.040 --> 00:21:02.050 align:middle line:84% And I went out on Sunday morning and built 00:21:02.050 --> 00:21:04.600 align:middle line:90% myself a camel in the backyard. 00:21:04.600 --> 00:21:05.470 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:21:05.470 --> 00:21:10.000 align:middle line:84% I also mentioned along the way two hotels in Las Vegas. 00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:13.000 align:middle line:90% 00:21:13.000 --> 00:21:15.580 align:middle line:84% It's a sustainer, for those of you 00:21:15.580 --> 00:21:18.880 align:middle line:84% with an interest in these things. 00:21:18.880 --> 00:21:22.180 align:middle line:90% What else should I mention? 00:21:22.180 --> 00:21:23.320 align:middle line:90% Nothing. 00:21:23.320 --> 00:21:24.700 align:middle line:90% "The Turn." 00:21:24.700 --> 00:21:26.110 align:middle line:90% "The Turn." 00:21:26.110 --> 00:21:34.840 align:middle line:84% In those days when the sands might shift at any moment, when 00:21:34.840 --> 00:21:39.400 align:middle line:84% his mother might at any moment lay into him, 00:21:39.400 --> 00:21:42.130 align:middle line:84% he thought nothing of getting up halfway 00:21:42.130 --> 00:21:45.820 align:middle line:84% through a story about the Sahara, the one 00:21:45.820 --> 00:21:49.300 align:middle line:84% about the tribesmen following the scent of water 00:21:49.300 --> 00:21:54.550 align:middle line:84% to a waterhole, thought nothing of getting up and going out 00:21:54.550 --> 00:21:58.870 align:middle line:84% while he was still halfway through a sentence, 00:21:58.870 --> 00:22:02.170 align:middle line:84% going out and taking a turn about the house, 00:22:02.170 --> 00:22:08.650 align:middle line:84% sometimes not bothering to return for an hour, two hours, 00:22:08.650 --> 00:22:15.910 align:middle line:84% a week, a year perhaps, perhaps not until the sands of time 00:22:15.910 --> 00:22:19.270 align:middle line:84% had run out, not until his favorite guinea 00:22:19.270 --> 00:22:24.250 align:middle line:84% hen had brought herself to lay a double-yoked egg, 00:22:24.250 --> 00:22:29.500 align:middle line:84% or the double scent of the sand-pile and the dunghill made 00:22:29.500 --> 00:22:34.960 align:middle line:84% a Sahara of the yard, through which Ned Skinner had moaned, 00:22:34.960 --> 00:22:37.900 align:middle line:90% 'Saahaara, Saahaara.' 00:22:37.900 --> 00:22:41.710 align:middle line:84% The yard in which after seeing The Four Feathers, 00:22:41.710 --> 00:22:44.320 align:middle line:84% he'd taken it upon himself to turn 00:22:44.320 --> 00:22:49.750 align:middle line:84% a stack of pear boxes still redolent of the scent of pears 00:22:49.750 --> 00:22:54.130 align:middle line:84% into a bolster-humped camel that carried him 00:22:54.130 --> 00:22:57.220 align:middle line:84% across the endless sands to where 00:22:57.220 --> 00:23:02.980 align:middle line:84% Harry Faversham and himself lay in wait in a gully for the last 00:23:02.980 --> 00:23:07.180 align:middle line:84% of those out-and-out cowards and scoundrels, 00:23:07.180 --> 00:23:09.250 align:middle line:84% the yard in which he'd not only learned 00:23:09.250 --> 00:23:13.420 align:middle line:84% to spout most, if not all, of the main languages 00:23:13.420 --> 00:23:18.250 align:middle line:84% of the Sahara, but had such a grasp of the lay of the land, 00:23:18.250 --> 00:23:23.170 align:middle line:84% every twist and turn of the ergs and regs which 00:23:23.170 --> 00:23:26.950 align:middle line:84% looked for all the world like featureless sands, 00:23:26.950 --> 00:23:32.380 align:middle line:84% had so mastered following the scent of water to a waterhole, 00:23:32.380 --> 00:23:37.570 align:middle line:84% shielding his eyes from the hen house's fluorescent strip 00:23:37.570 --> 00:23:43.420 align:middle line:84% of light, under which he could make out a couple making out 00:23:43.420 --> 00:23:49.210 align:middle line:84% in a featureless room in the old Sands, or a featureless room 00:23:49.210 --> 00:23:51.280 align:middle line:90% in the Sahara. 00:23:51.280 --> 00:23:54.700 align:middle line:84% A light by which he could make out every twist 00:23:54.700 --> 00:23:58.570 align:middle line:84% and turn in what would have seemed to a layperson 00:23:58.570 --> 00:24:02.860 align:middle line:84% a featureless hotel room, a room which offered him 00:24:02.860 --> 00:24:06.910 align:middle line:84% an instant replay of the old bolster 00:24:06.910 --> 00:24:11.590 align:middle line:84% and pear-box scent rising from the camel under him, 00:24:11.590 --> 00:24:16.810 align:middle line:84% a scent powerful enough to turn him around, reminding him 00:24:16.810 --> 00:24:20.480 align:middle line:84% that he'd already been out for an hour, 00:24:20.480 --> 00:24:25.840 align:middle line:84% two hours, a week, a year, perhaps, 00:24:25.840 --> 00:24:29.140 align:middle line:84% Having him turn back through the Sahara 00:24:29.140 --> 00:24:35.080 align:middle line:84% in which so many and perished, back through the sands on which 00:24:35.080 --> 00:24:39.220 align:middle line:84% lay the bones of thousands of his countrymen, 00:24:39.220 --> 00:24:42.130 align:middle line:84% through the sand pile that was not 00:24:42.130 --> 00:24:46.120 align:middle line:84% at all reminiscent of the Sahara, 00:24:46.120 --> 00:24:52.210 align:middle line:84% having him turn back inside to pick up his own sentence, 00:24:52.210 --> 00:24:53.875 align:middle line:90% to hear himself out. 00:24:53.875 --> 00:24:57.570 align:middle line:90% 00:24:57.570 --> 00:25:03.030 align:middle line:84% Title for the next book, which came out in 1980. 