WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.380 align:middle line:90% 00:00:07.380 --> 00:00:10.350 align:middle line:84% I think most of you know that our final reading will 00:00:10.350 --> 00:00:15.840 align:middle line:84% be one week from tonight, that's April 23rd, in this auditorium. 00:00:15.840 --> 00:00:17.655 align:middle line:84% And the reader will be Robert Penn Warren. 00:00:17.655 --> 00:00:21.147 align:middle line:90% 00:00:21.147 --> 00:00:22.730 align:middle line:84% I hope, following the reading tonight, 00:00:22.730 --> 00:00:25.040 align:middle line:84% you can come over to the union and meet 00:00:25.040 --> 00:00:27.800 align:middle line:90% our visitors from Australia. 00:00:27.800 --> 00:00:31.310 align:middle line:84% And we'll have some books available for sale also. 00:00:31.310 --> 00:00:33.080 align:middle line:84% We'll be in the terrace lounge, which 00:00:33.080 --> 00:00:36.380 align:middle line:84% is on the second floor on the far end of the union. 00:00:36.380 --> 00:00:39.920 align:middle line:90% 00:00:39.920 --> 00:00:42.280 align:middle line:84% These Australian visitors are here 00:00:42.280 --> 00:00:44.890 align:middle line:84% on a month long tour of the United States, 00:00:44.890 --> 00:00:47.500 align:middle line:84% sponsored in part, by the Academy of American Poets 00:00:47.500 --> 00:00:49.960 align:middle line:90% and the Library of Congress. 00:00:49.960 --> 00:00:54.020 align:middle line:90% 00:00:54.020 --> 00:01:01.940 align:middle line:84% They've already been in Hawaii, Oregon, and Utah, 00:01:01.940 --> 00:01:04.123 align:middle line:90% and California. 00:01:04.123 --> 00:01:06.290 align:middle line:84% We're lucky that they were able to stop off and read 00:01:06.290 --> 00:01:07.370 align:middle line:90% for us too. 00:01:07.370 --> 00:01:10.250 align:middle line:84% The first reader, tonight, will be Les Murray. 00:01:10.250 --> 00:01:13.610 align:middle line:84% Mr. Murray comes from New South Wales. 00:01:13.610 --> 00:01:18.260 align:middle line:84% And as well as writing poetry he is an editor 00:01:18.260 --> 00:01:20.788 align:middle line:90% and a translator, Les Murray. 00:01:20.788 --> 00:01:23.228 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:01:23.228 --> 00:01:33.500 align:middle line:90% 00:01:33.500 --> 00:01:38.510 align:middle line:84% I usually read chronologically, old poems, less old, 00:01:38.510 --> 00:01:40.250 align:middle line:90% and finally, recent. 00:01:40.250 --> 00:01:47.780 align:middle line:84% This one's the oldest, called the Burning Truck. 00:01:47.780 --> 00:01:50.870 align:middle line:84% It began at dawn with fighter planes, 00:01:50.870 --> 00:01:53.030 align:middle line:84% They came in off the sea and didn't rise, 00:01:53.030 --> 00:01:56.820 align:middle line:84% They leaped the sandbar one and one and one Coming so fast 00:01:56.820 --> 00:01:58.820 align:middle line:84% the crockery they shook down from off my shelves 00:01:58.820 --> 00:02:02.090 align:middle line:84% was spinning in the air when they were gone. 00:02:02.090 --> 00:02:03.500 align:middle line:84% They came in off the sea and drew 00:02:03.500 --> 00:02:06.770 align:middle line:84% a wave of lagging cannon shells across our roofs. 00:02:06.770 --> 00:02:10.460 align:middle line:84% Windows spat glass, a truck took sudden fire Out 00:02:10.460 --> 00:02:13.400 align:middle line:84% leaped the driver, but the truck ran on Growing enormous, 00:02:13.400 --> 00:02:16.970 align:middle line:84% shambling by our street doors, coming and coming. 00:02:16.970 --> 00:02:18.950 align:middle line:84% By every right in town, by every average 00:02:18.950 --> 00:02:21.920 align:middle line:84% we knew of in the world, it had to stop, Fetch up 00:02:21.920 --> 00:02:23.480 align:middle line:84% against a building, fall to rubble 00:02:23.480 --> 00:02:26.870 align:middle line:84% from pure force of burning, For its whole body and substance 00:02:26.870 --> 00:02:31.172 align:middle line:84% were consumed with heat but it would not stop. 00:02:31.172 --> 00:02:33.380 align:middle line:84% And all of us who knew our place and prayers Clutched 00:02:33.380 --> 00:02:35.300 align:middle line:84% our verandah rails and windows sills 00:02:35.300 --> 00:02:38.180 align:middle line:84% Begging that truck between our teeth to halt, Keep going, 00:02:38.180 --> 00:02:42.390 align:middle line:90% vanish, strike, but set us free. 00:02:42.390 --> 00:02:45.860 align:middle line:84% And then we saw the wild boys of the street go running after it 00:02:45.860 --> 00:02:48.680 align:middle line:84% And as they followed, cheering, on it crept Windshield melting 00:02:48.680 --> 00:02:52.700 align:middle line:84% now, Canopy frame a cage, torn by gorillas of flame, 00:02:52.700 --> 00:02:55.400 align:middle line:84% And it kept on over the tramlines, Past the church, 00:02:55.400 --> 00:02:57.860 align:middle line:84% on past the last lit windows, And then 00:02:57.860 --> 00:03:00.050 align:middle line:84% out of the world with its disciples. 00:03:00.050 --> 00:03:13.610 align:middle line:90% 00:03:13.610 --> 00:03:16.910 align:middle line:84% The main square in Sydney is called Martin Place. 00:03:16.910 --> 00:03:21.020 align:middle line:84% Sydney is oh-- three million people. 00:03:21.020 --> 00:03:24.410 align:middle line:90% "An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow" 00:03:24.410 --> 00:03:27.890 align:middle line:84% The world goes round Repins, the murmur goes around Lorenzinis, 00:03:27.890 --> 00:03:31.250 align:middle line:84% At Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers, 00:03:31.250 --> 00:03:33.950 align:middle line:84% the Stock Exchange scribbles forget the chalk in their hands 00:03:33.950 --> 00:03:36.410 align:middle line:84% and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club-- 00:03:36.410 --> 00:03:38.077 align:middle line:84% There's a fellow crying in Martin Place. 00:03:38.077 --> 00:03:40.760 align:middle line:90% They can't stop him. 00:03:40.760 --> 00:03:43.370 align:middle line:84% The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile 00:03:43.370 --> 00:03:44.720 align:middle line:90% and drained of motion. 00:03:44.720 --> 00:03:47.960 align:middle line:84% The crowds are edgy with talk and more crowds come hurrying. 00:03:47.960 --> 00:03:50.390 align:middle line:84% Many run in the back streets which minutes ago where busy 00:03:50.390 --> 00:03:51.480 align:middle line:90% main streets, pointing-- 00:03:51.480 --> 00:03:52.980 align:middle line:84% There's a fellow weeping down there. 00:03:52.980 --> 00:03:55.100 align:middle line:90% No one can stop him. 00:03:55.100 --> 00:03:57.950 align:middle line:84% The man we surround, the man no one approaches simply 00:03:57.950 --> 00:04:00.260 align:middle line:84% weeps, and doesn't cover it, weeps not 00:04:00.260 --> 00:04:04.310 align:middle line:84% like the wind, not like a child, like a man 00:04:04.310 --> 00:04:06.260 align:middle line:84% and doesn't declaim it, nor beat his breast, 00:04:06.260 --> 00:04:08.330 align:middle line:90% nor even sob very loudly-- 00:04:08.330 --> 00:04:10.310 align:middle line:84% Yet the dignity of his weeping holds us back 00:04:10.310 --> 00:04:13.070 align:middle line:84% from his space, the hollow he makes about him in the midday 00:04:13.070 --> 00:04:16.040 align:middle line:84% light, in his pentagram of sorrow, 00:04:16.040 --> 00:04:19.070 align:middle line:84% and uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him stare 00:04:19.070 --> 00:04:21.200 align:middle line:84% out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds 00:04:21.200 --> 00:04:24.800 align:middle line:84% longing for tears as children for a rainbow. 00:04:24.800 --> 00:04:26.300 align:middle line:84% Some will say, in the years to come, 00:04:26.300 --> 00:04:28.460 align:middle line:84% a halo or force stood around him. 00:04:28.460 --> 00:04:30.453 align:middle line:90% There is no such thing. 00:04:30.453 --> 00:04:32.870 align:middle line:84% Some will say they were shocked and would have stopped him 00:04:32.870 --> 00:04:34.910 align:middle line:84% but they will not have been there. 00:04:34.910 --> 00:04:37.010 align:middle line:84% The fiercest manhood, the toughest reserve, 00:04:37.010 --> 00:04:40.370 align:middle line:84% the slickest wit amongst us trembles with silence, 00:04:40.370 --> 00:04:43.430 align:middle line:84% and burns with unexpected judgments of peace. 00:04:43.430 --> 00:04:47.277 align:middle line:84% Some in the concourse scream who thought themselves happy. 00:04:47.277 --> 00:04:48.860 align:middle line:84% Only the smallest children and such as 00:04:48.860 --> 00:04:51.152 align:middle line:84% look out of Paradise come near him and sit at his feet, 00:04:51.152 --> 00:04:54.350 align:middle line:90% with dogs and dusty pigeons. 00:04:54.350 --> 00:04:56.630 align:middle line:84% Ridiculous, says a man near me, and stops his mouth 00:04:56.630 --> 00:04:59.930 align:middle line:84% with his hands as if it uttered vomit. 00:04:59.930 --> 00:05:01.910 align:middle line:84% And I see a woman, shining, stretch her hand 00:05:01.910 --> 00:05:04.370 align:middle line:84% and shake as she receives the gift of weeping; 00:05:04.370 --> 00:05:07.460 align:middle line:84% as many as follow her also receive it 00:05:07.460 --> 00:05:10.100 align:middle line:84% and many weep for sheer acceptance, and more 00:05:10.100 --> 00:05:12.650 align:middle line:84% refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance, 00:05:12.650 --> 00:05:15.680 align:middle line:84% but the weeping man, like the Earth, requires nothing, 00:05:15.680 --> 00:05:18.020 align:middle line:84% the man who weeps ignores us, and cries out 00:05:18.020 --> 00:05:21.290 align:middle line:84% of his writhen face and ordinary body not words, but grief, 00:05:21.290 --> 00:05:24.350 align:middle line:84% not messages, but sorrow, hard as the earth, 00:05:24.350 --> 00:05:26.626 align:middle line:90% shear, present as the sea-- 00:05:26.626 --> 00:05:28.280 align:middle line:84% And when he stops, he simply walks 00:05:28.280 --> 00:05:31.520 align:middle line:84% between us mopping his face with the dignity of one man who 00:05:31.520 --> 00:05:34.486 align:middle line:84% has wept, and now has finished weeping. 00:05:34.486 --> 00:05:36.920 align:middle line:84% Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street. 00:05:36.920 --> 00:06:05.740 align:middle line:90% 00:06:05.740 --> 00:06:08.650 align:middle line:90% "Kiss of the Whip" 00:06:08.650 --> 00:06:11.770 align:middle line:84% In Cardiff, off Saint Mary's Street there in the porn shops 00:06:11.770 --> 00:06:14.380 align:middle line:84% you could get a magazine called Kiss of the Whip. 00:06:14.380 --> 00:06:17.302 align:middle line:84% I used to pretend I'd had poems in it. 00:06:17.302 --> 00:06:18.010 align:middle line:90% Kiss of the Whip. 00:06:18.010 --> 00:06:18.700 align:middle line:90% I never saw it. 00:06:18.700 --> 00:06:20.367 align:middle line:84% I might have encountered familiar skills 00:06:20.367 --> 00:06:22.900 align:middle line:84% having been raised in a stockwhip culture. 00:06:22.900 --> 00:06:25.210 align:middle line:84% Grandfather could dock a black snake's head, 00:06:25.210 --> 00:06:27.730 align:middle line:84% Stanley would crack the snake for preference leap 00:06:27.730 --> 00:06:29.530 align:middle line:84% from his horse grab whirl and jolt! 00:06:29.530 --> 00:06:32.920 align:middle line:84% The popped head hummed from his one shot slingshot. 00:06:32.920 --> 00:06:35.800 align:middle line:84% The whips themselves were black, fine-braided arm-coiling beasts 00:06:35.800 --> 00:06:37.300 align:middle line:84% that could suddenly flourish and cut 00:06:37.300 --> 00:06:39.250 align:middle line:90% a cannibal strip from a bull. 00:06:39.250 --> 00:06:40.690 align:middle line:90% Millisecond returns. 00:06:40.690 --> 00:06:43.450 align:middle line:84% Or idly behead an ant on the track. 00:06:43.450 --> 00:06:45.700 align:middle line:90% My father did that. 00:06:45.700 --> 00:06:48.130 align:middle line:84% A knot in the lash would kill a rabbit. 00:06:48.130 --> 00:06:50.110 align:middle line:84% There were decencies, good dogs and children 00:06:50.110 --> 00:06:52.900 align:middle line:84% were flogged with the same lash doubled back. 00:06:52.900 --> 00:06:56.080 align:middle line:84% A horsehair plait on the tip for a cracker sharpened the note. 00:06:56.080 --> 00:06:57.670 align:middle line:84% For ten or twelve thousand years this 00:06:57.670 --> 00:07:00.340 align:middle line:84% was the sonic barrier's one human fracture. 00:07:00.340 --> 00:07:02.590 align:middle line:84% Whip-cracking is that, thonged lightning 00:07:02.590 --> 00:07:05.260 align:middle line:90% making the leanest thunder. 00:07:05.260 --> 00:07:07.810 align:middle line:84% When black snakes go to Hell they are affixed by their fangs 00:07:07.810 --> 00:07:11.320 align:middle line:84% to carve whip-handles and fed on nothing but noonday heat, sweat 00:07:11.320 --> 00:07:13.690 align:middle line:90% and flowing rumps and language. 00:07:13.690 --> 00:07:15.565 align:middle line:84% They writhe up dust-storms for revenge 00:07:15.565 --> 00:07:17.440 align:middle line:84% and send them roaring with creature comfort's 00:07:17.440 --> 00:07:19.300 align:middle line:90% got with a touch of the lash. 00:07:19.300 --> 00:07:20.680 align:middle line:84% And that is a temple yard that'll 00:07:20.680 --> 00:07:23.860 align:middle line:84% bear a more cleansing before, through droughts and barracks, 00:07:23.860 --> 00:07:26.590 align:middle line:84% those lax, quiet speaking, sudden fellas 00:07:26.590 --> 00:07:30.610 align:middle line:84% emerge where skill unbraides from death and mastering, 00:07:30.610 --> 00:07:31.660 align:middle line:90% in Saint Mary's Street. 00:07:31.660 --> 00:07:51.800 align:middle line:90% 00:07:51.800 --> 00:07:55.700 align:middle line:84% In this one, I imagined a couple of chaps coming back 00:07:55.700 --> 00:07:57.665 align:middle line:84% to live in the country after travel. 00:07:57.665 --> 00:08:01.760 align:middle line:90% 00:08:01.760 --> 00:08:03.290 align:middle line:90% It's called, "The Returnees." 00:08:03.290 --> 00:08:06.980 align:middle line:90% 00:08:06.980 --> 00:08:09.830 align:middle line:84% As we were rowing to the lakes our oars were blunt and steady 00:08:09.830 --> 00:08:14.600 align:middle line:84% wings the tanbark-colored water was a gruel of pollen-- 00:08:14.600 --> 00:08:16.850 align:middle line:84% More coming down hinted strange futures 00:08:16.850 --> 00:08:20.150 align:middle line:84% to our cells the far hills ancient 00:08:20.150 --> 00:08:23.750 align:middle line:84% under it the corn flats black-green under heat 00:08:23.750 --> 00:08:26.450 align:middle line:84% were cut in an antique grainy gold it 00:08:26.450 --> 00:08:29.390 align:middle line:90% was the light of Boeotian art. 00:08:29.390 --> 00:08:31.940 align:middle line:84% Bestowing tourbillons the drowned the dusty light we had 00:08:31.940 --> 00:08:34.429 align:middle line:84% used up pulling the distance to us, 00:08:34.429 --> 00:08:37.309 align:middle line:84% we were conscious of a lifelong sound on everything, 00:08:37.309 --> 00:08:41.120 align:middle line:84% that low fly-humming melismatic untedious endless note that 00:08:41.120 --> 00:08:43.820 align:middle line:84% a drone-pipe-plus-chants or a ballad-- 00:08:43.820 --> 00:08:47.610 align:middle line:84% Some ballads-- catch, the one some paintings and many yarners 00:08:47.610 --> 00:08:52.340 align:middle line:84% summon the ground-note here of unsnubbing art cicadas were 00:08:52.340 --> 00:08:57.920 align:middle line:84% in it, and that Gothic towering of crystals in the trees still 00:08:57.920 --> 00:09:02.270 align:middle line:84% hearing, we saw a snake a head winding, being his own snorkel 00:09:02.270 --> 00:09:04.310 align:middle line:84% aslant in the swimming highlights, only 00:09:04.310 --> 00:09:06.500 align:middle line:84% his head betrayed him, leading two ripples 00:09:06.500 --> 00:09:08.540 align:middle line:90% and a scaled-down swirl. 