WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.250 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.250 --> 00:00:02.790 align:middle line:84% I have a number of announcements. 00:00:02.790 --> 00:00:04.140 align:middle line:90% So I'll start right away. 00:00:04.140 --> 00:00:07.160 align:middle line:90% Can you hear me in the back? 00:00:07.160 --> 00:00:07.790 align:middle line:90% Yes? 00:00:07.790 --> 00:00:08.290 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:00:08.290 --> 00:00:11.770 align:middle line:90% 00:00:11.770 --> 00:00:15.880 align:middle line:84% The next poetry reading that I know of in town 00:00:15.880 --> 00:00:18.190 align:middle line:84% is that the University of Arizona 00:00:18.190 --> 00:00:21.580 align:middle line:84% next Wednesday, October 1, at 8:30 00:00:21.580 --> 00:00:24.400 align:middle line:84% in the terrace room of the Student Union. 00:00:24.400 --> 00:00:28.750 align:middle line:84% Michael Cuddihy, a local poet, and Susan Lowell Humphries, 00:00:28.750 --> 00:00:32.290 align:middle line:84% a member of the University of Arizona writing faculty 00:00:32.290 --> 00:00:34.570 align:middle line:90% will be reading. 00:00:34.570 --> 00:00:38.140 align:middle line:84% Michael will be reading his poetry, and Susan her fiction. 00:00:38.140 --> 00:00:40.910 align:middle line:90% 00:00:40.910 --> 00:00:45.050 align:middle line:84% Then on October 13, also at the University, 00:00:45.050 --> 00:00:48.050 align:middle line:84% this time in the modern languages auditorium, 00:00:48.050 --> 00:00:51.670 align:middle line:90% Stephen Spender will be reading. 00:00:51.670 --> 00:00:57.220 align:middle line:84% The next reading at Pima will be by Jeff Carter, 00:00:57.220 --> 00:01:04.330 align:middle line:84% that will be on October 16 also at 8:30 right here. 00:01:04.330 --> 00:01:06.370 align:middle line:84% I know this can get bewildering and I 00:01:06.370 --> 00:01:10.180 align:middle line:84% suggest that you pick up a schedule from the University 00:01:10.180 --> 00:01:14.980 align:middle line:84% of Arizona Poetry Center to keep track of their readings 00:01:14.980 --> 00:01:19.090 align:middle line:84% and one of these days we'll have something published 00:01:19.090 --> 00:01:22.030 align:middle line:84% for our series, we don't yet, so I 00:01:22.030 --> 00:01:27.040 align:middle line:84% suggest that you call student activities here, 00:01:27.040 --> 00:01:29.998 align:middle line:84% or once the schedules are out, I'll 00:01:29.998 --> 00:01:32.540 align:middle line:84% make sure that the Poetry Center at the University gets them, 00:01:32.540 --> 00:01:34.277 align:middle line:90% and you can check with them. 00:01:34.277 --> 00:01:35.860 align:middle line:84% In the meantime, we'll keep announcing 00:01:35.860 --> 00:01:39.478 align:middle line:84% and we'll keep sending material to the newspapers. 00:01:39.478 --> 00:01:41.020 align:middle line:84% The rest of our series this year will 00:01:41.020 --> 00:01:47.920 align:middle line:84% include among many others, Abelardo Delgado, Norman Dubie, 00:01:47.920 --> 00:01:50.440 align:middle line:84% Gwendolyn Brooks, and Simon Ortiz. 00:01:50.440 --> 00:01:53.780 align:middle line:90% 00:01:53.780 --> 00:01:56.690 align:middle line:84% Another activity that I'm sure many of you 00:01:56.690 --> 00:02:00.560 align:middle line:84% will be interested in is an exhibit 00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:05.600 align:middle line:84% of paintings by Gail Marcus Orlen, which 00:02:05.600 --> 00:02:10.940 align:middle line:84% will be right around the corner in the gallery in the building. 00:02:10.940 --> 00:02:16.980 align:middle line:84% That will be from September 29 to October 17. 00:02:16.980 --> 00:02:25.810 align:middle line:84% September 29 is Monday and there will be a reception that night 00:02:25.810 --> 00:02:27.040 align:middle line:90% from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. 