00:25:03.030 --> 00:25:05.580 align:middle line:84% It's a little snapshot, again, of a couple 00:25:05.580 --> 00:25:12.300 align:middle line:84% of horses standing in a field, a half-plowed field attached 00:25:12.300 --> 00:25:15.030 align:middle line:90% to a ply. 00:25:15.030 --> 00:25:23.430 align:middle line:84% Why Brownlee left, and where he went is a mystery even now. 00:25:23.430 --> 00:25:25.930 align:middle line:84% For if a man should have been content-- 00:25:25.930 --> 00:25:29.178 align:middle line:90% [DOOR OPENS] 00:25:29.178 --> 00:25:30.110 align:middle line:90% 00:25:30.110 --> 00:25:31.700 align:middle line:84% I'm not sure if he's coming or going. 00:25:31.700 --> 00:25:32.660 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:25:32.660 --> 00:25:38.240 align:middle line:84% Why Brownlee left, and where he went, is a mystery even now. 00:25:38.240 --> 00:25:41.780 align:middle line:84% For if a man should have been content, it was him. 00:25:41.780 --> 00:25:44.840 align:middle line:84% Two acres of barley, one of potatoes, 00:25:44.840 --> 00:25:50.360 align:middle line:84% four bullocks, a milker, a slated farmhouse. 00:25:50.360 --> 00:25:55.140 align:middle line:84% He was last seen going out to plough on a March morning, 00:25:55.140 --> 00:25:57.950 align:middle line:90% bright and early. 00:25:57.950 --> 00:26:01.685 align:middle line:90% By noon, Brownlee was famous. 00:26:01.685 --> 00:26:07.250 align:middle line:84% They had found all abandoned, with the last rig 00:26:07.250 --> 00:26:14.180 align:middle line:84% unbroken, his pair of black horses, like man and wife, 00:26:14.180 --> 00:26:17.990 align:middle line:84% shifting their weight from foot to foot, 00:26:17.990 --> 00:26:20.750 align:middle line:90% and gazing into the future. 00:26:20.750 --> 00:26:24.500 align:middle line:90% 00:26:24.500 --> 00:26:27.340 align:middle line:84% Let me read a little poem set in the school that I went to, 00:26:27.340 --> 00:26:29.095 align:middle line:84% the primary school, grade school. 00:26:29.095 --> 00:26:33.340 align:middle line:90% 00:26:33.340 --> 00:26:35.240 align:middle line:84% My mother was one of the teachers in it, 00:26:35.240 --> 00:26:39.130 align:middle line:84% which meant that I was required to go to school. 00:26:39.130 --> 00:26:41.950 align:middle line:84% But there were people around who seemed to have 00:26:41.950 --> 00:26:43.000 align:middle line:90% made other arrangements. 00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:45.430 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:26:45.430 --> 00:26:50.320 align:middle line:84% This is a poem about one of them, about his life. 00:26:50.320 --> 00:26:51.220 align:middle line:90% Excuse me. 00:26:51.220 --> 00:26:53.860 align:middle line:84% About his life then, and more recently. 00:26:53.860 --> 00:26:56.500 align:middle line:90% 00:26:56.500 --> 00:27:05.450 align:middle line:84% And Joseph Mary Plunkett, whom I mentioned here, 00:27:05.450 --> 00:27:07.700 align:middle line:84% was an Irish poet, if you recall, 00:27:07.700 --> 00:27:11.420 align:middle line:84% who took part in the 1916 rising in Dublin, 00:27:11.420 --> 00:27:14.880 align:middle line:90% and was shot for his part in it. 00:27:14.880 --> 00:27:18.650 align:middle line:84% So the poem is an Irish word, a Gaelic word as a title. 00:27:18.650 --> 00:27:21.590 align:middle line:90% 00:27:21.590 --> 00:27:24.200 align:middle line:90% "Anseo." 00:27:24.200 --> 00:27:27.140 align:middle line:84% When the master was calling the roll 00:27:27.140 --> 00:27:30.410 align:middle line:84% at the primary school in Collegelands, 00:27:30.410 --> 00:27:34.400 align:middle line:84% you were meant to call back Anseo, and raise your hand 00:27:34.400 --> 00:27:37.250 align:middle line:90% as your name occurred. 00:27:37.250 --> 00:27:43.760 align:middle line:84% Anseo meaning here, here and now, all present and correct, 00:27:43.760 --> 00:27:47.960 align:middle line:84% was the first word of Irish I spoke. 00:27:47.960 --> 00:27:51.590 align:middle line:84% The last name on the ledger belonged to Joseph Mary 00:27:51.590 --> 00:27:57.950 align:middle line:84% Plunkett Ward, and was followed, as often as not, by silence, 00:27:57.950 --> 00:28:03.110 align:middle line:84% knowing looks, a nod and a wink, the Master's droll, 00:28:03.110 --> 00:28:07.430 align:middle line:84% 'and where's our little Ward-of-court?' 00:28:07.430 --> 00:28:10.160 align:middle line:84% I remember the first time he came back, 00:28:10.160 --> 00:28:13.370 align:middle line:84% the Master had sent him out along the hedges 00:28:13.370 --> 00:28:19.280 align:middle line:84% to weigh up for himself, and cut a stick with which he 00:28:19.280 --> 00:28:22.550 align:middle line:90% would be beaten. 00:28:22.550 --> 00:28:25.580 align:middle line:84% After a while, nothing was spoken. 00:28:25.580 --> 00:28:28.350 align:middle line:84% He would arrive as a matter, of course, 00:28:28.350 --> 00:28:36.530 align:middle line:84% with an ash-plant, a sally-rod, or finally, the hazel-wand he 00:28:36.530 --> 00:28:41.840 align:middle line:84% had whittled down to a whip-lash, its twist 00:28:41.840 --> 00:28:47.390 align:middle line:84% of red and yellow lacquers sanded and polished, 00:28:47.390 --> 00:28:51.470 align:middle line:84% and altogether so delicately wrought that he had 00:28:51.470 --> 00:28:55.610 align:middle line:90% engraved his initials on it. 00:28:55.610 --> 00:29:00.950 align:middle line:84% I last met Joseph Mary Plunkett Ward in a pub 00:29:00.950 --> 00:29:04.130 align:middle line:90% just over the Irish border. 