00:09:08.540 --> 00:09:12.020 align:middle line:84% We edged closer, were defied and breathed at. 00:09:12.020 --> 00:09:13.100 align:middle line:90% A migrant, perhaps? 00:09:13.100 --> 00:09:14.450 align:middle line:90% a pioneer? 00:09:14.450 --> 00:09:16.100 align:middle line:84% Or had a hunting bird dropped him, 00:09:16.100 --> 00:09:18.770 align:middle line:84% missing the organ-busting ground and even 00:09:18.770 --> 00:09:21.680 align:middle line:90% the flat of the drinking-ground? 00:09:21.680 --> 00:09:23.540 align:middle line:84% Touching the oars and riding, we kept up 00:09:23.540 --> 00:09:27.080 align:middle line:84% with the blunt, heat-tasting head debating its life, 00:09:27.080 --> 00:09:30.080 align:middle line:84% and sparing it which is the good of Athens. 00:09:30.080 --> 00:09:33.050 align:middle line:84% Where the rotted-milk wharf took the sun flint-hard on top, 00:09:33.050 --> 00:09:34.490 align:middle line:90% dappling below. 00:09:34.490 --> 00:09:37.130 align:middle line:84% Remembered children danced up there spinning their partners, 00:09:37.130 --> 00:09:38.840 align:middle line:90% the bright steel cans. 00:09:38.840 --> 00:09:40.070 align:middle line:90% A way of life. 00:09:40.070 --> 00:09:42.320 align:middle line:90% But a way of life. 00:09:42.320 --> 00:09:45.110 align:middle line:84% The snake rose like a Viking ship signed mud 00:09:45.110 --> 00:09:47.600 align:middle line:84% with a scattering flourish and was into the wale of potato 00:09:47.600 --> 00:09:49.860 align:middle line:90% ground like a whip withdrawn. 00:09:49.860 --> 00:09:51.980 align:middle line:90% We punted it off. 00:09:51.980 --> 00:09:53.810 align:middle line:84% Oar-leather jumping in spaced kicks 00:09:53.810 --> 00:09:56.150 align:middle line:84% against the swivel-screw of rowlocks 00:09:56.150 --> 00:09:58.040 align:middle line:84% we hauled the slow bush headlands 00:09:58.040 --> 00:10:01.970 align:middle line:84% near drinking beer, and talking a bit such friendliness 00:10:01.970 --> 00:10:04.850 align:middle line:84% shone into us, such dry complex cheer, 00:10:04.850 --> 00:10:06.590 align:middle line:84% insouciant calm out of everything, 00:10:06.590 --> 00:10:09.410 align:middle line:84% the brain-shaped trees the wrinkling middle gleam, 00:10:09.410 --> 00:10:12.410 align:middle line:84% the still indifferently well-wooded hills, 00:10:12.410 --> 00:10:15.440 align:middle line:84% it was like rowing to meet your very best passionately casual 00:10:15.440 --> 00:10:18.740 align:middle line:84% and dead friends and feast with them on a little island 00:10:18.740 --> 00:10:21.110 align:middle line:84% or an angel leaning down to one cueing on the Day, 00:10:21.110 --> 00:10:25.430 align:middle line:84% to ask what was the best throw that you did? 00:10:25.430 --> 00:10:27.960 align:middle line:84% That note, raised to the pitch of tears-- 00:10:27.960 --> 00:10:33.650 align:middle line:84% Tower of joking, star of skill, gate of sardonyx and worn gold 00:10:33.650 --> 00:10:36.020 align:middle line:84% Black men and Rosenberg and I have beliefs in common, 00:10:36.020 --> 00:10:38.390 align:middle line:84% I exclaimed and you were agreeing that Mao Tse-tung had 00:10:38.390 --> 00:10:41.210 align:middle line:90% somehow come to Dunsinane-- 00:10:41.210 --> 00:10:44.030 align:middle line:84% Any more heightening and it would have been a test, 00:10:44.030 --> 00:10:46.310 align:middle line:84% but the center we had stirred stopped down again, one 00:10:46.310 --> 00:10:48.170 align:middle line:84% notch to happiness, and we were let 00:10:48.170 --> 00:10:50.540 align:middle line:84% dip our points in the wide stopped water 00:10:50.540 --> 00:10:52.700 align:middle line:90% and reclaim our motion. 00:10:52.700 --> 00:10:55.370 align:middle line:84% Bloodwood trees round there were in such a froth of bloom 00:10:55.370 --> 00:10:57.680 align:middle line:84% that honey dripped on shale and gummed blady-grass 00:10:57.680 --> 00:11:00.950 align:middle line:84% in wigwams and ant-towns sweetness, 00:11:00.950 --> 00:11:03.170 align:middle line:90% infusing, followed us 00:11:03.170 --> 00:11:06.500 align:middle line:84% Reality is somebody's, you said with a new and wryly 00:11:06.500 --> 00:11:10.700 align:middle line:84% balanced smile We're country, and Western, I replied. 00:11:10.700 --> 00:11:24.000 align:middle line:90% 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:24.500 align:middle line:90% The Future-- 00:11:24.500 --> 00:11:27.370 align:middle line:90% 00:11:27.370 --> 00:11:28.120 align:middle line:90% "The Future" 00:11:28.120 --> 00:11:30.040 align:middle line:90% There is nothing about it. 00:11:30.040 --> 00:11:34.090 align:middle line:84% Much science fiction is set there but it is not about it. 00:11:34.090 --> 00:11:35.930 align:middle line:90% Prophecy is not about it. 00:11:35.930 --> 00:11:37.870 align:middle line:90% It's sways no yarrow stalks. 00:11:37.870 --> 00:11:39.940 align:middle line:90% And crystal is a mirror. 00:11:39.940 --> 00:11:41.920 align:middle line:84% Even the man we nailed on a tree for a lookout 00:11:41.920 --> 00:11:45.910 align:middle line:84% said little about it; he told us evil would come. 00:11:45.910 --> 00:11:48.280 align:middle line:84% We see, by convention, a small living distance into it 00:11:48.280 --> 00:11:50.320 align:middle line:90% but even that's a projection. 00:11:50.320 --> 00:11:53.950 align:middle line:84% And all our projections fail the curve where it curves. 00:11:53.950 --> 00:11:55.390 align:middle line:84% It is the black hole out of which 00:11:55.390 --> 00:11:57.610 align:middle line:90% no radiation escapes to us. 00:11:57.610 --> 00:12:00.100 align:middle line:84% The commonplace and magnificent roads of our lives 00:12:00.100 --> 00:12:02.410 align:middle line:84% Go on some way through cityscape and landscape 00:12:02.410 --> 00:12:05.680 align:middle line:84% or steeply sloping, or scree, into that sheer fall 00:12:05.680 --> 00:12:07.930 align:middle line:84% where everything will be that we have ever sent there, 00:12:07.930 --> 00:12:09.790 align:middle line:90% compacted, spinning-- 00:12:09.790 --> 00:12:11.770 align:middle line:90% except perhaps us, to see it. 00:12:11.770 --> 00:12:14.680 align:middle line:90% It's said we see the start. 00:12:14.680 --> 00:12:16.810 align:middle line:84% But, from here, there's a blindness. 00:12:16.810 --> 00:12:20.140 align:middle line:84% The chasm future that will swallow all our present 00:12:20.140 --> 00:12:24.040 align:middle line:84% blinds us to the normal sun that may be imagined shining calmly 00:12:24.040 --> 00:12:28.450 align:middle line:84% away on the far side of it, for others In their ordinary day. 00:12:28.450 --> 00:12:31.180 align:middle line:84% A day to which all our portraits, ideals, revolutions, 00:12:31.180 --> 00:12:35.320 align:middle line:84% denim and deshabille are quaintly heartrending. 00:12:35.320 --> 00:12:38.230 align:middle line:84% To see those people is impossible, to greet them, 00:12:38.230 --> 00:12:39.760 align:middle line:90% mawkish. 00:12:39.760 --> 00:12:40.720 align:middle line:90% Nonetheless, I begin, 00:12:40.720 --> 00:12:43.390 align:middle line:90% "When I was alive--" 00:12:43.390 --> 00:12:45.490 align:middle line:84% And I am turned around to find myself looking 00:12:45.490 --> 00:12:48.550 align:middle line:84% at a cheerful picnic party, the women decently legless, 00:12:48.550 --> 00:12:52.120 align:middle line:84% in muslin and gloves, the men in beards and weskits, 00:12:52.120 --> 00:12:54.790 align:middle line:84% with the long cheroots and duck trousers of the better sort, 00:12:54.790 --> 00:12:56.290 align:middle line:90% relaxing on a stone veranda. 00:12:56.290 --> 00:12:59.090 align:middle line:90% Ceylon, or Sydney. 00:12:59.090 --> 00:13:01.630 align:middle line:84% And as I look, I know they are utterly gone, 00:13:01.630 --> 00:13:03.280 align:middle line:84% each one on his day, with pillow, 00:13:03.280 --> 00:13:06.580 align:middle line:84% small bottles, mist with all the futures they dreamed 00:13:06.580 --> 00:13:09.490 align:middle line:84% or dealt in, going down to that engulfment everything 00:13:09.490 --> 00:13:11.467 align:middle line:84% approaches; with the man on the tree, 00:13:11.467 --> 00:13:12.925 align:middle line:84% they have vanished into the Future. 00:13:12.925 --> 00:13:39.160 align:middle line:90% 00:13:39.160 --> 00:13:42.400 align:middle line:84% Where I come from is, above Sydney, about 200 miles 00:13:42.400 --> 00:13:45.310 align:middle line:90% on the East Coast of Australia. 00:13:45.310 --> 00:13:48.385 align:middle line:84% It's fairly green country, forested country. 00:13:48.385 --> 00:13:51.820 align:middle line:90% 00:13:51.820 --> 00:13:56.320 align:middle line:84% And these place names, in this poem, 00:13:56.320 --> 00:14:00.752 align:middle line:84% refer to spots around the Manning River and a bit 00:14:00.752 --> 00:14:02.710 align:middle line:84% to the south of there, the country I come from. 00:14:02.710 --> 00:14:08.050 align:middle line:90% 00:14:08.050 --> 00:14:10.140 align:middle line:84% Now the sun is an applegreen blindness 00:14:10.140 --> 00:14:12.840 align:middle line:84% through the swells, a white blast on the sea face, 00:14:12.840 --> 00:14:16.350 align:middle line:84% flaking and shoaling; now it is burning off the mist, 00:14:16.350 --> 00:14:18.000 align:middle line:84% it is emptying the density of trees, 00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:21.450 align:middle line:84% it is spreading upriver, hovering above the casuarina 00:14:21.450 --> 00:14:24.630 align:middle line:84% needles, there at Old Bar and Manning Point; 00:14:24.630 --> 00:14:27.030 align:middle line:84% flooding the island farms, it abolishes the milkers' 00:14:27.030 --> 00:14:30.480 align:middle line:84% munching breath as they walk towards the cowyards; 00:14:30.480 --> 00:14:34.170 align:middle line:84% it stings a bucket here, a teatcup there. 00:14:34.170 --> 00:14:37.050 align:middle line:84% Morning steps into the world by ever more southerly gates; 00:14:37.050 --> 00:14:39.540 align:middle line:84% shadows weaken their north skew on Middle Brother, 00:14:39.540 --> 00:14:44.340 align:middle line:84% on Cape Hawke, on the dune scrub towards Seal Rocks; 00:14:44.340 --> 00:14:47.100 align:middle line:84% steadily the heat is coming on, the butter-water time, 00:14:47.100 --> 00:14:51.930 align:middle line:84% the clothes-sticking time; grass covers itself with straw; 00:14:51.930 --> 00:14:54.900 align:middle line:84% abandoned things are thronged with spirits; 00:14:54.900 --> 00:14:56.940 align:middle line:84% everywhere wood is still with strain; 00:14:56.940 --> 00:14:58.800 align:middle line:84% birds hiding down the creek galleries, 00:14:58.800 --> 00:15:02.070 align:middle line:84% and in the cockspur canes; the cicada 00:15:02.070 --> 00:15:04.050 align:middle line:84% is hanging up her sheets; she takes wing 00:15:04.050 --> 00:15:06.510 align:middle line:90% off her music-sheets. 00:15:06.510 --> 00:15:09.090 align:middle line:84% Cars pass with a rational zoom, panning quickly 00:15:09.090 --> 00:15:11.730 align:middle line:84% towards Wingham, through the thronged and glittering, 00:15:11.730 --> 00:15:14.730 align:middle line:84% the shale-topped ridges, and the cattlecamps towards Wingham 00:15:14.730 --> 00:15:16.530 align:middle line:84% for the cricket, the ball knocked hard 00:15:16.530 --> 00:15:20.820 align:middle line:84% in front of smoked-glass rangers, and for the drinking. 00:15:20.820 --> 00:15:22.740 align:middle line:84% In the time of heat, the time of flies 00:15:22.740 --> 00:15:25.260 align:middle line:84% around the mouth, the time of the west verandah; 00:15:25.260 --> 00:15:27.360 align:middle line:84% looking at that umbrage along the ranges, 00:15:27.360 --> 00:15:30.030 align:middle line:84% on the New England side; clouds begin 00:15:30.030 --> 00:15:32.790 align:middle line:84% assembling vaguely, a hot soiled heaviness on the sky, 00:15:32.790 --> 00:15:36.390 align:middle line:84% away there towards Gloucester; a swelling up of clouds, 00:15:36.390 --> 00:15:39.510 align:middle line:84% growing there above Mount George, and above Tipperary; 00:15:39.510 --> 00:15:42.690 align:middle line:84% far away and hot with light; sometimes a storm 00:15:42.690 --> 00:15:44.940 align:middle line:84% takes root there, and fills the heavens rapidly; 00:15:44.940 --> 00:15:47.730 align:middle line:84% darkening, boiling up and swaying on its stalks, 00:15:47.730 --> 00:15:50.400 align:middle line:84% pulling this way and that, blowing round by Krambach; 00:15:50.400 --> 00:15:52.680 align:middle line:84% coming white on Bulby mountain, it drenches down 00:15:52.680 --> 00:15:55.118 align:middle line:84% on the paddocks, and on the wire fences 00:15:55.118 --> 00:15:56.910 align:middle line:84% the paddocks are full of ghosts, and people 00:15:56.910 --> 00:16:00.120 align:middle line:90% in cornbag hoods approaching; 00:16:00.120 --> 00:16:01.770 align:middle line:84% lights are lit in the house; the storm 00:16:01.770 --> 00:16:03.810 align:middle line:84% veers mightily on its stem, above the roof; 00:16:03.810 --> 00:16:08.100 align:middle line:84% the hills uphold it; the stony hills guide its dissolution; 00:16:08.100 --> 00:16:10.500 align:middle line:84% gullies opening and crumbling down, wrenching tussocks 00:16:10.500 --> 00:16:13.980 align:middle line:84% and rolling them; the storm carries a greenish-gray bag; 00:16:13.980 --> 00:16:15.780 align:middle line:84% perhaps it will find hail and send it down, 00:16:15.780 --> 00:16:19.050 align:middle line:84% starring cars, flattening tomatoes, 00:16:19.050 --> 00:16:22.410 align:middle line:84% in the time of the Washaways, of the dead trunks braiding water, 00:16:22.410 --> 00:16:23.595 align:middle line:90% and of the Hailstone Yarns. 00:16:23.595 --> 00:16:43.935 align:middle line:90% 00:16:43.935 --> 00:16:45.270 align:middle line:90% Oh, the air is dry here! 00:16:45.270 --> 00:16:48.225 align:middle line:90% 00:16:48.225 --> 00:16:49.350 align:middle line:90% I kind of like it that way. 00:16:49.350 --> 00:16:52.590 align:middle line:90% 00:16:52.590 --> 00:16:54.090 align:middle line:84% Here's a fairly dry one in return, 00:16:54.090 --> 00:16:57.840 align:middle line:84% it's called Employment For The Castes In Abeyance. 00:16:57.840 --> 00:17:00.150 align:middle line:84% I was a translator at the Institute-- 00:17:00.150 --> 00:17:02.880 align:middle line:84% Fair pay, clean work, and a bowerbirds delight 00:17:02.880 --> 00:17:06.510 align:middle line:84% of theory and fact to keep the forebrain supple. 00:17:06.510 --> 00:17:07.920 align:middle line:90% I was Western Europe. 00:17:07.920 --> 00:17:11.819 align:middle line:84% Beitrage, reviste, dissertaties, rapports turned English 00:17:11.819 --> 00:17:13.800 align:middle line:90% under my one fingered touch. 00:17:13.800 --> 00:17:16.470 align:middle line:90% Teacup-and-Remington days. 00:17:16.470 --> 00:17:20.550 align:middle line:84% It was a job like Australia-- peace and cover, a recourse 00:17:20.550 --> 00:17:23.495 align:middle line:84% for exiles, poets, decent spies, for plotters 00:17:23.495 --> 00:17:27.240 align:middle line:84% who meant to rise from the dead with their circle. 00:17:27.240 --> 00:17:29.790 align:middle line:84% My Chekhovian colleague who worked as if under surveillance 00:17:29.790 --> 00:17:32.640 align:middle line:84% would tell me tales of real life in Peking in Shanghai 00:17:32.640 --> 00:17:36.760 align:middle line:84% and swear at the gender subsumed in an equation. 00:17:36.760 --> 00:17:39.840 align:middle line:84% The trade was uneasy about computers, back then, if they 00:17:39.840 --> 00:17:42.720 align:middle line:84% could be taught not to render, say, out of sight out of mind 00:17:42.720 --> 00:17:46.590 align:middle line:84% as invisible lunatic they might supersede us-- 00:17:46.590 --> 00:17:48.030 align:middle line:90% Not because they'd be better. 