00:02:27.040 --> 00:02:33.450 align:middle line:90% 00:02:33.450 --> 00:02:41.830 align:middle line:84% And I have great pleasure in introducing Steve Orlen. 00:02:41.830 --> 00:02:44.890 align:middle line:84% Steve has been writing very good poetry for a good many years, 00:02:44.890 --> 00:02:50.470 align:middle line:84% and many people wondered when he would have a book out. 00:02:50.470 --> 00:02:53.320 align:middle line:84% He does have one now called Sleeping on Doors, 00:02:53.320 --> 00:02:59.880 align:middle line:84% a chapbook put out by Penumbra press in Lisbon Iowa. 00:02:59.880 --> 00:03:02.790 align:middle line:84% In the meantime, of course, even before his book came out, 00:03:02.790 --> 00:03:07.710 align:middle line:84% he was publishing in many, many magazines and journals 00:03:07.710 --> 00:03:13.800 align:middle line:84% including Kayak, Ironwood, Poetry, Iowa Review, Poetry 00:03:13.800 --> 00:03:16.570 align:middle line:90% Northwest, and American Review. 00:03:16.570 --> 00:03:19.820 align:middle line:90% 00:03:19.820 --> 00:03:23.390 align:middle line:84% Among his awards, he received a National Endowment 00:03:23.390 --> 00:03:29.080 align:middle line:90% for the Arts Fellowship in 1974. 00:03:29.080 --> 00:03:38.150 align:middle line:84% I'm sure that at the University, Steve is not only admired 00:03:38.150 --> 00:03:40.220 align:middle line:84% for his poetry but I think he's very much loved 00:03:40.220 --> 00:03:48.050 align:middle line:84% for his teaching and his always willing advice for young poets. 00:03:48.050 --> 00:03:50.050 align:middle line:84% It's a great pleasure to introduce Steve Orlen. 00:03:50.050 --> 00:04:00.750 align:middle line:90% 00:04:00.750 --> 00:04:01.250 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:04:01.250 --> 00:04:12.118 align:middle line:90% 00:04:12.118 --> 00:04:15.380 align:middle line:84% I want to start with a poem called The Secret. 00:04:15.380 --> 00:04:17.209 align:middle line:84% I know I'm among friends, but can't help 00:04:17.209 --> 00:04:22.010 align:middle line:84% but be nervous in front of all of them. 00:04:22.010 --> 00:04:25.330 align:middle line:90% First one's called The Secret. 00:04:25.330 --> 00:04:28.780 align:middle line:84% I left the Mexican coin to confuse her. 00:04:28.780 --> 00:04:32.080 align:middle line:84% I left it in the drawer with her mementos, letters 00:04:32.080 --> 00:04:34.150 align:middle line:90% to and from the dead. 00:04:34.150 --> 00:04:36.980 align:middle line:90% The oval portrait of her sister. 00:04:36.980 --> 00:04:41.240 align:middle line:84% Love must keep it secret, but not its hidden things. 00:04:41.240 --> 00:04:44.390 align:middle line:84% The day turned dark, after dinner 00:04:44.390 --> 00:04:47.270 align:middle line:84% I slid the brass coin in among the seeds 00:04:47.270 --> 00:04:50.190 align:middle line:84% in the lush flesh of a watermelon. 00:04:50.190 --> 00:04:53.900 align:middle line:84% It disappeared, the lovers version of a magic trick 00:04:53.900 --> 00:04:57.360 align:middle line:84% to resurrect mysterious strangers. 00:04:57.360 --> 00:05:01.080 align:middle line:84% Love must keep it secret between bathroom and kitchen, 00:05:01.080 --> 00:05:03.450 align:middle line:90% and in the marriage chambers. 00:05:03.450 --> 00:05:06.960 align:middle line:84% We try to sleep in a dream, she finds 00:05:06.960 --> 00:05:11.640 align:middle line:84% the coin wedged between her breast, lovely in my bed. 00:05:11.640 --> 00:05:16.020 align:middle line:84% She dreams of other men and unfamiliar places. 00:05:16.020 --> 00:05:20.700 align:middle line:84% By morning, she needs a bus trip, she's bored, I know. 00:05:20.700 --> 00:05:23.430 align:middle line:84% I left the Mexican coin to distract her 00:05:23.430 --> 00:05:25.440 align:middle line:90% from love and its mischief. 00:05:25.440 --> 00:05:29.550 align:middle line:84% Eyes making eyes at strangers as we pass. 00:05:29.550 --> 00:05:33.330 align:middle line:84% Across the aisle, I watch her finger it in her blue jeans 00:05:33.330 --> 00:05:37.200 align:middle line:84% pocket, smooth it, make it lucky, 00:05:37.200 --> 00:05:39.990 align:middle line:90% such wearing down takes years. 