00:29:04.130 --> 00:29:09.260 align:middle line:84% He was living in the open, in a secret camp on the other side 00:29:09.260 --> 00:29:11.840 align:middle line:90% of the mountain. 00:29:11.840 --> 00:29:16.730 align:middle line:84% He was fighting for Ireland, making things happen. 00:29:16.730 --> 00:29:22.400 align:middle line:84% And he told me, Joe Ward, of how he had risen through the ranks 00:29:22.400 --> 00:29:30.320 align:middle line:84% to Quartermaster, Commandant, how every morning at parade 00:29:30.320 --> 00:29:36.740 align:middle line:84% his volunteers would call back Anseo, and raise their hands 00:29:36.740 --> 00:29:37.940 align:middle line:90% as their names occurred. 00:29:37.940 --> 00:29:41.330 align:middle line:90% 00:29:41.330 --> 00:29:43.370 align:middle line:84% Seemed for a long time every Sunday 00:29:43.370 --> 00:29:46.850 align:middle line:84% afternoon, my parents had organized 00:29:46.850 --> 00:29:50.450 align:middle line:90% a little outing, a little trip. 00:29:50.450 --> 00:29:55.100 align:middle line:84% And usually, it was to see a graveyard somewhere 00:29:55.100 --> 00:29:56.510 align:middle line:90% in the vicinity. 00:29:56.510 --> 00:30:00.695 align:middle line:84% Graveyard visiting was a very popular pastime. 00:30:00.695 --> 00:30:13.380 align:middle line:90% 00:30:13.380 --> 00:30:16.170 align:middle line:84% And I've just forgotten for the moment 00:30:16.170 --> 00:30:17.310 align:middle line:90% what this poem is called. 00:30:17.310 --> 00:30:20.910 align:middle line:90% 00:30:20.910 --> 00:30:21.950 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:30:21.950 --> 00:30:26.945 align:middle line:90% 00:30:26.945 --> 00:30:33.280 align:middle line:84% And for a long time, we went on these trips, 00:30:33.280 --> 00:30:39.300 align:middle line:84% and we depended for a ride on one particular uncle. 00:30:39.300 --> 00:30:42.060 align:middle line:84% And then, we got our own car, and I 00:30:42.060 --> 00:30:46.580 align:middle line:84% was reminded of this today as we encountered 00:30:46.580 --> 00:30:52.315 align:middle line:84% a roundabout somewhere in Tucson, a rotary or traffic 00:30:52.315 --> 00:30:52.815 align:middle line:90% circle. 00:30:52.815 --> 00:30:56.250 align:middle line:90% 00:30:56.250 --> 00:31:01.320 align:middle line:84% The first trip we took in this car was to visit the first-- 00:31:01.320 --> 00:31:03.240 align:middle line:90% what term do you use here? 00:31:03.240 --> 00:31:04.290 align:middle line:90% Traffic roundabout? 00:31:04.290 --> 00:31:05.220 align:middle line:90% No, traffic circle. 00:31:05.220 --> 00:31:06.300 align:middle line:90% Traffic circle. 00:31:06.300 --> 00:31:10.150 align:middle line:84% The first traffic circle in Ireland, basically. 00:31:10.150 --> 00:31:11.400 align:middle line:90% Certainly in Northern Ireland. 00:31:11.400 --> 00:31:14.310 align:middle line:90% 00:31:14.310 --> 00:31:17.590 align:middle line:84% We'd heard all kinds of reports about it, of course, 00:31:17.590 --> 00:31:22.680 align:middle line:84% because people from the vicinity had been working on it. 00:31:22.680 --> 00:31:27.180 align:middle line:84% And you know, had been explaining the principle, 00:31:27.180 --> 00:31:28.254 align:middle line:90% I suppose. 00:31:28.254 --> 00:31:31.572 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:31:31.572 --> 00:31:33.000 align:middle line:90% 00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:34.710 align:middle line:90% Insofar as it's graspable. 00:31:34.710 --> 00:31:35.430 align:middle line:90% Well, we had-- 00:31:35.430 --> 00:31:37.520 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:31:37.520 --> 00:31:41.510 align:middle line:84% --we did grasp it, but nothing would do, of course, 00:31:41.510 --> 00:31:46.160 align:middle line:84% until we experienced it, which we did on the first trip 00:31:46.160 --> 00:31:46.860 align:middle line:90% in this car. 00:31:46.860 --> 00:31:48.740 align:middle line:84% This is a little poem about that. 00:31:48.740 --> 00:31:51.440 align:middle line:84% Or at least it mentions that, it alludes to that. 00:31:51.440 --> 00:31:54.140 align:middle line:84% I mentioned along the way here the sash, 00:31:54.140 --> 00:31:58.625 align:middle line:84% the sash my father wore, which is an orange song. 00:31:58.625 --> 00:32:02.530 align:middle line:90% 00:32:02.530 --> 00:32:09.490 align:middle line:84% And the B-Specials who were the second division of the Royal 00:32:09.490 --> 00:32:16.030 align:middle line:84% Ulster Constabulary, disbanded in the early 1970s, 00:32:16.030 --> 00:32:19.180 align:middle line:84% for, well, what was generally accepted 00:32:19.180 --> 00:32:22.660 align:middle line:84% to be bad behavior, a tendency towards bad behavior. 00:32:22.660 --> 00:32:24.460 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:32:24.460 --> 00:32:27.730 align:middle line:90% So "The Sightseers." 00:32:27.730 --> 00:32:34.300 align:middle line:84% My father and mother, my brother and sister and I, 00:32:34.300 --> 00:32:39.700 align:middle line:84% with Uncle Pat, are dour best-loved Uncle, 00:32:39.700 --> 00:32:45.550 align:middle line:84% had set out that Sunday afternoon in July in his broken 00:32:45.550 --> 00:32:50.050 align:middle line:84% down Ford, not to visit some graveyard-- 00:32:50.050 --> 00:32:53.560 align:middle line:84% one died of shingles, one of fever, 00:32:53.560 --> 00:32:57.280 align:middle line:84% another's knees turned to jelly-- 00:32:57.280 --> 00:33:02.830 align:middle line:84% but the brand new roundabout at Ballygawley, 00:33:02.830 --> 00:33:06.790 align:middle line:90% the first in mid-Ulster. 