00:17:48.030 --> 00:17:51.120 align:middle line:90% More on principle. 00:17:51.120 --> 00:17:53.640 align:middle line:84% Not that our researchers were unkindly folk-- 00:17:53.640 --> 00:17:55.620 align:middle line:84% One man on exchange from Moscow State 00:17:55.620 --> 00:17:57.390 align:middle line:84% told me about Earth's crustal plates, 00:17:57.390 --> 00:17:59.730 align:middle line:84% their ponderous inevitable motion, 00:17:59.730 --> 00:18:02.520 align:middle line:84% collisions that raised mountain chains, 00:18:02.520 --> 00:18:04.740 align:middle line:84% the continents rode on these Marxian turtles, 00:18:04.740 --> 00:18:07.650 align:middle line:84% it seemed, another had brought slow death 00:18:07.650 --> 00:18:09.630 align:middle line:84% to a billion rabbits, a third man 00:18:09.630 --> 00:18:14.040 align:middle line:84% had bottled the essence of rain on dry ground. 00:18:14.040 --> 00:18:16.470 align:middle line:84% They were translators, too, our scientists-- 00:18:16.470 --> 00:18:18.840 align:middle line:84% They were translating the universe into science, 00:18:18.840 --> 00:18:22.440 align:middle line:84% believing that otherwise it had no meaning. 00:18:22.440 --> 00:18:26.280 align:middle line:84% Leaving there, I kept my Larousse and my Leutseligkeit 00:18:26.280 --> 00:18:29.160 align:middle line:84% and I heard that machine translation never happened, 00:18:29.160 --> 00:18:30.930 align:middle line:90% that language defeated it. 00:18:30.930 --> 00:18:33.600 align:middle line:90% We are a language species. 00:18:33.600 --> 00:18:36.660 align:middle line:84% I gather this provoked a shift in science, that having become 00:18:36.660 --> 00:18:39.420 align:middle line:84% a side, it then changed sides and having collapsed, 00:18:39.420 --> 00:18:42.690 align:middle line:90% continued at full tempo. 00:18:42.690 --> 00:18:44.640 align:middle line:84% Prince Obolensky succeeded me for a time 00:18:44.640 --> 00:18:47.850 align:middle line:84% but he soon returned to Fiji to teach Hebrew. 00:18:47.850 --> 00:18:50.550 align:middle line:84% In the midst of life, in the midst of life, 00:18:50.550 --> 00:18:52.710 align:middle line:90% we are in employment-- 00:18:52.710 --> 00:18:55.770 align:middle line:84% Seek travel and print, seek-left-right-travel-and-bang 00:18:55.770 --> 00:18:58.350 align:middle line:84% as the Chinese typewriter went which I saw working when I was 00:18:58.350 --> 00:19:00.196 align:middle line:90% a translator at the Institute. 00:19:00.196 --> 00:19:26.908 align:middle line:90% 00:19:26.908 --> 00:19:28.450 align:middle line:84% I'll finish up with some recent ones. 00:19:28.450 --> 00:19:35.860 align:middle line:90% 00:19:35.860 --> 00:19:37.810 align:middle line:84% One of the dry land phenomena I've always 00:19:37.810 --> 00:19:40.990 align:middle line:84% been fascinated with is those curls of mud 00:19:40.990 --> 00:19:44.110 align:middle line:84% that you get on the bottom of dry-- 00:19:44.110 --> 00:19:45.355 align:middle line:90% dry lakes, dry lagoons. 00:19:45.355 --> 00:19:48.760 align:middle line:90% 00:19:48.760 --> 00:19:52.270 align:middle line:84% And I got down to this fascination 00:19:52.270 --> 00:19:54.145 align:middle line:84% and wrote this poem called "The Craze Field." 00:19:54.145 --> 00:19:56.710 align:middle line:90% 00:19:56.710 --> 00:19:59.800 align:middle line:84% These lagoons, these and their branches, 00:19:59.800 --> 00:20:01.750 align:middle line:90% streets of the underworld. 00:20:01.750 --> 00:20:05.620 align:middle line:84% Their water has become the trees that stand along them. 00:20:05.620 --> 00:20:08.080 align:middle line:84% Below root-revetments, in the circles 00:20:08.080 --> 00:20:10.690 align:middle line:84% of the water's recession the ravines 00:20:10.690 --> 00:20:13.660 align:middle line:84% seem thronged with a legacy of lily pads. 00:20:13.660 --> 00:20:15.490 align:middle line:84% Earth curls and faintly glistens, 00:20:15.490 --> 00:20:18.280 align:middle line:90% scumbled painterly and peeling. 00:20:18.280 --> 00:20:20.480 align:middle line:84% Palates of drought-stilled assonance, 00:20:20.480 --> 00:20:23.440 align:middle line:84% they are cut flakes of grit, crisps of bottom, 00:20:23.440 --> 00:20:26.800 align:middle line:84% dried meniscus lifted at the edges. 00:20:26.800 --> 00:20:28.690 align:middle line:90% Abstracts realized in slime. 00:20:28.690 --> 00:20:30.970 align:middle line:84% Shards of bubble, shriveled viscous of clay 00:20:30.970 --> 00:20:34.090 align:middle line:84% and stopped life, the scales of the water snake 00:20:34.090 --> 00:20:37.180 align:middle line:84% have gone to gray on this channel. 00:20:37.180 --> 00:20:39.970 align:middle line:84% Exfoliate bark of the rain tree, all the outer plaques 00:20:39.970 --> 00:20:41.980 align:middle line:90% have a jostling average size. 00:20:41.980 --> 00:20:46.060 align:middle line:84% It is a kind of fire, the invention of networks. 00:20:46.060 --> 00:20:48.700 align:middle line:84% Water's return, however gradual, and it won't be, 00:20:48.700 --> 00:20:52.270 align:middle line:84% however gentle, it won't be, would not re-lay all seamless 00:20:52.270 --> 00:20:57.190 align:middle line:84% this basal membrane; it has borne excess of clarity. 00:20:57.190 --> 00:20:59.980 align:middle line:84% This is the lush sheet that overlay the first cities, 00:20:59.980 --> 00:21:03.760 align:middle line:84% the mother goddess towns, that underlay them first; 00:21:03.760 --> 00:21:06.340 align:middle line:90% this they had for mortar. 00:21:06.340 --> 00:21:09.520 align:middle line:84% Laminar, half detached, these cusps are primal tissue, 00:21:09.520 --> 00:21:12.970 align:middle line:84% foreshadowings of leaf, pottery, palimpsest, 00:21:12.970 --> 00:21:16.090 align:middle line:90% the Dead Lagoon Scrolls. 00:21:16.090 --> 00:21:19.210 align:middle line:84% In this hollow season everything is perhaps to be recapitulated, 00:21:19.210 --> 00:21:21.340 align:middle line:90% hurriedly, approximately. 00:21:21.340 --> 00:21:23.110 align:middle line:90% It is a kind of fire. 00:21:23.110 --> 00:21:27.910 align:middle line:84% Saturate calm is all sprung, in the mother country. 00:21:27.910 --> 00:21:30.682 align:middle line:84% The lagoon-bed museums meanwhile have a dizzy stillness 00:21:30.682 --> 00:21:32.140 align:middle line:84% that will reduce with all the steps 00:21:32.140 --> 00:21:36.310 align:middle line:84% that are coming, to meal, grist, morsels. 00:21:36.310 --> 00:21:39.190 align:middle line:84% Dewfall and birds' feet of nipped, blind noons 00:21:39.190 --> 00:21:42.370 align:middle line:90% of nibbled this mineral matzah. 00:21:42.370 --> 00:21:44.920 align:middle line:84% The warlike peace-talking young, pacing this dominion 00:21:44.920 --> 00:21:47.680 align:middle line:84% in the beautiful flesh that outdoes their own creations, 00:21:47.680 --> 00:21:49.840 align:middle line:90% might read gnomic fragments-- 00:21:49.840 --> 00:21:57.040 align:middle line:84% corr lux Romant irit Or fragmentary texts-- 00:21:57.040 --> 00:22:00.280 align:middle line:84% Who lose belief in God will not only believe in anything. 00:22:00.280 --> 00:22:04.150 align:middle line:84% They will bring blood offerings to it. 00:22:04.150 --> 00:22:08.140 align:middle line:84% Bones, snags, seed capsules, intrinsic in the Martian 00:22:08.140 --> 00:22:10.390 align:middle line:84% central pan, are hidden, in the craze, 00:22:10.390 --> 00:22:11.920 align:middle line:90% under small pagoda eaves. 00:22:11.920 --> 00:22:23.320 align:middle line:90% 00:22:23.320 --> 00:22:24.940 align:middle line:90% This one's for bed. 00:22:24.940 --> 00:22:27.490 align:middle line:90% One of my favorite places, bed. 00:22:27.490 --> 00:22:29.950 align:middle line:84% And no matter how far you travel you can always find it, 00:22:29.950 --> 00:22:31.540 align:middle line:90% you know you'll always be there. 00:22:31.540 --> 00:22:34.990 align:middle line:90% "Homage To The Launching Place" 00:22:34.990 --> 00:22:36.620 align:middle line:84% Pleasure-craft of the sprung rhythms, 00:22:36.620 --> 00:22:40.480 align:middle line:84% bed, kindest of quadrupeds, you are also the unrocking boat 00:22:40.480 --> 00:22:43.840 align:middle line:90% that moves on silence. 00:22:43.840 --> 00:22:45.460 align:middle line:84% Straining hatchway into this world, 00:22:45.460 --> 00:22:48.970 align:middle line:84% you sustain our collapses above Earth; guarantor of evolution, 00:22:48.970 --> 00:22:52.240 align:middle line:90% you are our raised base-line. 00:22:52.240 --> 00:22:54.250 align:middle line:84% Resisting gravity, for us and in us, 00:22:54.250 --> 00:22:56.770 align:middle line:84% you form a planet-wide unobtrusive discontinuous 00:22:56.770 --> 00:23:00.550 align:middle line:84% layer, the mattressphere, pretty nearly 00:23:00.550 --> 00:23:05.020 align:middle line:84% our highest common level, tables may dispute it. 00:23:05.020 --> 00:23:07.420 align:middle line:84% Muscles' sweatprinted solace, godmother 00:23:07.420 --> 00:23:09.790 align:middle line:84% of butt-stubbing dreams, you sublimate, 00:23:09.790 --> 00:23:14.170 align:middle line:84% Great Vehicle, all our upright passions; midwife of figuring, 00:23:14.170 --> 00:23:17.080 align:middle line:84% and design, you moderate them wisely; 00:23:17.080 --> 00:23:18.430 align:middle line:90% you sigh Think some more. 00:23:18.430 --> 00:23:20.990 align:middle line:90% Sleep on it. 00:23:20.990 --> 00:23:21.620 align:middle line:90% Solitude. 00:23:21.620 --> 00:23:24.950 align:middle line:84% Approaching rest Time reveals her oscillation 00:23:24.950 --> 00:23:28.940 align:middle line:84% and narrows into space; there is time in that dilation-- 00:23:28.940 --> 00:23:29.870 align:middle line:90% Mansions. 00:23:29.870 --> 00:23:30.680 align:middle line:90% Defiles. 00:23:30.680 --> 00:23:32.030 align:middle line:90% Continents. 00:23:32.030 --> 00:23:34.040 align:middle line:84% The living and the greatly living, 00:23:34.040 --> 00:23:38.990 align:middle line:84% objects that take sides, that aren't morally neutral-- 00:23:38.990 --> 00:23:40.640 align:middle line:84% You accept my warm absence there, 00:23:40.640 --> 00:23:43.880 align:middle line:84% as you will accept, one day, my cooling presence. 00:23:43.880 --> 00:23:47.660 align:middle line:84% I loved you from the first, bed, doorway out of this world; 00:23:47.660 --> 00:23:51.290 align:middle line:84% above your inner springs I learned to dig my own. 00:23:51.290 --> 00:23:53.795 align:middle line:84% Primly dressed, linen-collared one, you look so still, 00:23:53.795 --> 00:23:57.410 align:middle line:84% for your speed, shield that carries us to the fight 00:23:57.410 --> 00:23:58.520 align:middle line:90% and bears us from it. 00:23:58.520 --> 00:24:01.290 align:middle line:90% 00:24:01.290 --> 00:24:13.280 align:middle line:84% And finally, there's a subject I've 00:24:13.280 --> 00:24:15.717 align:middle line:84% been after for a long time, which is interest. 00:24:15.717 --> 00:24:17.300 align:middle line:84% Not money interest, but the other one, 00:24:17.300 --> 00:24:22.410 align:middle line:84% you know, to be interested in, to be interested by something. 00:24:22.410 --> 00:24:26.120 align:middle line:84% This one is called, this was my first triad, it's called, 00:24:26.120 --> 00:24:29.480 align:middle line:90% First Essay On Interest. 00:24:29.480 --> 00:24:31.430 align:middle line:90% Not usury, but interest. 00:24:31.430 --> 00:24:34.190 align:middle line:84% The cup slowed in mid-raise, the short whistle, 00:24:34.190 --> 00:24:36.650 align:middle line:84% hum, the little forward shift mark 00:24:36.650 --> 00:24:40.220 align:middle line:84% our intake of that non-physical breath for which the lungs 00:24:40.220 --> 00:24:44.360 align:middle line:84% suspend, since the self vanishes angle 00:24:44.360 --> 00:24:47.570 align:middle line:84% to that form of love oscillating with it. 00:24:47.570 --> 00:24:50.220 align:middle line:84% A blink returns us to self, that intimate anger, 00:24:50.220 --> 00:24:52.670 align:middle line:90% self-repairing as a bow-wave. 00:24:52.670 --> 00:24:54.430 align:middle line:84% What we have received is the ordinary mail 00:24:54.430 --> 00:24:56.750 align:middle line:84% of the otherworld, wholly common, 00:24:56.750 --> 00:25:01.010 align:middle line:84% not postmarked divine; no one refuses delivery, not even 00:25:01.010 --> 00:25:03.500 align:middle line:84% the eagle, her face fixed that heavy Menace-- 00:25:03.500 --> 00:25:07.040 align:middle line:84% I have juices to sort the relevant from the irrelevant; 00:25:07.040 --> 00:25:10.220 align:middle line:84% even her gaze might tilt left, askance, aloof, 00:25:10.220 --> 00:25:13.730 align:middle line:90% right, fixing us still unknown. 00:25:13.730 --> 00:25:17.300 align:middle line:90% Delaying huge flight. 00:25:17.300 --> 00:25:18.500 align:middle line:90% Interest. 00:25:18.500 --> 00:25:21.260 align:middle line:84% Mild and inherent with fire as oxygen, 00:25:21.260 --> 00:25:23.270 align:middle line:90% it is a sporadic inhalation. 00:25:23.270 --> 00:25:25.100 align:middle line:84% We can live for years under its surface, 00:25:25.100 --> 00:25:30.020 align:middle line:84% breathing material air then something catches, is itself. 00:25:30.020 --> 00:25:32.600 align:middle line:90% Intent and special silence. 00:25:32.600 --> 00:25:35.840 align:middle line:84% This is interest that blinks our interests out and alone permits 00:25:35.840 --> 00:25:37.880 align:middle line:84% their survival, by relieving us of their gravity 00:25:37.880 --> 00:25:40.310 align:middle line:84% for a timeless moment; that centers 00:25:40.310 --> 00:25:42.950 align:middle line:84% where it points, and points to centring, 00:25:42.950 --> 00:25:45.500 align:middle line:84% that centers us where at points, and reflects our center. 00:25:45.500 --> 00:25:48.140 align:middle line:90% 00:25:48.140 --> 00:25:50.780 align:middle line:84% And this breadth of interest is non-rhythmical; 00:25:50.780 --> 00:25:54.380 align:middle line:84% it is human to obey, humane to be wary of rhythm 00:25:54.380 --> 00:25:58.110 align:middle line:84% as tainted by the rallies, as marching with the snare drum. 00:25:58.110 --> 00:26:00.950 align:middle line:84% The season of interest is not fixed in the calendar cycle; 00:26:00.950 --> 00:26:03.200 align:middle line:84% it pulls towards acute dimensions. 00:26:03.200 --> 00:26:05.300 align:middle line:90% Death is its intimate. 00:26:05.300 --> 00:26:07.250 align:middle line:84% When that Holland of cycles, the body, turns 00:26:07.250 --> 00:26:10.250 align:middle line:84% headlong downhill interest retreats from the face; 00:26:10.250 --> 00:26:12.680 align:middle line:84% it ceases to instill and fade, like breath; 00:26:12.680 --> 00:26:16.610 align:middle line:84% it becomes a vivid steady state that registers every grass 00:26:16.610 --> 00:26:20.180 align:middle line:84% blade seen on the way, the long combed grain in the steps, 00:26:20.180 --> 00:26:23.300 align:middle line:84% free insects flying; it stands aside 00:26:23.300 --> 00:26:25.400 align:middle line:84% from your panic, the wracked disarray; 00:26:25.400 --> 00:26:29.330 align:middle line:84% it behaves as if it were the part of you not dying. 00:26:29.330 --> 00:26:30.890 align:middle line:84% Affinity of interest with extremity 00:26:30.890 --> 00:26:33.920 align:middle line:84% seems to distill to this polar disaffinity, 00:26:33.920 --> 00:26:36.860 align:middle line:84% to learn where their dance ends will be interesting. 00:26:36.860 --> 00:26:37.705 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:26:37.705 --> 00:26:40.615 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:26:40.615 --> 00:26:51.290 align:middle line:90% 00:26:51.290 --> 00:26:55.040 align:middle line:84% Vincent Buckley was born in Victoria 00:26:55.040 --> 00:27:00.320 align:middle line:84% and currently lives and teaches at University in Melbourne. 