00:05:39.990 --> 00:05:42.840 align:middle line:90% The bus stops in Mexico City. 00:05:42.840 --> 00:05:47.070 align:middle line:84% We ride together, to strangers in a painted bed. 00:05:47.070 --> 00:05:50.190 align:middle line:84% We hardly know each other well enough, she whispers, 00:05:50.190 --> 00:05:55.890 align:middle line:84% to undress in this humid dark, stars drift above the skylight, 00:05:55.890 --> 00:05:57.990 align:middle line:90% the hours pass. 00:05:57.990 --> 00:06:01.770 align:middle line:84% I think I am falling in love with the need for fiction, 00:06:01.770 --> 00:06:05.160 align:middle line:90% may such shy coinage multiply. 00:06:05.160 --> 00:06:08.175 align:middle line:84% The coin glows between us, the coin knows. 00:06:08.175 --> 00:06:13.890 align:middle line:90% 00:06:13.890 --> 00:06:16.760 align:middle line:84% The next poem is called The Drunken Man, 00:06:16.760 --> 00:06:20.150 align:middle line:84% and it's the kind of situation with which everybody's familiar 00:06:20.150 --> 00:06:22.550 align:middle line:84% when your friend is drunk or the other guy is drunk 00:06:22.550 --> 00:06:25.970 align:middle line:90% and you're not, and how do you-- 00:06:25.970 --> 00:06:30.050 align:middle line:90% the communication gets mixed up. 00:06:30.050 --> 00:06:32.240 align:middle line:90% The Drunken Man. 00:06:32.240 --> 00:06:35.270 align:middle line:84% There's nothing you can say to a man who drinks, 00:06:35.270 --> 00:06:38.150 align:middle line:84% he rises in the gray mist of morning and lights 00:06:38.150 --> 00:06:42.470 align:middle line:84% a cigarette knowing that soon he'll be elsewhere. 00:06:42.470 --> 00:06:46.490 align:middle line:84% Out in the world, the old men sweep their shop and one barber 00:06:46.490 --> 00:06:47.990 align:middle line:90% nods. 00:06:47.990 --> 00:06:50.720 align:middle line:84% The full breasted woman airing her pillows, 00:06:50.720 --> 00:06:54.830 align:middle line:84% she smiles and squints, and seeing it his only him, 00:06:54.830 --> 00:06:58.770 align:middle line:84% she closes the window, but it doesn't matter, 00:06:58.770 --> 00:07:01.610 align:middle line:84% there's no way of hurting a man who drinks. 00:07:01.610 --> 00:07:04.730 align:middle line:84% His wife floats in his pocket, his father twists 00:07:04.730 --> 00:07:06.140 align:middle line:90% open the casket. 00:07:06.140 --> 00:07:09.380 align:middle line:84% His mother whispers, drink, drink, 00:07:09.380 --> 00:07:12.550 align:middle line:90% who moves on down the street. 00:07:12.550 --> 00:07:15.640 align:middle line:84% There are times when you feel obligated to speak, 00:07:15.640 --> 00:07:17.560 align:middle line:84% you take your hands from your pocket, 00:07:17.560 --> 00:07:19.930 align:middle line:84% you slide your glass away from him. 00:07:19.930 --> 00:07:22.180 align:middle line:84% In earnest, you'll say something, anything, 00:07:22.180 --> 00:07:25.840 align:middle line:84% the weather, your son, and he'll argue at you 00:07:25.840 --> 00:07:30.490 align:middle line:84% from someplace you can't know because you're not a drunk. 00:07:30.490 --> 00:07:34.150 align:middle line:84% Perhaps when you stagger home your wife screams to shut up, 00:07:34.150 --> 00:07:38.620 align:middle line:84% come to bed like a man, your face reddened, 00:07:38.620 --> 00:07:42.810 align:middle line:84% your shoes drops, your burrow into her flesh. 00:07:42.810 --> 00:07:46.020 align:middle line:84% But a drunk is like a cloud, is like a ship that 00:07:46.020 --> 00:07:52.500 align:middle line:84% sinks but never drowns, is like a feather bed already at its noon. 00:07:52.500 --> 00:07:57.610 align:middle line:84% His mother and his father are half gone, he's weightless now. 00:07:57.610 --> 00:08:00.090 align:middle line:84% Don't waste your pity on a drunken man, 00:08:00.090 --> 00:08:04.110 align:middle line:84% there are too many of him and your breasts are too few. 00:08:04.110 --> 00:08:07.770 align:middle line:84% At night in the bar, you are his weakness, his hope, 00:08:07.770 --> 00:08:09.640 align:middle line:90% and his family. 