00:33:06.790 --> 00:33:12.610 align:middle line:84% Uncle Pat was telling us how the B-Specials had stopped him 00:33:12.610 --> 00:33:16.690 align:middle line:84% one night somewhere near Ballygawley, 00:33:16.690 --> 00:33:22.240 align:middle line:84% and smashed his bicycle, and made him sing the Sash, 00:33:22.240 --> 00:33:26.650 align:middle line:90% and curse the Pope of Rome. 00:33:26.650 --> 00:33:32.890 align:middle line:84% They held a pistol so hard against his forehead 00:33:32.890 --> 00:33:37.090 align:middle line:84% there was still the mark of an O when he got home. 00:33:37.090 --> 00:33:40.820 align:middle line:90% 00:33:40.820 --> 00:33:44.300 align:middle line:84% Title poem the next book comes from a word 00:33:44.300 --> 00:33:49.490 align:middle line:84% we used in our house for the hot water bottle. 00:33:49.490 --> 00:33:54.840 align:middle line:90% 00:33:54.840 --> 00:33:57.900 align:middle line:84% I'm sure sales of hot water bottles will be up in Tucson 00:33:57.900 --> 00:33:58.400 align:middle line:90% today. 00:33:58.400 --> 00:34:01.820 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:34:01.820 --> 00:34:11.166 align:middle line:84% Now, this word is Quoof, which I spell Q-U-O-O-F. Quoof. 00:34:11.166 --> 00:34:12.501 align:middle line:90% Now, after-- 00:34:12.501 --> 00:34:15.868 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:34:15.868 --> 00:34:16.830 align:middle line:90% 00:34:16.830 --> 00:34:18.570 align:middle line:84% For a long time, I wondered if this 00:34:18.570 --> 00:34:23.699 align:middle line:84% might be a corruption of an Elizabethan word 00:34:23.699 --> 00:34:25.860 align:middle line:84% for a hot water bottle, because there 00:34:25.860 --> 00:34:29.909 align:middle line:84% are, of course, such fossilizations in Northern 00:34:29.909 --> 00:34:35.010 align:middle line:84% Ireland from the Elizabethan plantation. 00:34:35.010 --> 00:34:36.000 align:middle line:90% Perhaps not. 00:34:36.000 --> 00:34:41.489 align:middle line:84% Then I wondered if it might be fossilization 00:34:41.489 --> 00:34:44.699 align:middle line:84% of an old Gaelic word for a hot water bottle. 00:34:44.699 --> 00:34:48.270 align:middle line:90% Also perhaps not. 00:34:48.270 --> 00:34:49.710 align:middle line:84% A while after I'd written it, I'd 00:34:49.710 --> 00:34:52.500 align:middle line:84% asked my father about this word, and he told me 00:34:52.500 --> 00:34:56.219 align:middle line:84% that the first time he'd heard it was from us, the kids. 00:34:56.219 --> 00:34:59.600 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:34:59.600 --> 00:35:00.570 align:middle line:90% 00:35:00.570 --> 00:35:02.690 align:middle line:84% So I just assumed it had been handed down 00:35:02.690 --> 00:35:04.460 align:middle line:90% from generation to generation. 00:35:04.460 --> 00:35:07.470 align:middle line:90% 00:35:07.470 --> 00:35:14.960 align:middle line:90% So anyway, "Quoof." 00:35:14.960 --> 00:35:17.030 align:middle line:84% I think this is a poem very much of its time, 00:35:17.030 --> 00:35:19.070 align:middle line:84% and you have to forgive me for that. 00:35:19.070 --> 00:35:23.930 align:middle line:84% How often have I carried our family word for the hot water 00:35:23.930 --> 00:35:29.870 align:middle line:84% bottle to a strange bed, as my father would juggle 00:35:29.870 --> 00:35:38.720 align:middle line:84% a red-hot-half-brick in an old sock to his childhood settle. 00:35:38.720 --> 00:35:42.800 align:middle line:84% I have taken it into so many lovely heads, 00:35:42.800 --> 00:35:47.720 align:middle line:84% or laid it between us like a sword. 00:35:47.720 --> 00:35:53.750 align:middle line:84% A hotel room in New York City with a girl who spoke hardly 00:35:53.750 --> 00:35:59.210 align:middle line:84% any English, my hand on her breast, 00:35:59.210 --> 00:36:07.220 align:middle line:84% like the smoldering one-off spoor of the yeti, 00:36:07.220 --> 00:36:15.950 align:middle line:84% or some other shy beast that is yet to enter the language. 00:36:15.950 --> 00:36:17.690 align:middle line:84% Do you have Bigfoot in these parts? 00:36:17.690 --> 00:36:18.530 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:36:18.530 --> 00:36:19.790 align:middle line:90% Do you? 00:36:19.790 --> 00:36:21.500 align:middle line:84% No, a bit further north into the Rockies. 00:36:21.500 --> 00:36:22.000 align:middle line:90% Texas. 00:36:22.000 --> 00:36:23.030 align:middle line:90% Texas. 00:36:23.030 --> 00:36:23.580 align:middle line:90% I'm sorry. 00:36:23.580 --> 00:36:24.560 align:middle line:90% Please forgive me. 00:36:24.560 --> 00:36:26.090 align:middle line:90% That was not meant to be a slur. 00:36:26.090 --> 00:36:29.485 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:36:29.485 --> 00:36:30.168 align:middle line:90% 00:36:30.168 --> 00:36:32.210 align:middle line:84% It's only that the next poem is called "Bigfoot." 00:36:32.210 --> 00:36:35.570 align:middle line:84% I hadn't planned to read it at all, but now I am. 00:36:35.570 --> 00:36:36.470 align:middle line:90% "Bigfoot." 00:36:36.470 --> 00:36:37.910 align:middle line:90% "Bigfoot." 00:36:37.910 --> 00:36:45.380 align:middle line:84% Comes, if he comes at all, among sumach and birches, 00:36:45.380 --> 00:36:50.090 align:middle line:84% stops halfway across the clearing. 00:36:50.090 --> 00:36:57.650 align:middle line:84% Wood-smoke, the cabin where you mourn your wife, 00:36:57.650 --> 00:37:01.460 align:middle line:84% where, darkening the tiny window, 00:37:01.460 --> 00:37:04.790 align:middle line:84% is the fur coat you promised her when 00:37:04.790 --> 00:37:09.380 align:middle line:84% she was twenty or twenty-one, you forget. 