00:27:00.320 --> 00:27:04.100 align:middle line:84% As well as a poet he is very well 00:27:04.100 --> 00:27:06.110 align:middle line:84% known in his country for his essays 00:27:06.110 --> 00:27:08.570 align:middle line:84% and literary criticism, Vincent Buckley. 00:27:08.570 --> 00:27:16.250 align:middle line:90% 00:27:16.250 --> 00:27:19.730 align:middle line:84% Thank you, I'd like, first of all, 00:27:19.730 --> 00:27:22.430 align:middle line:84% to say how much we appreciate the thoughtfulness 00:27:22.430 --> 00:27:26.540 align:middle line:84% and generosity of the Academy of American Poets 00:27:26.540 --> 00:27:32.990 align:middle line:84% and the hospitality of all the centers that we've been to. 00:27:32.990 --> 00:27:36.110 align:middle line:84% We're particularly glad to come to Tucson, 00:27:36.110 --> 00:27:39.950 align:middle line:84% it was no afterthought on anybody's part, 00:27:39.950 --> 00:27:41.780 align:middle line:84% because we know perfectly well that this 00:27:41.780 --> 00:27:47.690 align:middle line:84% is a very important center for poetry in America. 00:27:47.690 --> 00:27:52.670 align:middle line:84% And I'd like to say, publicly, how much we 00:27:52.670 --> 00:27:55.730 align:middle line:84% appreciate the hospitality we've been given. 00:27:55.730 --> 00:27:59.570 align:middle line:84% We also have, of course, behind us a bit of Australian money, 00:27:59.570 --> 00:28:03.005 align:middle line:84% but we are not Australian government agents. 00:28:03.005 --> 00:28:07.880 align:middle line:90% 00:28:07.880 --> 00:28:13.730 align:middle line:84% Well, first of all, I would like to read some poems, all of them 00:28:13.730 --> 00:28:20.360 align:middle line:84% short, from a book called Golden Builders which is out of print 00:28:20.360 --> 00:28:23.270 align:middle line:90% now. 00:28:23.270 --> 00:28:26.960 align:middle line:84% The first poem I'll read, is a poem about a racehorse. 00:28:26.960 --> 00:28:31.670 align:middle line:84% Australia has an enormous horse racing industry. 00:28:31.670 --> 00:28:36.500 align:middle line:84% And we import American sires and we 00:28:36.500 --> 00:28:40.490 align:middle line:84% export Australian sires and their progeny 00:28:40.490 --> 00:28:42.710 align:middle line:84% to America as well as to other places. 00:28:42.710 --> 00:28:45.860 align:middle line:84% This particular poem is called, "Dual Choice". 00:28:45.860 --> 00:28:49.940 align:middle line:84% Dual Choice was a mare, a very fine sprinter, 00:28:49.940 --> 00:28:53.628 align:middle line:84% who used to gallop very close to the ground. 00:28:53.628 --> 00:28:55.670 align:middle line:84% I imagine she would have been in trouble if she'd 00:28:55.670 --> 00:28:57.420 align:middle line:90% tried to do anything else. 00:28:57.420 --> 00:29:02.720 align:middle line:84% But anyway, she did, it's called, daisy cutting action. 00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:05.990 align:middle line:84% And the motto for this poem is something 00:29:05.990 --> 00:29:13.400 align:middle line:84% I once heard said by one of the Irish show 00:29:13.400 --> 00:29:16.640 align:middle line:84% jumping team, Commandant Campion. 00:29:16.640 --> 00:29:18.350 align:middle line:84% He said, "the rider gets his courage 00:29:18.350 --> 00:29:22.670 align:middle line:84% from the horse" which I think is a remark which 00:29:22.670 --> 00:29:28.280 align:middle line:84% might apply to poetry as well as to many other things. 00:29:28.280 --> 00:29:31.730 align:middle line:84% Heat's whetstone in the sky the air like 00:29:31.730 --> 00:29:34.820 align:middle line:84% sparks bringing out red in every color. 00:29:34.820 --> 00:29:39.320 align:middle line:84% She trembles down each muscle; rainflecks, quick as flies, 00:29:39.320 --> 00:29:41.330 align:middle line:90% nerve her shoulder. 00:29:41.330 --> 00:29:43.970 align:middle line:84% Hoof stamps in her circling till running 00:29:43.970 --> 00:29:46.640 align:middle line:84% between these gates they strike grass 00:29:46.640 --> 00:29:49.460 align:middle line:84% with a pricking sound, small birds 00:29:49.460 --> 00:29:53.060 align:middle line:84% rise, dozens, along the margins of their running, 00:29:53.060 --> 00:29:55.490 align:middle line:90% float, sticky as bats, 00:29:55.490 --> 00:30:00.320 align:middle line:84% and his knees, loins, drive her round the long corner; no whip, 00:30:00.320 --> 00:30:04.220 align:middle line:84% but the whole arm driving back from her shoulder the beautiful 00:30:04.220 --> 00:30:09.200 align:middle line:84% short body almost sedate, patient in its speed the four 00:30:09.200 --> 00:30:13.580 align:middle line:84% feet cleanly meeting, neck arched like a stallion's 00:30:13.580 --> 00:30:16.250 align:middle line:84% wind blowing out of the sun light 00:30:16.250 --> 00:30:19.910 align:middle line:84% flashing on sweeps of cars fans through shade 00:30:19.910 --> 00:30:23.660 align:middle line:84% deliver at the post, the plunging stride, breastplate, 00:30:23.660 --> 00:30:28.790 align:middle line:84% curved up, bare nostril, the long, taped Egyptian faces. 00:30:28.790 --> 00:30:31.700 align:middle line:90% 00:30:31.700 --> 00:30:33.770 align:middle line:84% Now I would like to read three or four poems 00:30:33.770 --> 00:30:36.290 align:middle line:84% from a sequence called "Golden Builders", 00:30:36.290 --> 00:30:40.130 align:middle line:84% the nature of which I won't try to explain to you because it 00:30:40.130 --> 00:30:41.870 align:middle line:90% would take too long. 00:30:41.870 --> 00:30:45.020 align:middle line:84% I simply say that the motto for this poem 00:30:45.020 --> 00:30:50.420 align:middle line:84% was some lines from William Blake's "Jerusalem" 00:30:50.420 --> 00:30:53.840 align:middle line:84% "What are those golden builders doing? 00:30:53.840 --> 00:30:57.170 align:middle line:84% Where was the burying-place of soft Ethinthus? 00:30:57.170 --> 00:30:59.690 align:middle line:90% near Tyburn's fatal Tree? 00:30:59.690 --> 00:31:03.200 align:middle line:84% Is that Mild Zion's hill's most ancient promontory, 00:31:03.200 --> 00:31:06.620 align:middle line:84% near mournful ever-weeping Paddington?" 00:31:06.620 --> 00:31:08.720 align:middle line:84% And as you might suspect from that, 00:31:08.720 --> 00:31:13.880 align:middle line:84% the sequence has to do with the destruction and building 00:31:13.880 --> 00:31:17.870 align:middle line:90% of places and of lives. 00:31:17.870 --> 00:31:23.120 align:middle line:84% In the first part of it, it mentions a lot of street names. 00:31:23.120 --> 00:31:25.580 align:middle line:84% And many of these are all street names 00:31:25.580 --> 00:31:27.740 align:middle line:84% of places near the University of Melbourne. 00:31:27.740 --> 00:31:29.840 align:middle line:84% In an area which was for a long time, when 00:31:29.840 --> 00:31:33.380 align:middle line:90% I lived in it, a slum area. 00:31:33.380 --> 00:31:39.530 align:middle line:84% And the names are mostly the names of English noblemen. 00:31:39.530 --> 00:31:42.290 align:middle line:84% Because of course, all the Australian cities 00:31:42.290 --> 00:31:49.760 align:middle line:84% are founded on and named, in part, after British rulers, we 00:31:49.760 --> 00:31:53.660 align:middle line:90% being a colonial society. 00:31:53.660 --> 00:31:56.720 align:middle line:84% The hammers of iron glow down Faraday. 00:31:56.720 --> 00:32:00.140 align:middle line:84% Lygon and Drummond shift under their resonance. 00:32:00.140 --> 00:32:03.290 align:middle line:84% Saws and hammers drawn across the bending air shuttling 00:32:03.290 --> 00:32:07.340 align:middle line:84% like a bow; the saw trembles the hammers are molten, 00:32:07.340 --> 00:32:10.070 align:middle line:84% they flow with quick light striking; 00:32:10.070 --> 00:32:13.430 align:middle line:84% the flush spreads and deepens on the stone. 00:32:13.430 --> 00:32:16.520 align:middle line:84% The drills call the streets together stretching hall 00:32:16.520 --> 00:32:19.490 align:middle line:90% to lecture-room to hospital. 00:32:19.490 --> 00:32:23.540 align:middle line:84% But prop old walls with batons of old wood. 00:32:23.540 --> 00:32:25.130 align:middle line:90% Saturday work. 00:32:25.130 --> 00:32:27.050 align:middle line:90% Sabbath work. 00:32:27.050 --> 00:32:31.400 align:middle line:84% On this day we laid the stone to open the Sabbath School. 00:32:31.400 --> 00:32:34.070 align:middle line:90% Feed My Lambs. 00:32:34.070 --> 00:32:37.340 align:middle line:84% The sun dies half-glowing in the floating brickdust. 00:32:37.340 --> 00:32:40.280 align:middle line:84% Suspended between red and saffron. 00:32:40.280 --> 00:32:42.650 align:middle line:84% The colors resonate like a noise; 00:32:42.650 --> 00:32:44.720 align:middle line:84% the muscles of mouth neck shoulders 00:32:44.720 --> 00:32:47.720 align:middle line:90% loins arm themselves against it. 00:32:47.720 --> 00:32:51.290 align:middle line:84% Pavements clink like steel; the air soft. 00:32:51.290 --> 00:32:55.760 align:middle line:84% Palpable as cork, lets the stone cornices gasp into it. 00:32:55.760 --> 00:32:59.960 align:middle line:84% Pelham surrenders, Grattan runs leading forward, seeking 00:32:59.960 --> 00:33:03.230 align:middle line:84% the garden's breadth, the fearful edge of green 00:33:03.230 --> 00:33:06.290 align:middle line:90% on which the sexes lay. 00:33:06.290 --> 00:33:08.930 align:middle line:84% We have built this Sabbath school. 00:33:08.930 --> 00:33:11.810 align:middle line:90% Feed My Lambs. 00:33:11.810 --> 00:33:14.780 align:middle line:84% Evening wanders through my hands and feet 00:33:14.780 --> 00:33:18.530 align:middle line:84% my mouth as cool as the air that now thins twitching the lights 00:33:18.530 --> 00:33:21.110 align:middle line:90% on down winding paths. 00:33:21.110 --> 00:33:24.470 align:middle line:84% Everything leans on this bright cold. 00:33:24.470 --> 00:33:28.430 align:middle line:84% In gaps of lanes, in tingling shabby squares, 00:33:28.430 --> 00:33:31.550 align:middle line:84% I hear the crying of the machines. 00:33:31.550 --> 00:33:34.370 align:middle line:90% O Cardigan, Queensbury, Elgin-- 00:33:34.370 --> 00:33:36.500 align:middle line:90% names of their lordships. 00:33:36.500 --> 00:33:39.260 align:middle line:90% Cardigan, Elgin, Lygon-- 00:33:39.260 --> 00:33:41.360 align:middle line:84% Shall I find here my Lord's grave? 00:33:41.360 --> 00:33:45.860 align:middle line:90% 00:33:45.860 --> 00:33:48.950 align:middle line:84% Next poem from the sequence is called, "Blake In The Body." 00:33:48.950 --> 00:33:52.430 align:middle line:84% It concerns the fact that Blake left London, 00:33:52.430 --> 00:33:55.070 align:middle line:84% as far as I know, only for one period of his life. 00:33:55.070 --> 00:33:58.640 align:middle line:84% And that was to go to the Coast of Sussex at Felpham. 00:33:58.640 --> 00:34:01.370 align:middle line:84% Which he didn't like, and where he got into a lot of trouble, 00:34:01.370 --> 00:34:07.970 align:middle line:84% and was arrested on a charge of treason. 00:34:07.970 --> 00:34:12.929 align:middle line:84% Half-made London, blotched green fields. 00:34:12.929 --> 00:34:15.449 align:middle line:90% And you with your boxer's face. 00:34:15.449 --> 00:34:19.770 align:middle line:84% The broad limewhite forehead borne down on thick eyelids, 00:34:19.770 --> 00:34:25.860 align:middle line:84% the mouth muscling down, you came South to Felpham. 00:34:25.860 --> 00:34:29.100 align:middle line:84% Prophet to the watering-places, Cockney tradesman 00:34:29.100 --> 00:34:32.010 align:middle line:84% at the seaside, your boxer's head 00:34:32.010 --> 00:34:35.280 align:middle line:90% set at an angle for the sea air. 00:34:35.280 --> 00:34:37.530 align:middle line:84% It was light leaping all through the house; 00:34:37.530 --> 00:34:40.710 align:middle line:84% the unpruned vine reach to the roof-angles. 00:34:40.710 --> 00:34:43.949 align:middle line:84% In the long tilting stiff-grass paddocks with ecstasy 00:34:43.949 --> 00:34:48.120 align:middle line:84% you heard the ploughboy say "the gates are open, father." 00:34:48.120 --> 00:34:50.489 align:middle line:90% The gates are open. 00:34:50.489 --> 00:34:55.800 align:middle line:84% The twinned harrows' tines shone like earthshine. 00:34:55.800 --> 00:34:57.660 align:middle line:84% Later, you called it your three years 00:34:57.660 --> 00:35:00.090 align:middle line:90% slumber on the banks of ocean. 00:35:00.090 --> 00:35:03.750 align:middle line:90% Who did not sleep all night. 00:35:03.750 --> 00:35:15.360 align:middle line:84% And finally, from this book in sequence, a poem about nearly 00:35:15.360 --> 00:35:18.300 align:middle line:90% being electrocuted. 00:35:18.300 --> 00:35:23.100 align:middle line:84% And not quite succeeding in being electrocuted. 00:35:23.100 --> 00:35:27.960 align:middle line:84% The traffic glitters towards dull junction it inches forward 00:35:27.960 --> 00:35:30.750 align:middle line:84% in the muscles of my face crush forward 00:35:30.750 --> 00:35:35.490 align:middle line:84% in the agony of an eyeball my shoulders push against it. 00:35:35.490 --> 00:35:38.640 align:middle line:90% The smell tangible as a stain. 00:35:38.640 --> 00:35:41.190 align:middle line:84% And for no reason I catch the vinegar smell 00:35:41.190 --> 00:35:45.480 align:middle line:84% of fresh sweat in the thin hairs of my arm. 00:35:45.480 --> 00:35:48.330 align:middle line:84% And taste, again, fire and alloy, 00:35:48.330 --> 00:35:51.420 align:middle line:84% echo of the death-evening when stunned on the floor, 00:35:51.420 --> 00:35:55.470 align:middle line:84% on my elbow, metal framed in my mouth, 00:35:55.470 --> 00:36:02.190 align:middle line:84% my palm was struck metal-black my body cold and lustrous metal 00:36:02.190 --> 00:36:05.550 align:middle line:84% one more day of my life was dying-- 00:36:05.550 --> 00:36:08.430 align:middle line:84% The yellow bloomed in the pavement and the cool 00:36:08.430 --> 00:36:11.880 align:middle line:84% rang through every nerve and surface. 00:36:11.880 --> 00:36:14.910 align:middle line:84% At the window risen from the dead 00:36:14.910 --> 00:36:18.750 align:middle line:84% I sat thinking of the sea-horse dropping his children 00:36:18.750 --> 00:36:22.650 align:middle line:84% like seeds about him keeping his eye on them, 00:36:22.650 --> 00:36:26.430 align:middle line:84% so they float riderless in the water, drawn about him. 00:36:26.430 --> 00:36:29.330 align:middle line:90% 00:36:29.330 --> 00:36:32.970 align:middle line:84% I'd like to read some poems now from this book, 00:36:32.970 --> 00:36:35.880 align:middle line:84% Late-Winter Child, which has to do 00:36:35.880 --> 00:36:47.760 align:middle line:84% with the life of my third daughter. 00:36:47.760 --> 00:36:50.400 align:middle line:84% It's addressed to my wife and to my third daughter. 00:36:50.400 --> 00:36:56.640 align:middle line:84% And it concerns that whole very important length of time 00:36:56.640 --> 00:37:01.320 align:middle line:84% when the first of these was bearing the second in the womb. 00:37:01.320 --> 00:37:03.630 align:middle line:84% And these are very short poems, I'll read them-- 00:37:03.630 --> 00:37:05.360 align:middle line:90% I'll read five or six of them. 00:37:05.360 --> 00:37:09.810 align:middle line:84% They're not in sequence but, I'll read them as if they were. 00:37:09.810 --> 00:37:12.610 align:middle line:90% 00:37:12.610 --> 00:37:16.150 align:middle line:84% Gently rounded as your hips in the yellow kaftan, 00:37:16.150 --> 00:37:18.730 align:middle line:84% we'll hear him, some time, whistling and changing 00:37:18.730 --> 00:37:22.660 align:middle line:84% in your body, your flesh and blood. 00:37:22.660 --> 00:37:26.860 align:middle line:84% Sweet william with candytuft in the one bowl I brought you. 00:37:26.860 --> 00:37:29.320 align:middle line:84% Stationed here, we'll wait as he strains 00:37:29.320 --> 00:37:33.310 align:middle line:84% into his clinging tent of waters, waiting for fins, 00:37:33.310 --> 00:37:36.250 align:middle line:84% for eyes bulbing, for breath itching 00:37:36.250 --> 00:37:39.430 align:middle line:90% at the dance-like morning. 