00:08:09.640 --> 00:08:12.570 align:middle line:84% If you argue back, if you arm wrestle him, 00:08:12.570 --> 00:08:15.660 align:middle line:84% if the bartender is embarrassed by your antics, 00:08:15.660 --> 00:08:20.010 align:middle line:84% it's time to go home, go home, go home to your noisy wife. 00:08:20.010 --> 00:08:24.920 align:middle line:90% 00:08:24.920 --> 00:08:27.610 align:middle line:84% The next one is called Beauty and the Beast. 00:08:27.610 --> 00:08:32.500 align:middle line:84% And the situation as it unfolds in the poem 00:08:32.500 --> 00:08:36.260 align:middle line:90% is a little chaotic. 00:08:36.260 --> 00:08:38.679 align:middle line:84% But I think that I've asked enough people 00:08:38.679 --> 00:08:41.710 align:middle line:84% whether it comes across and it seems to somebody-- 00:08:41.710 --> 00:08:48.280 align:middle line:84% a little girl requests entrance into something, into a dream, 00:08:48.280 --> 00:08:50.830 align:middle line:84% into the woods, into your house, and eventually 00:08:50.830 --> 00:08:55.690 align:middle line:84% in the narrative of the poem, the little girl 00:08:55.690 --> 00:08:58.690 align:middle line:90% gets bitten badly by a dog. 00:08:58.690 --> 00:09:00.640 align:middle line:90% That's basically the situation. 00:09:00.640 --> 00:09:01.600 align:middle line:90% Beauty and the Beast. 00:09:01.600 --> 00:09:04.180 align:middle line:84% The girl speaks, the little girl speaks occasionally 00:09:04.180 --> 00:09:07.000 align:middle line:90% in the poem. 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:12.310 align:middle line:84% Letting in the four year old in printed dress and rubber boots 00:09:12.310 --> 00:09:15.340 align:middle line:84% knocks on the door in the white woods. 00:09:15.340 --> 00:09:19.120 align:middle line:84% A Jack rabbit scurries invisibly across the fragile roof 00:09:19.120 --> 00:09:22.960 align:middle line:84% of snow and hides behind the rotted oak. 00:09:22.960 --> 00:09:27.550 align:middle line:84% The coyote lion and half blind dumb wild pig 00:09:27.550 --> 00:09:30.610 align:middle line:90% remain asleep inside. 00:09:30.610 --> 00:09:33.430 align:middle line:84% All of this occurred before the dream of a girl 00:09:33.430 --> 00:09:35.290 align:middle line:90% turned into a beast. 00:09:35.290 --> 00:09:38.980 align:middle line:84% The pink scar tensing the mouse in a permanent grin 00:09:38.980 --> 00:09:44.410 align:middle line:84% of aftermath, the one wide open improbable eye. 00:09:44.410 --> 00:09:47.380 align:middle line:84% But it's only a dream, she cries, and couldn't 00:09:47.380 --> 00:09:50.590 align:middle line:90% happen to a princess. 00:09:50.590 --> 00:09:54.520 align:middle line:84% So it was afternoon, I slept and whatever 00:09:54.520 --> 00:09:59.850 align:middle line:84% takes place in my dream, I am faultless and a child again. 00:09:59.850 --> 00:10:01.770 align:middle line:84% The mother watches from the window, 00:10:01.770 --> 00:10:06.840 align:middle line:84% I believe water and flowers, and the large black stubborn dog 00:10:06.840 --> 00:10:10.080 align:middle line:84% mounting his mate on an endless ladder. 00:10:10.080 --> 00:10:12.720 align:middle line:84% For him this is a dream twice yearly 00:10:12.720 --> 00:10:16.440 align:middle line:84% of the maddening odor of fish into which he strives, 00:10:16.440 --> 00:10:18.900 align:middle line:90% he growls. 00:10:18.900 --> 00:10:21.420 align:middle line:90% Let me in, says the princess. 