00:37:09.380 --> 00:37:14.650 align:middle line:90% 00:37:14.650 --> 00:37:16.480 align:middle line:84% This poem called "Meeting The British." 00:37:16.480 --> 00:37:20.350 align:middle line:84% It's set in the area just northwest of Detroit 00:37:20.350 --> 00:37:25.880 align:middle line:84% in the 1760s, when, if you recall, 00:37:25.880 --> 00:37:29.500 align:middle line:84% there was a spot of trouble with the locals. 00:37:29.500 --> 00:37:36.280 align:middle line:84% And this is a poem spoken by the spirit of one of the Ottawa. 00:37:36.280 --> 00:37:39.310 align:middle line:90% 00:37:39.310 --> 00:37:41.800 align:middle line:90% "Meeting The British." 00:37:41.800 --> 00:37:44.920 align:middle line:84% We met the British in the dead of winter. 00:37:44.920 --> 00:37:50.860 align:middle line:84% The sky was lavender and the snow lavender blue. 00:37:50.860 --> 00:37:57.040 align:middle line:84% I could hear far below the sound of two streams coming together. 00:37:57.040 --> 00:38:00.280 align:middle line:90% Both were frozen over. 00:38:00.280 --> 00:38:05.200 align:middle line:84% And no less strange, myself calling out in French 00:38:05.200 --> 00:38:08.710 align:middle line:90% across that forest clearing. 00:38:08.710 --> 00:38:14.710 align:middle line:84% Neither General Jeffrey Amherst nor Colonel Henry Bouquet 00:38:14.710 --> 00:38:18.400 align:middle line:84% could stomach our willow-tobacco. 00:38:18.400 --> 00:38:24.190 align:middle line:84% As for the unusual scent when the Colonel shook out 00:38:24.190 --> 00:38:29.590 align:middle line:84% his handkerchief, C-est la lavande, une fleur mauve, 00:38:29.590 --> 00:38:32.380 align:middle line:90% comme le ciel. 00:38:32.380 --> 00:38:37.480 align:middle line:84% They gave us six fishhooks, and two blankets 00:38:37.480 --> 00:38:39.260 align:middle line:90% embroidered with smallpox. 00:38:39.260 --> 00:38:42.370 align:middle line:90% 00:38:42.370 --> 00:38:44.680 align:middle line:90% Enough of that. 00:38:44.680 --> 00:38:50.110 align:middle line:84% This is a poem about a hare I met once when I was a kid. 00:38:50.110 --> 00:38:52.960 align:middle line:84% I was brought up in an area of Ireland 00:38:52.960 --> 00:39:03.280 align:middle line:84% where on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas Day, 00:39:03.280 --> 00:39:06.340 align:middle line:84% there was always a big hunt, a hunt off the hare. 00:39:06.340 --> 00:39:12.340 align:middle line:84% And almost everyone in the vicinity 00:39:12.340 --> 00:39:16.420 align:middle line:84% kept a dog of some description, some class of a Beagle 00:39:16.420 --> 00:39:20.290 align:middle line:84% or Bagle, as they pronounce it there. 00:39:20.290 --> 00:39:26.140 align:middle line:84% And this is a little poem about that, 00:39:26.140 --> 00:39:30.070 align:middle line:90% about Boxing Day and the Bagels. 00:39:30.070 --> 00:39:33.430 align:middle line:90% "Beagels." 00:39:33.430 --> 00:39:40.210 align:middle line:84% That Boxing Day morning, I would hear the familiar far-off gowls 00:39:40.210 --> 00:39:44.800 align:middle line:84% and guilders over Keenaghan and Aughanlig, 00:39:44.800 --> 00:39:50.080 align:middle line:84% of a pack of beagles, old dogs disinclined 00:39:50.080 --> 00:39:55.270 align:middle line:84% to chase a car suddenly quite unlike themselves, 00:39:55.270 --> 00:40:00.130 align:middle line:84% pups coming helter skelter across the plowlands, 00:40:00.130 --> 00:40:03.250 align:middle line:84% with all the chutzpah of veterans 00:40:03.250 --> 00:40:08.020 align:middle line:84% of the trenches, their slate-grays, cinnamons, 00:40:08.020 --> 00:40:13.630 align:middle line:84% liver-browns, lemons, rusts, and violets 00:40:13.630 --> 00:40:18.790 align:middle line:84% turning and twisting unseen across the fields. 00:40:18.790 --> 00:40:23.200 align:middle line:84% Their gowls and gulders turning and twisting 00:40:23.200 --> 00:40:30.460 align:middle line:84% after the twists and turns of the great hare who had just 00:40:30.460 --> 00:40:36.460 align:middle line:84% now sauntered into the yard where I stood on tiptoes, 00:40:36.460 --> 00:40:41.230 align:middle line:90% astride my new Raleigh cycle. 00:40:41.230 --> 00:40:45.130 align:middle line:84% His demeanor somewhat louche, somewhat 00:40:45.130 --> 00:40:49.630 align:middle line:84% lackadaisical under the circumstances. 00:40:49.630 --> 00:40:55.930 align:middle line:84% What with him standing on tiptoes as if to mimic me, 00:40:55.930 --> 00:40:59.950 align:middle line:84% standing almost as tall as I, looking 00:40:59.950 --> 00:41:06.970 align:middle line:84% as if he might for a moment put himself in my place, 00:41:06.970 --> 00:41:12.955 align:middle line:84% thinking better off it, sloping off behind the lorry bend. 00:41:12.955 --> 00:41:18.660 align:middle line:90% 00:41:18.660 --> 00:41:20.160 align:middle line:90% Moving quickly along. 00:41:20.160 --> 00:41:24.108 align:middle line:84% Oh, I think I'll drop a couple of things from that plan, 00:41:24.108 --> 00:41:24.900 align:middle line:90% since we're moving. 00:41:24.900 --> 00:41:28.800 align:middle line:84% Let me read you three little poems about my daughter. 00:41:28.800 --> 00:41:35.800 align:middle line:84% This first one has to do with her in the womb. 00:41:35.800 --> 00:41:39.600 align:middle line:84% It's a poem about a sonogram, the sound picture of the child 00:41:39.600 --> 00:41:42.960 align:middle line:84% there in the womb, as you know, at 14 or 16 00:41:42.960 --> 00:41:46.140 align:middle line:90% weeks into the process. 00:41:46.140 --> 00:41:50.100 align:middle line:84% I mention here Spiddal, the town, little village in Galway. 