00:37:39.430 --> 00:37:41.320 align:middle line:84% Before the phone shrills there is 00:37:41.320 --> 00:37:46.780 align:middle line:84% a ticking in the wood beside it gardens rise level as platforms 00:37:46.780 --> 00:37:50.200 align:middle line:84% pressing their smell through every leaf 00:37:50.200 --> 00:37:53.725 align:middle line:84% we spent our summers preparing a late-winter child. 00:37:53.725 --> 00:37:59.560 align:middle line:90% 00:37:59.560 --> 00:38:02.680 align:middle line:84% But I'd grown with you fifteen years; was I 00:38:02.680 --> 00:38:06.610 align:middle line:84% to lose you now you were distant with child, your eyes drawling 00:38:06.610 --> 00:38:08.590 align:middle line:90% like a sleepwalker's feet-- 00:38:08.590 --> 00:38:11.440 align:middle line:84% and morning I'd say, where is the morning of rain 00:38:11.440 --> 00:38:14.650 align:middle line:84% and the strong bright light that pricks up our eyes, 00:38:14.650 --> 00:38:17.050 align:middle line:84% and the park where I would hope to see you running, 00:38:17.050 --> 00:38:20.200 align:middle line:84% the dog beside you, and, under the belted raincoat that 00:38:20.200 --> 00:38:25.750 align:middle line:84% hide your body's lines of heat, cool linen on your shoulders. 00:38:25.750 --> 00:38:29.260 align:middle line:84% You called when we were sleeping from that room we shared, 00:38:29.260 --> 00:38:32.530 align:middle line:84% that bed where I'd waited listening for the birth-sounds, 00:38:32.530 --> 00:38:36.130 align:middle line:84% so often cool as linen on your breast; 00:38:36.130 --> 00:38:38.530 align:middle line:84% beyond the furthest dream-shapes your face 00:38:38.530 --> 00:38:41.560 align:middle line:84% closed like a story told, endlessly, 00:38:41.560 --> 00:38:44.140 align:middle line:84% in the room where I'd come in, out of the white photographed 00:38:44.140 --> 00:38:47.890 align:middle line:84% heat, to find you leaning in your double weight cool 00:38:47.890 --> 00:38:49.120 align:middle line:90% linen on your shoulders. 00:38:49.120 --> 00:38:57.850 align:middle line:90% 00:38:57.850 --> 00:39:01.060 align:middle line:90% The dreamchild is curious. 00:39:01.060 --> 00:39:04.390 align:middle line:84% At 5 months you dreamed it leaned out of your body 00:39:04.390 --> 00:39:09.250 align:middle line:84% in its own dream, to smile at an approaching child. 00:39:09.250 --> 00:39:12.820 align:middle line:84% I think of its eyes opened in greeting its hands trailing 00:39:12.820 --> 00:39:15.250 align:middle line:90% drops of clear water. 00:39:15.250 --> 00:39:19.480 align:middle line:84% As if an animal walked out, and drew lines in the clearing 00:39:19.480 --> 00:39:20.260 align:middle line:90% for a new city. 00:39:20.260 --> 00:39:24.340 align:middle line:90% 00:39:24.340 --> 00:39:27.880 align:middle line:84% In your heat, my breath surrounds you. 00:39:27.880 --> 00:39:30.550 align:middle line:84% Twelve months the thought of lightning 00:39:30.550 --> 00:39:35.650 align:middle line:84% glided across your birthday the heat was heavy as water 00:39:35.650 --> 00:39:39.860 align:middle line:90% low cloud shivered with light. 00:39:39.860 --> 00:39:42.550 align:middle line:90% A waste between us. 00:39:42.550 --> 00:39:44.260 align:middle line:84% I should have told you, then, death 00:39:44.260 --> 00:39:47.800 align:middle line:84% was your arrival that darkened my brain with fears, 00:39:47.800 --> 00:39:53.080 align:middle line:84% plans, the thin copper movements of a worm on the hot stone. 00:39:53.080 --> 00:39:56.500 align:middle line:84% Instead I listened for the velvet sounds, moths, 00:39:56.500 --> 00:40:00.100 align:middle line:84% door-handles, the rise of a footstep 00:40:00.100 --> 00:40:03.310 align:middle line:84% the comb's hiss over the hair, its parting 00:40:03.310 --> 00:40:07.690 align:middle line:84% tightened by summer my eyes carried all day 00:40:07.690 --> 00:40:11.500 align:middle line:84% their pinpoint of blood all day I 00:40:11.500 --> 00:40:14.635 align:middle line:84% was the object in your path giving no echo. 00:40:14.635 --> 00:40:21.250 align:middle line:90% 00:40:21.250 --> 00:40:25.660 align:middle line:84% Going to another book now, this one is called The Pattern. 00:40:25.660 --> 00:40:33.580 align:middle line:84% And it's a book chiefly about places and people in Ireland 00:40:33.580 --> 00:40:42.910 align:middle line:84% and in parts of Australia which continue Irish traditions. 00:40:42.910 --> 00:40:45.920 align:middle line:90% 00:40:45.920 --> 00:40:51.260 align:middle line:84% First, I'll read-- this is about my grandfather's 00:40:51.260 --> 00:40:54.950 align:middle line:84% house in Australia, he was an Irishman. 00:40:54.950 --> 00:40:58.310 align:middle line:90% And it's addressed to my mother. 00:40:58.310 --> 00:41:05.030 align:middle line:84% The pale blue Child-of-Mary cape is 00:41:05.030 --> 00:41:07.970 align:middle line:84% an object which will be familiar to a small minority of you, 00:41:07.970 --> 00:41:08.690 align:middle line:90% I'm sure. 00:41:08.690 --> 00:41:11.810 align:middle line:84% But it has very little significance in the poem 00:41:11.810 --> 00:41:21.515 align:middle line:84% except to give a connotation of Catholic piety to the place. 00:41:21.515 --> 00:41:24.120 align:middle line:90% 00:41:24.120 --> 00:41:33.010 align:middle line:84% And the last line refers to the character of Emily Bronte. 00:41:33.010 --> 00:41:36.250 align:middle line:84% No place was like your father's house. 00:41:36.250 --> 00:41:39.610 align:middle line:84% I followed you round and round, grinning, 00:41:39.610 --> 00:41:43.360 align:middle line:84% nervy with your pleasure; even when bedded down, 00:41:43.360 --> 00:41:46.870 align:middle line:84% fatigued with ancestry, kneeing the blankets, 00:41:46.870 --> 00:41:50.380 align:middle line:84% I heard their soft laughter rustling the kitchen 00:41:50.380 --> 00:41:52.930 align:middle line:84% and over the orchard's dung smells 00:41:52.930 --> 00:41:56.020 align:middle line:84% the apple-trees made their furred sound of green 00:41:56.020 --> 00:42:01.000 align:middle line:84% moving it was as though I lay along the buds of my mother's 00:42:01.000 --> 00:42:05.290 align:middle line:84% body so close to sleep I felt the farm 00:42:05.290 --> 00:42:11.260 align:middle line:84% sliding in water, myself growing crafty as a farmer, all of it 00:42:11.260 --> 00:42:15.410 align:middle line:90% hovered on the edge of outcry. 00:42:15.410 --> 00:42:19.070 align:middle line:84% The first, frail paradise, where the dream let down 00:42:19.070 --> 00:42:21.860 align:middle line:84% like tendrils, entering through air 00:42:21.860 --> 00:42:25.760 align:middle line:84% the airless sponge that would sometimes be memory. 00:42:25.760 --> 00:42:29.330 align:middle line:84% Behind the door the pale blue Child-of-Mary cape; 00:42:29.330 --> 00:42:34.040 align:middle line:84% unfamiliar coats; spittle, pipe smell. 00:42:34.040 --> 00:42:35.870 align:middle line:84% Drifting in with an animal wholeness 00:42:35.870 --> 00:42:38.450 align:middle line:84% through the propped window the birds, 00:42:38.450 --> 00:42:41.060 align:middle line:84% their beaks opening with the slowness of fire, 00:42:41.060 --> 00:42:43.340 align:middle line:90% stung at the trees. 00:42:43.340 --> 00:42:45.530 align:middle line:84% Your father held out the sovereigns to us 00:42:45.530 --> 00:42:50.680 align:middle line:84% in their shapely box, roughened by his hands. 00:42:50.680 --> 00:42:54.070 align:middle line:84% And you live thereafter in the unlike house, 00:42:54.070 --> 00:42:56.020 align:middle line:84% whose roselight side-windows shed 00:42:56.020 --> 00:43:00.040 align:middle line:84% ovals where the dust shimmered always with its few motes, 00:43:00.040 --> 00:43:02.950 align:middle line:84% and the sunlight entered from the north. 00:43:02.950 --> 00:43:07.120 align:middle line:84% Room by room you circled it, open as a razor; 00:43:07.120 --> 00:43:10.240 align:middle line:84% walked out carrying the axe into sunlight, 00:43:10.240 --> 00:43:13.780 align:middle line:84% quivered with the fowls, but let me see your arms 00:43:13.780 --> 00:43:16.240 align:middle line:90% froth in the entrails-- 00:43:16.240 --> 00:43:20.050 align:middle line:84% fine-brown-featured and tense, like a surviving Bronte. 00:43:20.050 --> 00:43:24.560 align:middle line:90% 00:43:24.560 --> 00:43:27.500 align:middle line:84% This one is about Australia and Ireland, 00:43:27.500 --> 00:43:30.560 align:middle line:90% it called "The Blind School." 00:43:30.560 --> 00:43:32.270 align:middle line:84% And it's not a very long poem but it's 00:43:32.270 --> 00:43:35.990 align:middle line:84% in three short sections and I have to explain something 00:43:35.990 --> 00:43:38.030 align:middle line:90% about this. 00:43:38.030 --> 00:43:40.280 align:middle line:84% It's about a time, a couple of years 00:43:40.280 --> 00:43:42.560 align:middle line:84% ago, when I was living in a house 00:43:42.560 --> 00:43:48.140 align:middle line:84% right opposite the gateway to St. Paul's Blind School, 00:43:48.140 --> 00:43:50.060 align:middle line:90% a school for blind children. 00:43:50.060 --> 00:43:52.520 align:middle line:84% And the children in the school were not only 00:43:52.520 --> 00:43:56.150 align:middle line:84% blind but mentally retarded and you would often 00:43:56.150 --> 00:43:57.150 align:middle line:90% pass them in the street. 00:43:57.150 --> 00:43:59.420 align:middle line:84% But as well as that, you would hear them 00:43:59.420 --> 00:44:07.140 align:middle line:84% on some nights crying very piteously in the institution. 00:44:07.140 --> 00:44:09.800 align:middle line:84% At that time, my daughter was about 12 months old 00:44:09.800 --> 00:44:13.250 align:middle line:84% and she was perfectly fit and sound 00:44:13.250 --> 00:44:16.910 align:middle line:84% in every respect except that she had a dreadful hatred of going 00:44:16.910 --> 00:44:19.418 align:middle line:90% to sleep. 00:44:19.418 --> 00:44:21.460 align:middle line:84% And it seemed to me that there was something in-- 00:44:21.460 --> 00:44:22.060 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:44:22.060 --> 00:44:26.830 align:middle line:84% From off my skin, thick spume, blood, mouse-matter 00:44:26.830 --> 00:44:29.560 align:middle line:90% fled into your dreams. 00:44:29.560 --> 00:44:33.910 align:middle line:84% Cicadas steam at the Earth under the blind school; 00:44:33.910 --> 00:44:37.630 align:middle line:84% behind the gauzy wire there are gusts of shrilling. 00:44:37.630 --> 00:44:39.460 align:middle line:84% In the clear space of your parents' bed 00:44:39.460 --> 00:44:42.100 align:middle line:84% you sob with closed eyes, your voice 00:44:42.100 --> 00:44:46.600 align:middle line:84% a flashlight ebbing in the dark around me. 00:44:46.600 --> 00:44:50.780 align:middle line:84% In the famine years Schull was a place of skeletons. 00:44:50.780 --> 00:44:54.130 align:middle line:84% They said propped in the streets, each cabin inside it's 00:44:54.130 --> 00:44:57.730 align:middle line:84% born of spit and blood-clotted feces. 00:44:57.730 --> 00:45:00.910 align:middle line:84% Skibbereen also was a famine center. 00:45:00.910 --> 00:45:03.700 align:middle line:84% There in a parish of 18,000, there 00:45:03.700 --> 00:45:06.820 align:middle line:90% were fifty deaths every day. 00:45:06.820 --> 00:45:10.480 align:middle line:84% The cornstore at Durrus was filled with children. 00:45:10.480 --> 00:45:12.730 align:middle line:90% All were dying. 00:45:12.730 --> 00:45:17.080 align:middle line:84% Look there, Sir, you cannot tell whether they are boys or girls. 00:45:17.080 --> 00:45:21.280 align:middle line:84% Their legs swing and rock like the legs of a doll. 00:45:21.280 --> 00:45:24.880 align:middle line:84% Sir, they have the smell of mice. 00:45:24.880 --> 00:45:27.580 align:middle line:84% Every one of them is in famine fever, 00:45:27.580 --> 00:45:32.230 align:middle line:84% a fever so sticky it never leaves them. 00:45:32.230 --> 00:45:37.240 align:middle line:84% Dying to sleep, not knowing how to begin that slow climb down, 00:45:37.240 --> 00:45:41.620 align:middle line:84% you heard my clock on the pillow, its gold-black face, 00:45:41.620 --> 00:45:44.710 align:middle line:90% its hands sticking on twelve. 00:45:44.710 --> 00:45:48.010 align:middle line:84% And you burrow back, down towards the unimaginable 00:45:48.010 --> 00:45:53.920 align:middle line:84% center, angrily "Mama, Mama," whose hair 00:45:53.920 --> 00:45:57.400 align:middle line:84% is moving in the glistenings of street light. 00:45:57.400 --> 00:46:02.590 align:middle line:84% Now, perhaps I have time for a couple more recent poems, 00:46:02.590 --> 00:46:03.640 align:middle line:90% unpublished poems. 00:46:03.640 --> 00:46:07.060 align:middle line:90% 00:46:07.060 --> 00:46:12.670 align:middle line:84% And first of these, first two are very short, first 00:46:12.670 --> 00:46:17.590 align:middle line:84% of these mentions two poets from the classical Chinese 00:46:17.590 --> 00:46:18.520 align:middle line:90% anthology. 00:46:18.520 --> 00:46:20.740 align:middle line:84% In the center of the poem are two lines 00:46:20.740 --> 00:46:24.910 align:middle line:84% from Arthur Waley's translation of one of these two poets, 00:46:24.910 --> 00:46:28.090 align:middle line:90% Po Chu-I. 00:46:28.090 --> 00:46:32.740 align:middle line:84% Po Chu-I, choked with the age-old fogs of office, 00:46:32.740 --> 00:46:35.890 align:middle line:84% seeing the moon clean as the glass he drained, 00:46:35.890 --> 00:46:38.170 align:middle line:90% got up from his chair-- 00:46:38.170 --> 00:46:41.530 align:middle line:84% So many dead, that's when he cried out, 00:46:41.530 --> 00:46:44.200 align:middle line:84% looking up at the red shoots of sunset, 00:46:44.200 --> 00:46:48.010 align:middle line:84% "Looking for each other we have all grown gray," 00:46:48.010 --> 00:46:52.300 align:middle line:84% his great soft cry for the dead, "When shall we meet and drink 00:46:52.300 --> 00:46:57.340 align:middle line:84% a cup of wine," calling them, into the moonlight. 00:46:57.340 --> 00:47:00.730 align:middle line:84% And thinking of my dead friends I pick up a stick 00:47:00.730 --> 00:47:02.950 align:middle line:84% and tap it lightly on the ground, 00:47:02.950 --> 00:47:09.730 align:middle line:84% as Po Chu-I. Or like Li Po, look downward, drain my glass, 00:47:09.730 --> 00:47:13.690 align:middle line:84% go forward, slowly, drunk, to the river. 00:47:13.690 --> 00:47:18.730 align:middle line:90% 00:47:18.730 --> 00:47:21.580 align:middle line:84% Next one is called, "Men Of Appin" 00:47:21.580 --> 00:47:26.890 align:middle line:84% and it concerns a mine disaster in New South Wales, last year, 00:47:26.890 --> 00:47:28.540 align:middle line:84% in which a number of men were killed. 00:47:28.540 --> 00:47:31.240 align:middle line:90% 00:47:31.240 --> 00:47:35.230 align:middle line:84% Sudden, modern, cold pit, as blast-scoured as the gravel 00:47:35.230 --> 00:47:37.930 align:middle line:84% mountains where the sheep scattered the small-bone bodies 00:47:37.930 --> 00:47:42.130 align:middle line:84% of their fathers under a sky red with cold-- 00:47:42.130 --> 00:47:44.200 align:middle line:90% How well can we sleep? 00:47:44.200 --> 00:47:47.110 align:middle line:84% Better than the men of Appin carried in their shrouds 00:47:47.110 --> 00:47:51.520 align:middle line:84% like hammocks up the coal-black death-canal to the blunt light 00:47:51.520 --> 00:47:56.170 align:middle line:84% and the square hands restless on the morning papers. 00:47:56.170 --> 00:47:58.960 align:middle line:84% Outside, the washed-out world of news, 00:47:58.960 --> 00:48:00.850 align:middle line:84% the light drumming on their windows 00:48:00.850 --> 00:48:03.610 align:middle line:84% and on their wives' and children's faces. 