WEBVTT

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I think I'll do like this--

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I'll read for 40 minutes
or so, and then we

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start a sort of
conversation here.

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We can do that.

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You can ask any [? hurting ?]
questions you like,

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and I will try to answer it.

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And I will read one poem in
the May Swenson's translation.

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It's about a portrait of
a composer, Edvard Grieg.

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And it's called "An
Artist in the North."

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"I, Edvard Grieg,
moved free among men.

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I joked a lot, read the
papers, often on tour.

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I conducted the orchestra.

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The auditorium and
its lights shuddered

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with each triumph like a train
ferry pushing in to dock.

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I have holed myself up here
to butt heads with silence.

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My work hut is small.

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The grand piano fits as
rubbing-tight in there

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as a swallow under
a roof shingle.

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The steep and lovely
mountain slopes

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are silent most of the time.

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There is no path,
but there is a wicket

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that sometimes opens, and
a peculiar light leaks

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in directly from the trolls.

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Simplify!

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And hammer blows in the
mountain came, came, came, came,

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came one spring night into our
room disguised as heartbeats.

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The year before I die, I
shall send out four hymns

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to track down God.

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But it begins here, a song
about that which is near.

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That which is near.

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Battlegrounds within
us where we bones

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of the dead fight to come alive.

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