00:41:50.100 --> 00:41:52.980 align:middle line:90% 00:41:52.980 --> 00:41:57.450 align:middle line:84% Corruption of ospideal, hospital. 00:41:57.450 --> 00:41:59.430 align:middle line:90% Hospital. 00:41:59.430 --> 00:42:05.430 align:middle line:84% So the sex of the child not entirely clear at the end here. 00:42:05.430 --> 00:42:07.470 align:middle line:90% "The Sonogram." 00:42:07.470 --> 00:42:12.210 align:middle line:84% Only a few weeks ago, the sonogram of Jean's womb 00:42:12.210 --> 00:42:19.830 align:middle line:84% resembled nothing so much as a satellite map of Ireland. 00:42:19.830 --> 00:42:23.460 align:middle line:84% Now the image is so well-defined, 00:42:23.460 --> 00:42:29.880 align:middle line:84% we can make out not only a hand but a thumb. 00:42:29.880 --> 00:42:37.560 align:middle line:84% On the road to Spiddal, a woman hitching a ride, 00:42:37.560 --> 00:42:43.605 align:middle line:84% at gladiator in his net, passing judgment on the crowd. 00:42:43.605 --> 00:42:46.505 align:middle line:90% 00:42:46.505 --> 00:42:47.880 align:middle line:84% We discovered just before she was 00:42:47.880 --> 00:42:52.080 align:middle line:84% born that rather than coming headfirst into the world, 00:42:52.080 --> 00:42:54.390 align:middle line:90% she was putting her foot down. 00:42:54.390 --> 00:42:56.130 align:middle line:90% She was a footling breech. 00:42:56.130 --> 00:42:59.040 align:middle line:84% And the minute I heard this term, 00:42:59.040 --> 00:43:01.020 align:middle line:90% I felt a little poem coming on. 00:43:01.020 --> 00:43:03.090 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:43:03.090 --> 00:43:08.730 align:middle line:84% I think I may have attacked her perhaps a little too earnestly, 00:43:08.730 --> 00:43:14.160 align:middle line:84% because in the second line, I use the word groyne, 00:43:14.160 --> 00:43:22.410 align:middle line:84% G-R-O-Y-N-E, which of course is the breakwater type of thing 00:43:22.410 --> 00:43:27.330 align:middle line:90% jutting out into the ocean. 00:43:27.330 --> 00:43:30.250 align:middle line:84% It seemed like a terrific idea at the time. 00:43:30.250 --> 00:43:36.463 align:middle line:84% But anyway, the child was born by cesarean section, C-E-S-A-R, 00:43:36.463 --> 00:43:38.130 align:middle line:84% as it spelled in this part of the world. 00:43:38.130 --> 00:43:40.920 align:middle line:90% 00:43:40.920 --> 00:43:42.720 align:middle line:90% "Footling." 00:43:42.720 --> 00:43:44.820 align:middle line:90% This I don't believe. 00:43:44.820 --> 00:43:48.870 align:middle line:84% Rather than take a header off the groyne 00:43:48.870 --> 00:43:52.770 align:middle line:84% and into the ground swell, yea verily, 00:43:52.770 --> 00:43:56.700 align:middle line:84% the ground swell of life, she shows 00:43:56.700 --> 00:43:59.760 align:middle line:90% instead her utter disregard-- 00:43:59.760 --> 00:44:03.720 align:middle line:84% part diffidence, but mostly scorn-- 00:44:03.720 --> 00:44:07.710 align:middle line:84% for what lies behind the great sea-wall, 00:44:07.710 --> 00:44:13.320 align:middle line:84% and what knocks away at the great sea-cliff. 00:44:13.320 --> 00:44:16.770 align:middle line:84% Though she's been in training all spring and summer, 00:44:16.770 --> 00:44:22.290 align:middle line:84% and swathed herself in fat and Saran-wrap, 00:44:22.290 --> 00:44:26.040 align:middle line:84% like an old time Channel swimmer, 00:44:26.040 --> 00:44:32.250 align:middle line:84% she's now got cold feet and turned in on herself, 00:44:32.250 --> 00:44:35.490 align:middle line:90% the phantom 'a' in Cesarian. 00:44:35.490 --> 00:44:39.070 align:middle line:90% 00:44:39.070 --> 00:44:40.360 align:middle line:90% "The Birth." 00:44:40.360 --> 00:44:41.500 align:middle line:90% Seven o'clock. 00:44:41.500 --> 00:44:46.270 align:middle line:84% The seventh day of the seventh month of the year. 00:44:46.270 --> 00:44:50.410 align:middle line:84% No sooner have I got myself up in lime-green scrubs, 00:44:50.410 --> 00:44:54.940 align:middle line:84% a sterile cap and mask, and taken my place at the head 00:44:54.940 --> 00:45:00.310 align:middle line:84% of the table, than the windless women ply their shears 00:45:00.310 --> 00:45:06.220 align:middle line:84% and gralloch-grub for a footling foot, then, 00:45:06.220 --> 00:45:12.190 align:middle line:84% warming to their task, haul into the inestimable realm 00:45:12.190 --> 00:45:17.470 align:middle line:84% of apple-blossoms and chanterelles and damsons 00:45:17.470 --> 00:45:23.560 align:middle line:84% and eel-spears and foxes and the general hubbub of inkies 00:45:23.560 --> 00:45:28.330 align:middle line:84% and jennets and Kickapoos with their lemniscs, 00:45:28.330 --> 00:45:32.620 align:middle line:84% or peekaboo-quiffs of Russian sable, 00:45:32.620 --> 00:45:38.620 align:middle line:84% and tallow-unctuous vernix, into the realm of the widgeon-- 00:45:38.620 --> 00:45:43.090 align:middle line:84% the whew or yellow-poll, not the zuizin. 00:45:43.090 --> 00:45:48.400 align:middle line:90% Dorothy Aoife Korelitz Muldoon. 00:45:48.400 --> 00:45:52.270 align:middle line:84% I watch through floods of tears as they 00:45:52.270 --> 00:45:58.390 align:middle line:84% give her a quick rub-a-dub and whisk her off to the nursery, 00:45:58.390 --> 00:46:02.605 align:middle line:84% then check their staple-guns for staples. 00:46:02.605 --> 00:46:06.790 align:middle line:90% 00:46:06.790 --> 00:46:09.680 align:middle line:90% And just two more. 00:46:09.680 --> 00:46:15.400 align:middle line:84% This one is about that same child a little bit 00:46:15.400 --> 00:46:16.090 align:middle line:90% down the road. 00:46:16.090 --> 00:46:24.370 align:middle line:90% 00:46:24.370 --> 00:46:26.370 align:middle line:84% Getting there, getting there, I'm getting there. 