00:48:03.610 --> 00:48:06.940 align:middle line:84% Their mates said, They were all good men, good mates, 00:48:06.940 --> 00:48:09.130 align:middle line:90% good men to work with. 00:48:09.130 --> 00:48:11.530 align:middle line:90% How could you love this land? 00:48:11.530 --> 00:48:14.650 align:middle line:84% Not more than the men of Appin; crouched, intently, 00:48:14.650 --> 00:48:17.290 align:middle line:84% towards their graves; had when, drugged, 00:48:17.290 --> 00:48:21.910 align:middle line:84% they drank the gas like water, fell by the pit-wall hard 00:48:21.910 --> 00:48:24.430 align:middle line:90% by Dapto and its harbour. 00:48:24.430 --> 00:48:25.374 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:48:25.374 --> 00:48:28.338 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:48:28.338 --> 00:48:39.220 align:middle line:90% 00:48:39.220 --> 00:48:42.790 align:middle line:84% David Malouf was born in Brisbane. 00:48:42.790 --> 00:48:45.250 align:middle line:84% In recent years, he's divided his time between home 00:48:45.250 --> 00:48:48.620 align:middle line:90% in Italy and home in Australia. 00:48:48.620 --> 00:48:52.330 align:middle line:84% As well as writing poetry, he writes novels. 00:48:52.330 --> 00:48:55.360 align:middle line:84% His two most recent books are published by Braziller, here 00:48:55.360 --> 00:48:56.620 align:middle line:90% in the United States. 00:48:56.620 --> 00:49:00.340 align:middle line:84% The most recent book of poems is called The Year of the Foxes. 00:49:00.340 --> 00:49:03.850 align:middle line:84% And though, we won't have copies of those available tonight, 00:49:03.850 --> 00:49:07.360 align:middle line:84% they will be available in the bookstores soon, David Malouf. 00:49:07.360 --> 00:49:18.130 align:middle line:90% 00:49:18.130 --> 00:49:20.770 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read first some poems and then 00:49:20.770 --> 00:49:24.097 align:middle line:84% a couple of passages from the novel. 00:49:24.097 --> 00:49:26.680 align:middle line:84% The book published by Braziller, by the way, the book of poems 00:49:26.680 --> 00:49:28.540 align:middle line:84% isn't in fact, my latest book, really. 00:49:28.540 --> 00:49:30.220 align:middle line:84% It's my very first book in Australia, 00:49:30.220 --> 00:49:32.470 align:middle line:84% which has been reprinted here, it's quite an old book. 00:49:32.470 --> 00:49:36.400 align:middle line:90% 00:49:36.400 --> 00:49:39.520 align:middle line:84% This first poem is called "Early Discoveries." 00:49:39.520 --> 00:49:44.500 align:middle line:84% And my grandfather came from Lebanon in the 1880s, 00:49:44.500 --> 00:49:48.610 align:middle line:84% and learned to speak no English, and the poem is about that. 00:49:48.610 --> 00:49:51.700 align:middle line:84% The only two references I think that would be difficult 00:49:51.700 --> 00:49:55.810 align:middle line:84% are a Webbs Wonder, if you don't have such a thing in the United 00:49:55.810 --> 00:49:58.270 align:middle line:90% States, is a form of lettuce. 00:49:58.270 --> 00:50:01.000 align:middle line:84% Zahle is the name of a town in Lebanon, 00:50:01.000 --> 00:50:03.280 align:middle line:84% Helios is an island in Greece, and you 00:50:03.280 --> 00:50:05.920 align:middle line:84% might remember that the seasons are completely upside down 00:50:05.920 --> 00:50:07.870 align:middle line:90% in Australia, that helps. 00:50:07.870 --> 00:50:10.390 align:middle line:90% 00:50:10.390 --> 00:50:12.700 align:middle line:90% "Early Discoveries" 00:50:12.700 --> 00:50:14.830 align:middle line:90% I find him in the garden. 00:50:14.830 --> 00:50:17.530 align:middle line:84% Staked tomato-plants are what he walks among, 00:50:17.530 --> 00:50:19.660 align:middle line:90% the apples of paradise. 00:50:19.660 --> 00:50:22.930 align:middle line:84% He is eighty and stoops, white-haired in baggy 00:50:22.930 --> 00:50:24.880 align:middle line:90% serge and braces. 00:50:24.880 --> 00:50:26.980 align:middle line:84% His mustache, once warrior-fierce 00:50:26.980 --> 00:50:29.080 align:middle line:84% for quarrels in a small town of Zahle, 00:50:29.080 --> 00:50:32.230 align:middle line:84% where honor divides houses, empties squares, 00:50:32.230 --> 00:50:35.170 align:middle line:84% droops and is thin from stroking. 00:50:35.170 --> 00:50:37.420 align:middle line:84% He has come too far from his century 00:50:37.420 --> 00:50:41.020 align:middle line:84% to care for more than these, the simplest ones, Webbs 00:50:41.020 --> 00:50:44.980 align:middle line:84% Wonders, salad-harmless, stripped by the birds. 00:50:44.980 --> 00:50:47.320 align:middle line:84% He pantomimes a dervish-dance amongst them 00:50:47.320 --> 00:50:49.600 align:middle line:84% and the birds creak off, his place at evening 00:50:49.600 --> 00:50:52.390 align:middle line:84% filled by a stick that flares and swipes at air, 00:50:52.390 --> 00:50:55.180 align:middle line:84% a pin-striped waistcoat stuffed with straw. 00:50:55.180 --> 00:50:58.420 align:middle line:84% It cuffs and swivels, I'm scared of it. 00:50:58.420 --> 00:51:00.730 align:middle line:84% Such temper-tantrums are unpredictable; 00:51:00.730 --> 00:51:03.730 align:middle line:84% blind buffeting of storms that rattle venetians, 00:51:03.730 --> 00:51:06.790 align:middle line:90% hiss off pavements in the sun. 00:51:06.790 --> 00:51:09.440 align:middle line:84% Grandpa is milder, but when he hefts as high 00:51:09.440 --> 00:51:12.010 align:middle line:84% his white hairs prickle and the smell is foreign. 00:51:12.010 --> 00:51:14.590 align:middle line:90% Is it garlic or old age? 00:51:14.590 --> 00:51:16.840 align:middle line:84% They are continents I have not happened on, 00:51:16.840 --> 00:51:19.240 align:middle line:90% their time will come. 00:51:19.240 --> 00:51:21.460 align:middle line:90% Meanwhile he mutters blessings. 00:51:21.460 --> 00:51:24.460 align:middle line:84% I watch him practice his odd rites, hatchet in hand 00:51:24.460 --> 00:51:27.670 align:middle line:84% as he martyrs chickens in the woodblock's dark, an old man 00:51:27.670 --> 00:51:32.020 align:middle line:84% struggling with wings, or shakes a sieve while bright grain 00:51:32.020 --> 00:51:36.130 align:middle line:84% showers in a heap and blown chaff flies and glitters, 00:51:36.130 --> 00:51:38.530 align:middle line:90% falling to the other mouths. 00:51:38.530 --> 00:51:40.780 align:middle line:90% He comes and goes with daylight. 00:51:40.780 --> 00:51:44.530 align:middle line:84% He is the lord of vegetables, the scourge of nuns and birds, 00:51:44.530 --> 00:51:47.080 align:middle line:84% those shoo-black crows his sullen daughters taunt him 00:51:47.080 --> 00:51:47.830 align:middle line:90% with. 00:51:47.830 --> 00:51:51.190 align:middle line:84% His black-sheep son feeds rabbits live to greyhounds 00:51:51.190 --> 00:51:53.500 align:middle line:90% in a cage behind choko-vines. 00:51:53.500 --> 00:51:57.400 align:middle line:84% The girls too go to the bad in a foreign land, consorting 00:51:57.400 --> 00:52:00.670 align:middle line:84% with Carmelites, on hot nights tossing in their high beds 00:52:00.670 --> 00:52:05.140 align:middle line:84% in a riot of lace doilies, painted virgins, unwed. 00:52:05.140 --> 00:52:06.850 align:middle line:90% They dwell in another land. 00:52:06.850 --> 00:52:09.430 align:middle line:84% As I do, his eldest grandson, aged 00:52:09.430 --> 00:52:11.710 align:middle line:84% four, what I nose through dusty bean 00:52:11.710 --> 00:52:16.000 align:middle line:84% stalks searching for brothers under a nine-week cabbages. 00:52:16.000 --> 00:52:19.060 align:middle line:84% He finds me there and I dig behind his shadow 00:52:19.060 --> 00:52:21.250 align:middle line:90% down the rows. 00:52:21.250 --> 00:52:23.920 align:middle line:84% This is his garden, a valley in Lebanon; 00:52:23.920 --> 00:52:26.170 align:middle line:84% you can smell the cedars on his breath and the blood 00:52:26.170 --> 00:52:29.170 align:middle line:84% of massacres, the crescent flashing from ravines to slice 00:52:29.170 --> 00:52:30.550 align:middle line:90% through half a family. 00:52:30.550 --> 00:52:33.100 align:middle line:84% He rolls furred sage between thumb 00:52:33.100 --> 00:52:36.130 align:middle line:84% and stained forefinger, sniffs the snowy hills-- 00:52:36.130 --> 00:52:39.760 align:middle line:84% bees shifting gold as they forage sunlight among stones, 00:52:39.760 --> 00:52:43.480 align:middle line:84% churchbells wading in through pools of silence. 00:52:43.480 --> 00:52:45.820 align:middle line:84% He has never quite migrated, the weather 00:52:45.820 --> 00:52:49.570 align:middle line:84% in his head still upside-down as out of season snow 00:52:49.570 --> 00:52:52.360 align:middle line:84% falls from his eyes on Queensland's green, 00:52:52.360 --> 00:52:54.790 align:middle line:90% and January's midwinter still. 00:52:54.790 --> 00:52:56.650 align:middle line:90% These swelling suns of miracles. 00:52:56.650 --> 00:52:59.260 align:middle line:84% Tomatoes in invisible glass-houses 00:52:59.260 --> 00:53:01.540 align:middle line:84% sweat in the heat of his attention, 00:53:01.540 --> 00:53:04.090 align:middle line:84% like islands Columbus happens on. 00:53:04.090 --> 00:53:08.470 align:middle line:84% And me, whom he also finds squatting, egg-plant tall 00:53:08.470 --> 00:53:12.580 align:middle line:84% and puzzled by his dark hands parting the stems. 00:53:12.580 --> 00:53:13.690 align:middle line:90% Where am I? 00:53:13.690 --> 00:53:16.150 align:middle line:90% This is Brisbane, our back yard. 00:53:16.150 --> 00:53:18.490 align:middle line:84% We let him garden here behind the lattice wall. 00:53:18.490 --> 00:53:20.200 align:middle line:90% This house is ours and home. 00:53:20.200 --> 00:53:22.990 align:middle line:84% He comes like a stranger, warrior-mustachioed, 00:53:22.990 --> 00:53:24.340 align:middle line:90% un-English. 00:53:24.340 --> 00:53:27.520 align:middle line:84% These days I find him at all turns. 00:53:27.520 --> 00:53:30.970 align:middle line:84% One morning early in Chios, I raise the shutter, 00:53:30.970 --> 00:53:35.110 align:middle line:84% and his garden, re-discovered, shines; cucumbers, spinach, 00:53:35.110 --> 00:53:36.640 align:middle line:90% trellised vines. 00:53:36.640 --> 00:53:41.050 align:middle line:84% The old man finds me watching; smiles and nods. 00:53:41.050 --> 00:53:45.250 align:middle line:84% Later, fresh on the marble step in yesterday's newspaper, 00:53:45.250 --> 00:53:48.430 align:middle line:84% words of a tongue I cannot read, his offering-- 00:53:48.430 --> 00:53:51.310 align:middle line:90% two heads of new spring cabbage. 00:53:51.310 --> 00:53:54.220 align:middle line:84% I look under the leaves, an ancient joke, 00:53:54.220 --> 00:53:56.830 align:middle line:84% there's nothing there, Just a sprinkling 00:53:56.830 --> 00:53:59.950 align:middle line:84% of black soil on the headlines of another war, 00:53:59.950 --> 00:54:01.900 align:middle line:90% shaken from the roots. 00:54:01.900 --> 00:54:08.440 align:middle line:84% That night I eat them, boiled with oil and vinegar. 00:54:08.440 --> 00:54:10.870 align:middle line:84% Second poem is a very short poem, 00:54:10.870 --> 00:54:13.210 align:middle line:84% which attempts to reproduce something 00:54:13.210 --> 00:54:15.230 align:middle line:84% of the place I come from in Australia, 00:54:15.230 --> 00:54:17.620 align:middle line:90% which is subtropical. 00:54:17.620 --> 00:54:19.380 align:middle line:84% Northern, which in your terms means 00:54:19.380 --> 00:54:23.670 align:middle line:84% southern, about the equivalent of Georgia. 00:54:23.670 --> 00:54:27.450 align:middle line:84% It's called, "An Ordinary Evening in Hamilton." 00:54:27.450 --> 00:54:32.250 align:middle line:84% The garden shifts indoors, the house lets fall its lamp light, 00:54:32.250 --> 00:54:35.910 align:middle line:84% opens windows in the earth and the small stars 00:54:35.910 --> 00:54:40.050 align:middle line:84% of the grass, the night insects, needlepoint a jungle more 00:54:40.050 --> 00:54:43.290 align:middle line:84% dense than any tapestry, where Saturn burns, 00:54:43.290 --> 00:54:46.710 align:middle line:84% a snow owl's nest, and melons feed their crystal 00:54:46.710 --> 00:54:49.140 align:middle line:90% with hot sugars of the moon. 00:54:49.140 --> 00:54:53.280 align:middle line:84% The Pacific breaks at our table, each grain of salt 00:54:53.280 --> 00:54:54.990 align:middle line:84% a splinter of its light at midday, 00:54:54.990 --> 00:54:58.080 align:middle line:84% deserts flare on the lizard's tongue. 00:54:58.080 --> 00:55:02.070 align:middle line:84% Familiar rooms glow, rise through the dark-- 00:55:02.070 --> 00:55:06.990 align:middle line:84% exotic islands; this house a strange anatomy 00:55:06.990 --> 00:55:13.410 align:middle line:84% of parts, so many neighbors in a thicket; hair, eyetooth, thumb. 00:55:13.410 --> 00:55:16.320 align:middle line:90% 00:55:16.320 --> 00:55:19.270 align:middle line:84% This poem is called "A Poet Among Others." 00:55:19.270 --> 00:55:21.180 align:middle line:84% It has a very brief epigraph which 00:55:21.180 --> 00:55:23.490 align:middle line:90% is from Nadezhda Mandelstam. 00:55:23.490 --> 00:55:26.610 align:middle line:84% I'll read that quickly, "A poet, after all, is just 00:55:26.610 --> 00:55:28.560 align:middle line:84% a human being like any other and he 00:55:28.560 --> 00:55:30.630 align:middle line:84% is bound to end up in the most ordinary way, 00:55:30.630 --> 00:55:33.630 align:middle line:84% in the way most typical for his age and his times, 00:55:33.630 --> 00:55:36.585 align:middle line:84% meeting the fate that lies in wait for everyone else." 00:55:36.585 --> 00:55:39.450 align:middle line:90% 00:55:39.450 --> 00:55:43.350 align:middle line:84% The self is like smoke drifting up at dawn, 00:55:43.350 --> 00:55:47.010 align:middle line:84% a fist can't hold it, a knotted handkerchief. 00:55:47.010 --> 00:55:49.500 align:middle line:90% It fades into gray winter skies. 00:55:49.500 --> 00:55:53.160 align:middle line:84% It goes where the birds go when water cracks in pools 00:55:53.160 --> 00:55:55.110 align:middle line:90% and is no window. 00:55:55.110 --> 00:55:59.520 align:middle line:84% Gray faces, gray serge uniforms in the frozen yard, a rollcall 00:55:59.520 --> 00:56:01.530 align:middle line:90% without names. 00:56:01.530 --> 00:56:04.680 align:middle line:84% Midday strikes clean through these ghosts, 00:56:04.680 --> 00:56:08.700 align:middle line:84% no longer citizens, these shadows herded behind a winter 00:56:08.700 --> 00:56:12.510 align:middle line:84% palisade they cannot pass through to swollen fields, 00:56:12.510 --> 00:56:15.930 align:middle line:84% to thresholds they cross only in dreams, 00:56:15.930 --> 00:56:19.890 align:middle line:84% at first light hunted from Petersburg. 00:56:19.890 --> 00:56:21.750 align:middle line:90% They have fallen out of favor-- 00:56:21.750 --> 00:56:23.500 align:middle line:90% it's a long way down. 00:56:23.500 --> 00:56:25.290 align:middle line:90% And the state is everywhere. 00:56:25.290 --> 00:56:27.960 align:middle line:84% In a man's guts it aches, in the ear of corn 00:56:27.960 --> 00:56:30.240 align:middle line:84% it shouts its slogans, in a thick skull 00:56:30.240 --> 00:56:33.270 align:middle line:90% lodges its birdsongs like lead. 00:56:33.270 --> 00:56:37.110 align:middle line:84% The way to freedom is thin smoke ascending, a road 00:56:37.110 --> 00:56:40.110 align:middle line:90% that winds out of the hands. 00:56:40.110 --> 00:56:42.900 align:middle line:84% Birds perched on the wire go there; fly in, 00:56:42.900 --> 00:56:44.910 align:middle line:84% light on your wrist with the scent of pinewood, 00:56:44.910 --> 00:56:48.210 align:middle line:84% can be cast into the air and over the stockade out. 00:56:48.210 --> 00:56:53.400 align:middle line:84% Even the grass is innocent, goes on growing beyond a wall. 00:56:53.400 --> 00:56:56.070 align:middle line:84% In such a century the grass is fortunate. 