00:46:26.370 --> 00:46:28.530 align:middle line:90% Sorry, sorry, sorry. 00:46:28.530 --> 00:46:30.030 align:middle line:90% What horrible to watch. 00:46:30.030 --> 00:46:31.200 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:46:31.200 --> 00:46:32.100 align:middle line:90% Worse to do. 00:46:32.100 --> 00:46:35.490 align:middle line:90% 00:46:35.490 --> 00:46:41.310 align:middle line:84% Xerxes, Xerxes, Xerxes, and I mention here the Persian King, 00:46:41.310 --> 00:46:43.374 align:middle line:90% rather than the other guy. 00:46:43.374 --> 00:46:44.760 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:46:44.760 --> 00:46:51.270 align:middle line:84% So this little poem goes from 0 to 60 and just-- 00:46:51.270 --> 00:46:55.230 align:middle line:90% it's a poem about a little tick. 00:46:55.230 --> 00:46:56.370 align:middle line:90% "The Throwback." 00:46:56.370 --> 00:46:59.340 align:middle line:90% 00:46:59.340 --> 00:47:04.530 align:middle line:84% Even I can't help but notice, my sweet, 00:47:04.530 --> 00:47:07.830 align:middle line:84% but when you tuck your chin into your chest, 00:47:07.830 --> 00:47:11.310 align:middle line:84% as if folding a sheet while holding 00:47:11.310 --> 00:47:17.430 align:middle line:84% a clothespin between your teeth, or when, a small detail, 00:47:17.430 --> 00:47:21.840 align:middle line:84% you put your hands like so on your little potbelly, 00:47:21.840 --> 00:47:25.860 align:middle line:84% and twiddle your thumbs like so, it's 00:47:25.860 --> 00:47:32.850 align:middle line:84% as if you're a throwback to the grandmother you never met, 00:47:32.850 --> 00:47:40.560 align:middle line:84% the mother whom I sight in this reddish patch of psoriasis 00:47:40.560 --> 00:47:46.110 align:middle line:84% behind your ear, that might suddenly flare up 00:47:46.110 --> 00:47:52.626 align:middle line:84% into the helmet she wore when she stood firm against Xerxes. 00:47:52.626 --> 00:47:55.770 align:middle line:90% 00:47:55.770 --> 00:48:00.510 align:middle line:84% I'll end with a little marital love poem. 00:48:00.510 --> 00:48:06.750 align:middle line:84% It takes its title "Long Finish" from one of those phrases, 00:48:06.750 --> 00:48:10.080 align:middle line:90% beloved of wine label-- 00:48:10.080 --> 00:48:15.390 align:middle line:90% wine bottle label writers. 00:48:15.390 --> 00:48:18.390 align:middle line:90% "Long Finish." 00:48:18.390 --> 00:48:24.870 align:middle line:84% I mentioned along the way a known play Matsukaze, 00:48:24.870 --> 00:48:26.340 align:middle line:90% or Pining Wind. 00:48:26.340 --> 00:48:31.920 align:middle line:84% I mentioned some of the things happening 00:48:31.920 --> 00:48:38.520 align:middle line:90% in Ireland along the way. 00:48:38.520 --> 00:48:44.280 align:middle line:84% It's a ballad or a double ballad, for what it's worth. 00:48:44.280 --> 00:48:47.850 align:middle line:84% Traditionally, the ballad, the envoy of the ballad 00:48:47.850 --> 00:48:51.270 align:middle line:84% began with the word Prince, where, if you recall, 00:48:51.270 --> 00:48:53.970 align:middle line:84% the troubadour addressed his patron. 00:48:53.970 --> 00:48:56.490 align:middle line:90% 00:48:56.490 --> 00:48:58.650 align:middle line:84% And there's a little play on that here. 00:48:58.650 --> 00:48:59.640 align:middle line:90% Accutane. 00:48:59.640 --> 00:49:03.440 align:middle line:84% Accutane is a prescription medicine. 00:49:03.440 --> 00:49:06.540 align:middle line:90% I hear a funny noise? 00:49:06.540 --> 00:49:07.620 align:middle line:90% That's from the speaker. 00:49:07.620 --> 00:49:09.484 align:middle line:90% It's from the speaker. 00:49:09.484 --> 00:49:10.448 align:middle line:90% Oh. 00:49:10.448 --> 00:49:13.740 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:49:13.740 --> 00:49:17.000 align:middle line:90% 00:49:17.000 --> 00:49:23.060 align:middle line:84% Accutane is a drug for some forms of skin trouble. 00:49:23.060 --> 00:49:26.640 align:middle line:84% So may I say what a pleasure it is to have been here. 00:49:26.640 --> 00:49:28.910 align:middle line:84% Thank you so much for inviting me 00:49:28.910 --> 00:49:33.290 align:middle line:84% and I look forward to talking with you after this. 00:49:33.290 --> 00:49:36.410 align:middle line:90% So "Long Finish." 00:49:36.410 --> 00:49:38.304 align:middle line:90% Not too long, I hope. 00:49:38.304 --> 00:49:39.140 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:49:39.140 --> 00:49:43.160 align:middle line:84% Ten years since we were married, since we 00:49:43.160 --> 00:49:47.270 align:middle line:84% stood under a chuppah of pine boughs 00:49:47.270 --> 00:49:49.520 align:middle line:84% in the middle of a little pinewood 00:49:49.520 --> 00:49:52.940 align:middle line:90% and exchanged our wedding vows. 00:49:52.940 --> 00:49:57.050 align:middle line:84% Save me good, good though, a piece of marchpane, 00:49:57.050 --> 00:50:00.950 align:middle line:84% while I fill your glass with Simi Chardonnay, 00:50:00.950 --> 00:50:06.230 align:middle line:84% as high as decency allows, and then some. 00:50:06.230 --> 00:50:09.260 align:middle line:84% Bear with me now, as I myself must 00:50:09.260 --> 00:50:12.890 align:middle line:84% bear the scrutiny of a bottle of wine 00:50:12.890 --> 00:50:19.130 align:middle line:84% that boasts of hints plum and pear, its muscadine tempered 00:50:19.130 --> 00:50:22.160 align:middle line:90% by an oak backbone. 00:50:22.160 --> 00:50:25.280 align:middle line:84% I myself have designs on the willow-boss 00:50:25.280 --> 00:50:29.510 align:middle line:84% of your breast, on all your waist confines, 00:50:29.510 --> 00:50:33.350 align:middle line:90% between longing and loss. 00:50:33.350 --> 00:50:38.300 align:middle line:84% The wonder is that we somehow have withstood the soars 00:50:38.300 --> 00:50:42.050 align:middle line:84% and slumps in the Dow, of ten years of marriage 00:50:42.050 --> 00:50:45.920 align:middle line:84% and parenthood, its summits and its sloughs, 00:50:45.920 --> 00:50:48.590 align:middle line:84% that we've somehow managed to withstand 00:50:48.590 --> 00:50:53.780 align:middle line:84% an almond-blossomy five years of bitter rapture, five 00:50:53.780 --> 00:50:57.680 align:middle line:84% of blissful rows, and then some, if we 00:50:57.680 --> 00:51:01.310 align:middle line:84% count the one or two to spare when we've been firmly 00:51:01.310 --> 00:51:04.130 align:middle line:90% on cloud nine. 00:51:04.130 --> 00:51:07.250 align:middle line:84% Even though, as you turn away from me with your one 00:51:07.250 --> 00:51:12.560 align:middle line:84% bare shoulder, the veer of your neckline, I glimpse the all 00:51:12.560 --> 00:51:16.010 align:middle line:84% but cleared up eczema patch on your spine, 00:51:16.010 --> 00:51:19.940 align:middle line:84% and it brings to mind not the Schloss that stands, 00:51:19.940 --> 00:51:26.360 align:middle line:84% transitory, tra la, Triestine, between longing and loss, 00:51:26.360 --> 00:51:29.390 align:middle line:84% but a crude hip trench in a field, 00:51:29.390 --> 00:51:32.630 align:middle line:84% covered with pine bones, in which 00:51:32.630 --> 00:51:37.400 align:middle line:84% two men in masks and hoods who have themselves taken 00:51:37.400 --> 00:51:42.920 align:middle line:84% vows wait for a farmer to break a bale for his cows 00:51:42.920 --> 00:51:47.870 align:middle line:84% before opening fire with semi-automatics, 00:51:47.870 --> 00:51:53.600 align:middle line:84% cutting him off slightly above the eyebrows, and then some. 00:51:53.600 --> 00:51:56.360 align:middle line:84% It brings to mind another, driving out 00:51:56.360 --> 00:52:00.350 align:middle line:84% to care for six white-faced kine, 00:52:00.350 --> 00:52:05.060 align:middle line:84% finishing on heather and mountain air, another who'll 00:52:05.060 --> 00:52:10.250 align:middle line:84% shortly divine the precise whereabouts of a landmine 00:52:10.250 --> 00:52:15.080 align:middle line:84% on the road between Beragh and Six Mile Cross, who'll shortly 00:52:15.080 --> 00:52:19.880 align:middle line:84% know what it is to have breasted the line between longing 00:52:19.880 --> 00:52:22.040 align:middle line:90% and loss. 00:52:22.040 --> 00:52:26.180 align:middle line:84% Such forbearance in the face of vicissitude 00:52:26.180 --> 00:52:29.450 align:middle line:84% also brings to mind the little there there's 00:52:29.450 --> 00:52:34.670 align:middle line:84% a now, nows of two sisters whose sleeves are imbued 00:52:34.670 --> 00:52:40.370 align:middle line:84% with the constant douse and souse of salt water 00:52:40.370 --> 00:52:46.790 align:middle line:84% through their salt house in Matsukaze or Pining Wind 00:52:46.790 --> 00:52:48.530 align:middle line:90% by Zeami. 00:52:48.530 --> 00:52:54.440 align:middle line:84% The salt house, through which the wind soughs and soughs, 00:52:54.440 --> 00:52:56.840 align:middle line:84% and then some of the wind's little now, 00:52:56.840 --> 00:53:00.230 align:middle line:84% nows and there, theres seem to intertwine 00:53:00.230 --> 00:53:02.630 align:middle line:84% with those of pining wind and autumn 00:53:02.630 --> 00:53:08.120 align:middle line:84% rain, who must forebear the dolor of their lives of boiling 00:53:08.120 --> 00:53:10.310 align:middle line:90% down brine. 00:53:10.310 --> 00:53:14.300 align:middle line:84% For the double meaning of pine is much the same in Japanese 00:53:14.300 --> 00:53:20.030 align:middle line:84% as English, coming across both in the sense of tree, 00:53:20.030 --> 00:53:24.980 align:middle line:84% and the sense we assign between longing and loss. 00:53:24.980 --> 00:53:30.230 align:middle line:84% As when the ghost of Yukihira, the poet-courtier 00:53:30.230 --> 00:53:35.960 align:middle line:84% who wooed both sisters appears as a ghostly pine, 00:53:35.960 --> 00:53:39.830 align:middle line:90% pining among pine boughs. 00:53:39.830 --> 00:53:43.130 align:middle line:84% Barely have Autumn Rain and Pining Wind 00:53:43.130 --> 00:53:47.270 align:middle line:84% renewed their vines, when you turn back toward me, 00:53:47.270 --> 00:53:51.050 align:middle line:84% and your blouse, while it covers the all 00:53:51.050 --> 00:53:55.700 align:middle line:84% but cleared up patch of eczema, forms as low 00:53:55.700 --> 00:54:00.530 align:middle line:84% as decency allows, and then some. 00:54:00.530 --> 00:54:04.700 align:middle line:84% Princess of Accutane, lets no more 00:54:04.700 --> 00:54:09.530 align:middle line:84% try to refine the pure drop from the dross 00:54:09.530 --> 00:54:14.270 align:middle line:84% than distinguish good thou, between mine and thine, 00:54:14.270 --> 00:54:20.990 align:middle line:84% between longing and loss, but rouse ourselves each dawn, here 00:54:20.990 --> 00:54:26.240 align:middle line:84% on the shore of Suma, with such force and fervor 00:54:26.240 --> 00:54:33.230 align:middle line:84% as spouses may yet espouse, and then some. 00:54:33.230 --> 00:54:34.370 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:54:34.370 --> 00:54:37.720 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:54:37.720 --> 00:54:46.000 align:middle line:90%