00:56:56.070 --> 00:56:59.010 align:middle line:90% The state cares only for men. 00:56:59.010 --> 00:57:02.610 align:middle line:84% This one was a poet, holding to the is-ness of things; 00:57:02.610 --> 00:57:05.070 align:middle line:84% a blade of rye, a moment spiraling up 00:57:05.070 --> 00:57:07.230 align:middle line:84% from the stubble field on a lark's wing 00:57:07.230 --> 00:57:11.070 align:middle line:84% to enter the whole day's blue, a waterdrop filled 00:57:11.070 --> 00:57:13.950 align:middle line:84% with the light of Causasus, a woman's face 00:57:13.950 --> 00:57:16.290 align:middle line:90% clenched on its grief. 00:57:16.290 --> 00:57:20.040 align:middle line:84% He shares it now, the commonness of what is human-- 00:57:20.040 --> 00:57:22.770 align:middle line:84% gray, gray is the dirt with its many 00:57:22.770 --> 00:57:26.520 align:middle line:84% grains, each one identical and singing. 00:57:26.520 --> 00:57:29.370 align:middle line:90% The earth in his mouth at last. 00:57:29.370 --> 00:57:33.330 align:middle line:84% Heavy as silence where the unkillable grass-seed takes 00:57:33.330 --> 00:57:35.345 align:middle line:90% root under his tongue. 00:57:35.345 --> 00:57:37.560 align:middle line:84% Sorry, I am a victim of your dry air. 00:57:37.560 --> 00:57:43.950 align:middle line:90% 00:57:43.950 --> 00:57:47.910 align:middle line:84% These three short poems come from a sequence 00:57:47.910 --> 00:57:50.280 align:middle line:84% which is called "The Little Panopticon." 00:57:50.280 --> 00:57:52.620 align:middle line:84% Each of them has the name of the famous book 00:57:52.620 --> 00:57:55.680 align:middle line:84% and is as much like what the name of the book 00:57:55.680 --> 00:57:57.940 align:middle line:90% might suggest as possible. 00:57:57.940 --> 00:58:00.210 align:middle line:84% The first one is called "The Elements of Geometry." 00:58:00.210 --> 00:58:03.450 align:middle line:90% 00:58:03.450 --> 00:58:06.810 align:middle line:90% It's-- the town is Florence. 00:58:06.810 --> 00:58:09.150 align:middle line:84% In this bankers' town of course art 00:58:09.150 --> 00:58:13.930 align:middle line:84% would depend on figures, angles, rules of thumb. 00:58:13.930 --> 00:58:15.690 align:middle line:84% The shadow of the Palazzo Vecchio 00:58:15.690 --> 00:58:19.110 align:middle line:84% shifts across the air, a slow diagonal, 00:58:19.110 --> 00:58:21.750 align:middle line:84% cutting violets with its edge of ice, 00:58:21.750 --> 00:58:25.680 align:middle line:84% an imaginary triangle of which my clenched fist is 00:58:25.680 --> 00:58:29.280 align:middle line:84% the base and Judith's upraised cleaver one point, 00:58:29.280 --> 00:58:31.740 align:middle line:84% the Banca Toscana perhaps another, 00:58:31.740 --> 00:58:36.840 align:middle line:84% or the sun that holds in focus a province and its skulls. 00:58:36.840 --> 00:58:40.050 align:middle line:84% How curious, Dante, that our lines of life 00:58:40.050 --> 00:58:42.750 align:middle line:84% should intersect in this narrow street, 00:58:42.750 --> 00:58:47.700 align:middle line:84% you going your way to the exile's tomb, I seeking mine. 00:58:47.700 --> 00:58:49.830 align:middle line:84% This line of thought extended downward 00:58:49.830 --> 00:58:52.650 align:middle line:84% would pass through New Zealand and upwards 00:58:52.650 --> 00:58:56.580 align:middle line:84% might divide the Fathers of the Church in holy schism. 00:58:56.580 --> 00:58:59.340 align:middle line:84% Spaces gather in the evening light-- 00:58:59.340 --> 00:59:03.570 align:middle line:84% huge, solemn, empty, howling for blue, 00:59:03.570 --> 00:59:07.560 align:middle line:84% to be occupied with small events from the passion of a saint 00:59:07.560 --> 00:59:11.670 align:middle line:84% or miracles in the repertoire of God. 00:59:11.670 --> 00:59:14.410 align:middle line:84% What feeling is it for the structure of things, 00:59:14.410 --> 00:59:16.890 align:middle line:84% another law, that makes this old man 00:59:16.890 --> 00:59:20.980 align:middle line:84% pause at the mathematical center of the Square? 00:59:20.980 --> 00:59:23.410 align:middle line:84% There are other kingdoms than nature. 00:59:23.410 --> 00:59:26.950 align:middle line:84% This city is the capital of more than Tuscany. 00:59:26.950 --> 00:59:28.420 align:middle line:90% All lines meet here. 00:59:28.420 --> 00:59:32.740 align:middle line:84% The bright cube opens, turns and splits in segments. 00:59:32.740 --> 00:59:37.840 align:middle line:84% We enter at a tangent to the field, our only asset an eye 00:59:37.840 --> 00:59:41.410 align:middle line:84% and its mechanics, the ground rules of a discipline. 00:59:41.410 --> 00:59:44.410 align:middle line:90% 00:59:44.410 --> 00:59:46.420 align:middle line:84% This one is called "A Thousand and One Nights," 00:59:46.420 --> 00:59:50.900 align:middle line:84% and is a tribute to the art of narrative, 00:59:50.900 --> 00:59:54.410 align:middle line:84% which I think of in terms of providence itself. 00:59:54.410 --> 00:59:58.030 align:middle line:90% "A Thousand and One Nights" 00:59:58.030 --> 01:00:01.870 align:middle line:84% A boy stops open-mouthed, between one breath 01:00:01.870 --> 01:00:05.170 align:middle line:84% and the next travels to Baghdad via Kathmandu 01:00:05.170 --> 01:00:08.740 align:middle line:84% and back, two decades later finds the apple 01:00:08.740 --> 01:00:11.560 align:middle line:90% in his hand still untasted. 01:00:11.560 --> 01:00:13.960 align:middle line:84% Another boy, whose life the first boy 01:00:13.960 --> 01:00:16.390 align:middle line:84% enters through the eye of a tailor's needle, 01:00:16.390 --> 01:00:19.300 align:middle line:84% whose dreams in steam of a shaving basin 01:00:19.300 --> 01:00:23.380 align:middle line:84% show his face agape, loiters beside a blacksmith shop 01:00:23.380 --> 01:00:26.950 align:middle line:84% and enters halfway through the third boy's adventures-- 01:00:26.950 --> 01:00:30.430 align:middle line:84% For seven years spellbound, wrecked among brutes 01:00:30.430 --> 01:00:34.900 align:middle line:84% on a black coast, riding in oiljars with the Old Man 01:00:34.900 --> 01:00:36.850 align:middle line:90% of the Mountains. 01:00:36.850 --> 01:00:41.380 align:middle line:84% Magnetized by chains of such events, and then, and then, 01:00:41.380 --> 01:00:44.110 align:middle line:90% whose lifetime has he spent? 01:00:44.110 --> 01:00:47.440 align:middle line:84% A storyteller, sewing strips of hide, 01:00:47.440 --> 01:00:51.550 align:middle line:84% announces what happens to us next and we are held. 01:00:51.550 --> 01:00:55.990 align:middle line:84% Whispering Please don't let me wake, don't let me fall, 01:00:55.990 --> 01:01:00.205 align:middle line:84% don't let me ever get home, don't let the story end. 01:01:00.205 --> 01:01:03.340 align:middle line:90% 01:01:03.340 --> 01:01:07.810 align:middle line:84% Which is perhaps the point at which I might move to something 01:01:07.810 --> 01:01:08.920 align:middle line:90% from the novel. 01:01:08.920 --> 01:01:12.370 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read the beginning and the very end 01:01:12.370 --> 01:01:14.292 align:middle line:90% and a peace in between. 01:01:14.292 --> 01:01:16.375 align:middle line:84% The beginning explains itself completely, I think. 01:01:16.375 --> 01:01:19.810 align:middle line:90% 01:01:19.810 --> 01:01:23.440 align:middle line:84% WHEN I FIRST saw the child I cannot say. 01:01:23.440 --> 01:01:24.580 align:middle line:90% I see myself-- 01:01:24.580 --> 01:01:26.680 align:middle line:84% I might be three or four years old-- 01:01:26.680 --> 01:01:29.740 align:middle line:84% playing under the olives at the edge of our farm, 01:01:29.740 --> 01:01:31.870 align:middle line:84% just within call of the goatherd, 01:01:31.870 --> 01:01:34.930 align:middle line:84% and I am talking to the child, whether for the first time 01:01:34.930 --> 01:01:37.450 align:middle line:84% or not I cannot tell at this distance. 01:01:37.450 --> 01:01:40.120 align:middle line:84% The goatherd is dozing against an olive bole, 01:01:40.120 --> 01:01:43.600 align:middle line:84% his head rolled back to show the dark line of his jaw 01:01:43.600 --> 01:01:47.650 align:middle line:84% and the sinews of his scraggy neck, the black mouth gaping. 01:01:47.650 --> 01:01:49.660 align:middle line:90% Bees shift among the herbs. 01:01:49.660 --> 01:01:50.740 align:middle line:90% The air glitters. 01:01:50.740 --> 01:01:52.570 align:middle line:90% It must be late summer. 01:01:52.570 --> 01:01:55.030 align:middle line:84% There are windblown poppies in the grass. 01:01:55.030 --> 01:01:57.430 align:middle line:84% A black he-goat is up on his hind legs 01:01:57.430 --> 01:01:59.200 align:middle line:90% reaching for vineshoots. 01:01:59.200 --> 01:02:00.430 align:middle line:90% The child is there. 01:02:00.430 --> 01:02:02.230 align:middle line:90% I am three or four years old. 01:02:02.230 --> 01:02:03.670 align:middle line:90% It is late summer. 01:02:03.670 --> 01:02:04.750 align:middle line:90% It is spring. 01:02:04.750 --> 01:02:05.650 align:middle line:90% I am six. 01:02:05.650 --> 01:02:06.610 align:middle line:90% I am eight. 01:02:06.610 --> 01:02:09.070 align:middle line:84% The child is always the same age. 01:02:09.070 --> 01:02:12.940 align:middle line:84% We speak to one another, but in a tongue of our own devising. 01:02:12.940 --> 01:02:16.210 align:middle line:84% My brother, who is a year older, does not see him, even when 01:02:16.210 --> 01:02:17.890 align:middle line:90% he moves close between us. 01:02:17.890 --> 01:02:20.320 align:middle line:90% He is a wild boy. 01:02:20.320 --> 01:02:22.720 align:middle line:84% I've heard the goatherds speak of a wild boy, 01:02:22.720 --> 01:02:25.720 align:middle line:84% whether this one or another I do not know; 01:02:25.720 --> 01:02:28.600 align:middle line:84% and of course I do not admit to them, or to anyone 01:02:28.600 --> 01:02:30.130 align:middle line:90% that I know him. 01:02:30.130 --> 01:02:33.820 align:middle line:84% The wild boy they speak of lives among wolves, in the ravines 01:02:33.820 --> 01:02:36.880 align:middle line:84% to the east, beyond the cultivated farms and villas 01:02:36.880 --> 01:02:39.250 align:middle line:90% of our well-watered valley. 01:02:39.250 --> 01:02:41.560 align:middle line:84% There really are wolves out there. 01:02:41.560 --> 01:02:45.520 align:middle line:84% I've heard stories of how they raid the outlying pastures, 01:02:45.520 --> 01:02:48.400 align:middle line:84% and once I think I heard one howling in the snow. 01:02:48.400 --> 01:02:50.140 align:middle line:90% Unless it was the child. 01:02:50.140 --> 01:02:52.600 align:middle line:84% And I've seen a wolf's head that one of the hunters 01:02:52.600 --> 01:02:55.720 align:middle line:84% brought back to hang up as a warning in the fold. 01:02:55.720 --> 01:02:58.240 align:middle line:84% It was gray, and not very fierce looking, 01:02:58.240 --> 01:03:02.020 align:middle line:84% despite the curling back of the flesh over its fanged jaw. 01:03:02.020 --> 01:03:05.440 align:middle line:84% I thought of the child, and how wolves must have something 01:03:05.440 --> 01:03:07.810 align:middle line:84% in their nature which is kindly, and which 01:03:07.810 --> 01:03:11.800 align:middle line:84% connects with our kind, or else how could the child 01:03:11.800 --> 01:03:13.267 align:middle line:90% live among them? 01:03:13.267 --> 01:03:15.850 align:middle line:84% What was frightening was the way the head had been hacked off, 01:03:15.850 --> 01:03:18.850 align:middle line:84% with ropes of dark blood hanging from it and the fur 01:03:18.850 --> 01:03:21.280 align:middle line:90% at its throat matted with blood. 01:03:21.280 --> 01:03:23.770 align:middle line:84% Later I heard, again from the goatherds perhaps, 01:03:23.770 --> 01:03:25.870 align:middle line:84% that there is indeed some part of our nature 01:03:25.870 --> 01:03:28.930 align:middle line:84% that we share with wolves, and something of their nature 01:03:28.930 --> 01:03:31.030 align:middle line:84% that is in us, since there are men, 01:03:31.030 --> 01:03:34.300 align:middle line:84% at certain phases of the moon, who can transform themselves 01:03:34.300 --> 01:03:35.830 align:middle line:90% into wolves. 01:03:35.830 --> 01:03:39.310 align:middle line:84% They close their human mind like a fist and when they open it 01:03:39.310 --> 01:03:41.860 align:middle line:90% again it is a wolf's paw. 01:03:41.860 --> 01:03:45.070 align:middle line:84% The skull bulges, the jaw pushes out to become a snout. 01:03:45.070 --> 01:03:48.490 align:middle line:84% Hair prickles down their spine, grows rough on their belly. 01:03:48.490 --> 01:03:51.010 align:middle line:84% The body slouches and is on all fours. 01:03:51.010 --> 01:03:53.050 align:middle line:90% The voice thickens. 01:03:53.050 --> 01:03:54.580 align:middle line:90% It is the moon draws them on. 01:03:54.580 --> 01:03:57.160 align:middle line:84% I believed such things in those days, and wondered. 01:03:57.160 --> 01:03:59.200 align:middle line:90% Was the child of a wolf boy? 01:03:59.200 --> 01:04:01.870 align:middle line:84% Were those wolf men who lived secretly among us, 01:04:01.870 --> 01:04:05.530 align:middle line:84% changing themselves painfully at the moon's bidding, children 01:04:05.530 --> 01:04:07.270 align:middle line:84% who had been captured from the wilds 01:04:07.270 --> 01:04:12.080 align:middle line:84% and brought in among us, to be adapted to the ways of men? 01:04:12.080 --> 01:04:14.500 align:middle line:84% Sometime when my own body began to change 01:04:14.500 --> 01:04:17.080 align:middle line:84% and I discovered the first signs of manhood upon me, 01:04:17.080 --> 01:04:20.020 align:middle line:84% the child left and did not reappear, 01:04:20.020 --> 01:04:22.870 align:middle line:84% though I dreamt of him often enough in those early years, 01:04:22.870 --> 01:04:24.670 align:middle line:90% and have done so since. 01:04:24.670 --> 01:04:26.740 align:middle line:84% I've forgotten the language we used, 01:04:26.740 --> 01:04:28.840 align:middle line:84% and if he were to reappear, perhaps we 01:04:28.840 --> 01:04:30.590 align:middle line:90% could no longer communicate. 01:04:30.590 --> 01:04:32.600 align:middle line:84% Did he have some message for me then? 01:04:32.600 --> 01:04:34.510 align:middle line:90% If so, he failed to deliver it. 01:04:34.510 --> 01:04:37.240 align:middle line:84% Or did so and it has slipped my mind. 01:04:37.240 --> 01:04:39.310 align:middle line:84% Or the language he used on whatever occasion 01:04:39.310 --> 01:04:41.920 align:middle line:84% it was had already passed my understanding 01:04:41.920 --> 01:04:45.130 align:middle line:84% and could not be translated into daily speech. 01:04:45.130 --> 01:04:47.470 align:middle line:84% I believe, I think I have always believed, 01:04:47.470 --> 01:04:48.730 align:middle line:90% that he will come again. 01:04:48.730 --> 01:04:51.640 align:middle line:90% But in what guise? 01:04:51.640 --> 01:04:53.830 align:middle line:84% The speaker of that is, in fact, Ovid. 01:04:53.830 --> 01:04:56.440 align:middle line:84% He is exiled, as you may or may not know, 01:04:56.440 --> 01:05:04.433 align:middle line:84% to Scythia, at the very height of his career. 01:05:04.433 --> 01:05:06.100 align:middle line:84% And the form of that punishment, really, 01:05:06.100 --> 01:05:08.242 align:middle line:84% was to deprive him completely of language. 01:05:08.242 --> 01:05:09.700 align:middle line:84% Since he was taken to a place where 01:05:09.700 --> 01:05:11.830 align:middle line:84% people spoke neither Latin nor Greek. 01:05:11.830 --> 01:05:16.240 align:middle line:84% And in that place, he hear of a wild child 01:05:16.240 --> 01:05:18.400 align:middle line:84% and tempts the people of the village 01:05:18.400 --> 01:05:20.620 align:middle line:90% to go out and capture the child. 01:05:20.620 --> 01:05:24.580 align:middle line:84% What I'm reading now is a lead into the moment when he sees 01:05:24.580 --> 01:05:27.130 align:middle line:90% the child for the first time. 01:05:27.130 --> 01:05:29.590 align:middle line:84% He is just beginning to learn, to understand, 01:05:29.590 --> 01:05:33.370 align:middle line:84% the language of the people he lives among. 01:05:33.370 --> 01:05:36.160 align:middle line:84% I understand all that is said to me now in this crude tongue, 01:05:36.160 --> 01:05:38.590 align:middle line:84% by these plain but kindly people. 01:05:38.590 --> 01:05:41.470 align:middle line:84% I began to teach the old man's grandson Latin, to write it, 01:05:41.470 --> 01:05:43.450 align:middle line:90% and to recite poems. 01:05:43.450 --> 01:05:45.970 align:middle line:84% Listening to the old man now, telling his stories 01:05:45.970 --> 01:05:49.420 align:middle line:84% in our little yard, I know what the different voices signify, 01:05:49.420 --> 01:05:52.810 align:middle line:84% they are the north wind, they are wolves, they are giants, 01:05:52.810 --> 01:05:54.640 align:middle line:84% they are the ghosts of warriors, they 01:05:54.640 --> 01:05:58.630 align:middle line:84% are a shinbone, a severed head, they are the bottom of the sea. 01:05:58.630 --> 01:06:01.300 align:middle line:84% The old man's stories are fabulous beyond anything 01:06:01.300 --> 01:06:04.360 align:middle line:84% I have retold from the Greek; but savage, a form 01:06:04.360 --> 01:06:07.360 align:middle line:84% of extravagant play that explains nothing, but speaks 01:06:07.360 --> 01:06:09.160 align:middle line:84% straight out of the nightmare landscape 01:06:09.160 --> 01:06:12.460 align:middle line:84% of this place and my dream journeys across it. 01:06:12.460 --> 01:06:15.490 align:middle line:84% Our civilized fables that account so elegantly for what 01:06:15.490 --> 01:06:20.080 align:middle line:84% we see and know seem feeble beside these elaborate and 01:06:20.080 --> 01:06:21.520 align:middle line:90% absurd jokes. 01:06:21.520 --> 01:06:23.920 align:middle line:84% They are like winter here, they fill the world, 01:06:23.920 --> 01:06:26.260 align:middle line:84% they make the head buzz, they numb the blood. 01:06:26.260 --> 01:06:30.040 align:middle line:84% They seem absolutely true, yet they explain nothing. 01:06:30.040 --> 01:06:32.050 align:middle line:84% I begin to see briefly, in snatches, 01:06:32.050 --> 01:06:34.780 align:middle line:84% how this old man, my friend, might see the world. 01:06:34.780 --> 01:06:35.950 align:middle line:90% It is astonishing. 01:06:35.950 --> 01:06:40.330 align:middle line:90% Bare, cruel, terrible, comic. 01:06:40.330 --> 01:06:41.770 align:middle line:90% It begins to be autumn again. 01:06:41.770 --> 01:06:43.420 align:middle line:90% There is a smokiness in things. 01:06:43.420 --> 01:06:46.630 align:middle line:84% Once again we go to the birchwoods. 01:06:46.630 --> 01:06:49.390 align:middle line:84% Almost immediately, in the golden light of a fine autumn 01:06:49.390 --> 01:06:51.880 align:middle line:84% day, with the sky broken in rainpools 01:06:51.880 --> 01:06:53.470 align:middle line:84% among the drifts of yellow leaves, 01:06:53.470 --> 01:06:55.690 align:middle line:84% he is there, standing quite still 01:06:55.690 --> 01:06:59.380 align:middle line:84% and taller after these years among the slashed birches. 01:06:59.380 --> 01:07:00.530 align:middle line:90% I am filled with joy. 01:07:00.530 --> 01:07:01.060 align:middle line:90% He is there. 01:07:01.060 --> 01:07:01.930 align:middle line:90% He is real. 01:07:01.930 --> 01:07:03.400 align:middle line:90% The others see him too. 01:07:03.400 --> 01:07:06.700 align:middle line:84% He is streaked with mud, with bony knees and elbows 01:07:06.700 --> 01:07:08.020 align:middle line:90% and a shrunken belly. 01:07:08.020 --> 01:07:11.020 align:middle line:84% An ugly boy of eleven or twelve with a bird's nest 01:07:11.020 --> 01:07:12.580 align:middle line:90% of dirty hair. 01:07:12.580 --> 01:07:14.502 align:middle line:84% We are sitting, five of us, in a circle, 01:07:14.502 --> 01:07:16.960 align:middle line:84% drinking a little of the thin soup we have brought with us, 01:07:16.960 --> 01:07:19.600 align:middle line:84% while the horses wander among the birches, 01:07:19.600 --> 01:07:21.880 align:middle line:84% grazing off what blades of grass still 01:07:21.880 --> 01:07:23.410 align:middle line:90% push up through the leaf mold. 01:07:23.410 --> 01:07:25.810 align:middle line:90% It is late afternoon. 01:07:25.810 --> 01:07:26.830 align:middle line:90% Still. 01:07:26.830 --> 01:07:30.070 align:middle line:84% We hold our cups in both hands, drinking, not speaking, 01:07:30.070 --> 01:07:32.230 align:middle line:84% and suddenly the boy is there, watching us. 01:07:32.230 --> 01:07:33.850 align:middle line:84% The men's eyes dark above the rim 01:07:33.850 --> 01:07:35.890 align:middle line:84% of the cup and their fingers grimy. 01:07:35.890 --> 01:07:36.910 align:middle line:90% We all look. 01:07:36.910 --> 01:07:40.510 align:middle line:84% First at the boy then at one another, and are frozen. 01:07:40.510 --> 01:07:43.330 align:middle line:84% Even the horses cease grazing and raise their heads 01:07:43.330 --> 01:07:45.490 align:middle line:84% against the watery blue of the afternoon, 01:07:45.490 --> 01:07:49.060 align:middle line:84% sniffing, scenting another presence. 01:07:49.060 --> 01:07:50.920 align:middle line:90% It is as if time had stopped. 01:07:50.920 --> 01:07:53.290 align:middle line:84% And I feel that if we could sit like this long enough, 01:07:53.290 --> 01:07:55.930 align:middle line:84% cross-legged on the leaves, so that we seemed like another 01:07:55.930 --> 01:07:58.300 align:middle line:84% part of the would; if we let our spirits out, 01:07:58.300 --> 01:08:01.960 align:middle line:84% shaking them loose, and became wood, leaf mold, lichen-- 01:08:01.960 --> 01:08:03.310 align:middle line:90% he would come to us. 01:08:03.310 --> 01:08:05.440 align:middle line:90% The others, I know, are afraid. 01:08:05.440 --> 01:08:07.570 align:middle line:84% Their stillness is a sort of terror. 01:08:07.570 --> 01:08:09.640 align:middle line:84% These men who are not afraid of whirling horsemen 01:08:09.640 --> 01:08:12.050 align:middle line:84% in the night with poisoned arrows and firebrands, 01:08:12.050 --> 01:08:15.280 align:middle line:84% or of a wild boar with its tusks foaming, at afraid 01:08:15.280 --> 01:08:16.210 align:middle line:90% of the Child. 01:08:16.210 --> 01:08:17.229 align:middle line:90% I am not. 01:08:17.229 --> 01:08:21.100 align:middle line:84% My stillness is for fear that we may, 01:08:21.100 --> 01:08:22.600 align:middle line:84% even with the lifting of a finger 01:08:22.600 --> 01:08:26.439 align:middle line:84% or the catching of a breath, startle him into flight. 01:08:26.439 --> 01:08:28.660 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read now, from the very end of the book, 01:08:28.660 --> 01:08:30.790 align:middle line:90% the last page or so. 01:08:30.790 --> 01:08:34.149 align:middle line:84% Ovid attempts to teach the child to speak and to induce out 01:08:34.149 --> 01:08:35.859 align:middle line:84% of him some notion of, first of all, 01:08:35.859 --> 01:08:38.229 align:middle line:90% the human then of the Godhead. 01:08:38.229 --> 01:08:39.910 align:middle line:84% People of the village drive them out, 01:08:39.910 --> 01:08:44.500 align:middle line:84% and they set off across the wilderness towards the pole. 01:08:44.500 --> 01:08:47.950 align:middle line:84% And these are the very last two pages of the book. 01:08:47.950 --> 01:08:50.500 align:middle line:90% 01:08:50.500 --> 01:08:53.350 align:middle line:90% And so we come to it, the place. 01:08:53.350 --> 01:08:56.710 align:middle line:84% I have taken my last step, though he does not know it yet, 01:08:56.710 --> 01:09:00.850 align:middle line:84% as he moves away as usual to forage for our evening meal. 01:09:00.850 --> 01:09:05.170 align:middle line:84% From here I ascend, or lower myself, grain by grain, 01:09:05.170 --> 01:09:07.569 align:middle line:90% into the hands of the gods. 01:09:07.569 --> 01:09:11.500 align:middle line:84% It is the place I dreamed of so often, back there in Tomis, 01:09:11.500 --> 01:09:14.979 align:middle line:84% but could never find in all my wanderings in sleep-- 01:09:14.979 --> 01:09:19.250 align:middle line:84% the point on the earth's surface where I disappear. 01:09:19.250 --> 01:09:21.359 align:middle line:90% It is not at all as I imagined. 01:09:21.359 --> 01:09:22.880 align:middle line:90% There are no wolves. 01:09:22.880 --> 01:09:25.910 align:middle line:84% It is clear sunlight, at the end of the day like each 01:09:25.910 --> 01:09:29.450 align:middle line:84% of the others we have spent out here, a fine warm spring 01:09:29.450 --> 01:09:31.819 align:middle line:84% day with larks in the air, and insects 01:09:31.819 --> 01:09:34.580 align:middle line:90% swimming under our feet. 01:09:34.580 --> 01:09:36.050 align:middle line:90% The Child is here. 01:09:36.050 --> 01:09:38.930 align:middle line:84% I watch him moving away along the edge of a stream, 01:09:38.930 --> 01:09:41.569 align:middle line:84% stooping, kneeling, starting off again 01:09:41.569 --> 01:09:43.340 align:middle line:84% with his spring-heeled gait as he 01:09:43.340 --> 01:09:46.189 align:middle line:90% gathers snails among the weeds. 01:09:46.189 --> 01:09:48.800 align:middle line:84% Strange to look back on the enormous landscape 01:09:48.800 --> 01:09:52.500 align:middle line:84% we have struggled across all these weeks, across the sea, 01:09:52.500 --> 01:09:55.520 align:middle line:84% across my life in Rome, across my childhood, 01:09:55.520 --> 01:09:58.250 align:middle line:84% to observe how clearly the footprints lead 01:09:58.250 --> 01:10:00.710 align:middle line:90% to this place and no other. 01:10:00.710 --> 01:10:03.380 align:middle line:84% They shine in my head, all those steps. 01:10:03.380 --> 01:10:05.660 align:middle line:84% I can, in my mind, follow them back, 01:10:05.660 --> 01:10:08.600 align:middle line:84% feeling myself with each step restored, 01:10:08.600 --> 01:10:11.360 align:middle line:84% till I come to the ground of my earliest memories again, 01:10:11.360 --> 01:10:13.760 align:middle line:84% and I'm standing in the checkered light of olives 01:10:13.760 --> 01:10:16.880 align:middle line:84% at the very edge of our farm, with wings glittering 01:10:16.880 --> 01:10:21.320 align:middle line:84% beyond the low stone wall and a goatherd dozing against one 01:10:21.320 --> 01:10:23.840 align:middle line:84% of the olives, his rough head tilted back 01:10:23.840 --> 01:10:26.660 align:middle line:84% and all the throat exposed, as if he had been dozing 01:10:26.660 --> 01:10:29.060 align:middle line:84% like that, just as I last remember him, 01:10:29.060 --> 01:10:31.220 align:middle line:90% for nearly sixty years. 01:10:31.220 --> 01:10:32.960 align:middle line:84% One of the goats, which is black, 01:10:32.960 --> 01:10:37.380 align:middle line:84% has just jerked up onto its hind legs to munch at a vine shoot. 01:10:37.380 --> 01:10:38.180 align:middle line:90% It is spring. 01:10:38.180 --> 01:10:39.170 align:middle line:90% It is summer. 01:10:39.170 --> 01:10:40.400 align:middle line:90% I'm three years old. 01:10:40.400 --> 01:10:41.510 align:middle line:90% I'm sixty. 01:10:41.510 --> 01:10:43.280 align:middle line:90% The child is there. 01:10:43.280 --> 01:10:46.730 align:middle line:84% He turns for a moment to gaze at me across his shoulder, which 01:10:46.730 --> 01:10:50.030 align:middle line:84% is touched with sunlight, then stoops to gather another snail 01:10:50.030 --> 01:10:51.740 align:middle line:90% from the edge of the stream. 01:10:51.740 --> 01:10:53.720 align:middle line:90% He rises and goes on. 01:10:53.720 --> 01:10:56.180 align:middle line:84% The stream shakes out its light around his ankles 01:10:56.180 --> 01:10:59.390 align:middle line:84% as he wades deeper, then climbs on to a smooth stone 01:10:59.390 --> 01:11:01.400 align:middle line:84% and balances for a moment in the sun, 01:11:01.400 --> 01:11:05.270 align:middle line:84% leaps, leaps again, then wanders upstream on the other bank, 01:11:05.270 --> 01:11:07.820 align:middle line:84% which is gravel, every pebble of it, 01:11:07.820 --> 01:11:10.970 align:middle line:84% white, black, gray, picked out and glittering 01:11:10.970 --> 01:11:14.390 align:middle line:84% in the light sunlight as in a mosaic, where he pauses, 01:11:14.390 --> 01:11:18.320 align:middle line:84% gathers one, two, four snails, and with the stream rippling 01:11:18.320 --> 01:11:20.780 align:middle line:84% as he steps in and out of it, walks on, 01:11:20.780 --> 01:11:23.150 align:middle line:84% kicking at the gravel with his toes 01:11:23.150 --> 01:11:25.910 align:middle line:84% and lost for a moment in his own childlike pleasure 01:11:25.910 --> 01:11:27.950 align:middle line:90% in being free. 01:11:27.950 --> 01:11:29.240 align:middle line:90% I might call to him. 01:11:29.240 --> 01:11:30.710 align:middle line:90% I have the voice for that. 01:11:30.710 --> 01:11:32.390 align:middle line:90% But do not. 01:11:32.390 --> 01:11:34.250 align:middle line:84% To call him back might be to miss 01:11:34.250 --> 01:11:37.550 align:middle line:84% the fullness of this moment as it is about to be revealed, 01:11:37.550 --> 01:11:41.570 align:middle line:84% and I want so much, at the very end here, to be open to all 01:11:41.570 --> 01:11:43.160 align:middle line:90% that it holds for me. 01:11:43.160 --> 01:11:45.980 align:middle line:84% The fullness is in the Child's moving away, 01:11:45.980 --> 01:11:48.800 align:middle line:84% in his stepping so lightly, so joyfully, 01:11:48.800 --> 01:11:51.560 align:middle line:84% naked, into his own distance at last 01:11:51.560 --> 01:11:54.830 align:middle line:84% as he fades in and out of the dazzle of light off the water 01:11:54.830 --> 01:11:56.240 align:middle line:90% and stoops to gather-- 01:11:56.240 --> 01:11:56.900 align:middle line:90% what? 01:11:56.900 --> 01:11:57.800 align:middle line:90% Pebbles? 01:11:57.800 --> 01:12:00.740 align:middle line:84% Is that what his eye is attracted by now, the grayest, 01:12:00.740 --> 01:12:03.020 align:middle line:90% most delicately veined of them? 01:12:03.020 --> 01:12:05.030 align:middle line:84% Or has he already forgotten all purpose, 01:12:05.030 --> 01:12:08.420 align:middle line:84% moving simply for the joy of it, wading deeper into the light 01:12:08.420 --> 01:12:10.940 align:middle line:84% and letting them fall from his hands, the living 01:12:10.940 --> 01:12:14.120 align:middle line:84% and edible snails that are no longer necessary to my life 01:12:14.120 --> 01:12:17.030 align:middle line:84% and may be left now to return to their own, 01:12:17.030 --> 01:12:18.920 align:middle line:84% the useless pebbles that where they 01:12:18.920 --> 01:12:20.840 align:middle line:84% strike the ground suddenly flare up 01:12:20.840 --> 01:12:24.860 align:middle line:84% as butterflies, whose bright wings rainbow the stream. 01:12:24.860 --> 01:12:27.230 align:middle line:84% He is walking on the water's light. 01:12:27.230 --> 01:12:30.620 align:middle line:84% And as I watch, he takes the first step off it, 01:12:30.620 --> 01:12:32.960 align:middle line:84% moving slowly away now into the deepest 01:12:32.960 --> 01:12:37.520 align:middle line:84% distance, above the earth, above the water, on air. 01:12:37.520 --> 01:12:38.210 align:middle line:90% It is summer. 01:12:38.210 --> 01:12:39.650 align:middle line:90% It is spring. 01:12:39.650 --> 01:12:40.980 align:middle line:90% I'm three years old. 01:12:40.980 --> 01:12:42.050 align:middle line:90% I am sixty. 01:12:42.050 --> 01:12:43.250 align:middle line:90% I am six. 01:12:43.250 --> 01:12:44.390 align:middle line:90% I am there. 01:12:44.390 --> 01:12:45.140 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 01:12:45.140 --> 01:12:49.090 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 01:12:49.090 --> 01:13:04.000 align:middle line:90%