00:10:21.420 --> 00:10:25.770 align:middle line:84% The dreams on lost teeth plunge into her face, 00:10:25.770 --> 00:10:28.620 align:middle line:84% the face in the window, the face and the dream 00:10:28.620 --> 00:10:32.400 align:middle line:84% ripped half off like a door from the tin. 00:10:32.400 --> 00:10:35.040 align:middle line:84% Blood rushing from the bared skulls 00:10:35.040 --> 00:10:38.490 align:middle line:84% onto the pure white dream of snow over which 00:10:38.490 --> 00:10:41.280 align:middle line:90% she trudges crazily home. 00:10:41.280 --> 00:10:44.980 align:middle line:84% Of course, the wild horsey, wild. 00:10:44.980 --> 00:10:50.290 align:middle line:84% There is no horse, no princess, no beef from fairy tales, 00:10:50.290 --> 00:10:54.670 align:middle line:84% only a dog dreaming of bullets raining down like bad weather 00:10:54.670 --> 00:10:57.910 align:middle line:90% and a man slamming a car door. 00:10:57.910 --> 00:11:01.600 align:middle line:84% At the dreams and she whispers, let me in, 00:11:01.600 --> 00:11:06.370 align:middle line:84% and I wake sweating in a room with a strange one-eyed 00:11:06.370 --> 00:11:08.680 align:middle line:90% improbable princess by my side. 00:11:08.680 --> 00:11:19.280 align:middle line:90% 00:11:19.280 --> 00:11:23.690 align:middle line:84% For a long time, I tried to write 00:11:23.690 --> 00:11:26.330 align:middle line:84% poems that seemed to me to be lyrics, 00:11:26.330 --> 00:11:29.540 align:middle line:84% seemed to me to be lyrical poems, or song like. 00:11:29.540 --> 00:11:32.820 align:middle line:84% And I wrote some and some were successful and a lot weren't. 00:11:32.820 --> 00:11:36.140 align:middle line:84% At some point, I realized that writing a lyric 00:11:36.140 --> 00:11:39.320 align:middle line:84% wasn't my strength, but something like a narrative 00:11:39.320 --> 00:11:41.810 align:middle line:84% seemed to be the direction I had been fighting 00:11:41.810 --> 00:11:45.345 align:middle line:84% and the direction I should have been going in for a long time. 00:11:45.345 --> 00:11:46.970 align:middle line:84% It took me a long time to realize that. 00:11:46.970 --> 00:11:50.930 align:middle line:84% This is a poem that I think is about the short poem to Lyric 00:11:50.930 --> 00:11:56.100 align:middle line:84% poem, about a tendency to write stories, narrative poem. 00:11:56.100 --> 00:11:59.300 align:middle line:90% It's called Tranquility. 00:11:59.300 --> 00:12:02.210 align:middle line:84% Someone is pushing the stone out of place, 00:12:02.210 --> 00:12:07.790 align:middle line:84% and someone is pushing it back gently without intention. 00:12:07.790 --> 00:12:11.090 align:middle line:84% I wanted to write a lyric while the world slept, 00:12:11.090 --> 00:12:15.230 align:middle line:84% I wanted to write your name but the hours passed, 00:12:15.230 --> 00:12:18.410 align:middle line:84% the gray light seeped through my curtains, 00:12:18.410 --> 00:12:20.870 align:middle line:84% children gathered in groups on the streets, 00:12:20.870 --> 00:12:24.260 align:middle line:84% then broke and went their long ways. 00:12:24.260 --> 00:12:28.310 align:middle line:84% A story unfolded, partial and without relief. 00:12:28.310 --> 00:12:33.440 align:middle line:84% The details so intimate, for the moment, I forgot your name. 00:12:33.440 --> 00:12:36.520 align:middle line:84% I give you events, and latest tranquility. 00:12:36.520 --> 00:12:42.244 align:middle line:90% 00:12:42.244 --> 00:12:45.190 align:middle line:84% This poem is called Streetfighter. 00:12:45.190 --> 00:12:50.200 align:middle line:84% And it's part truth and part fiction, 00:12:50.200 --> 00:12:52.150 align:middle line:84% but the incident behind it is one 00:12:52.150 --> 00:12:57.490 align:middle line:84% in which a friend of mine who's used to fighting 00:12:57.490 --> 00:13:00.520 align:middle line:84% was called out two or three times in one 00:13:00.520 --> 00:13:03.550 align:middle line:84% night by different people in different bars, 00:13:03.550 --> 00:13:07.900 align:middle line:84% and for some reason, he just wasn't in the mood for it, 00:13:07.900 --> 00:13:09.410 align:middle line:90% and he just couldn't do it. 00:13:09.410 --> 00:13:12.340 align:middle line:84% One of the reasons was he had just gotten loose teeth, 00:13:12.340 --> 00:13:16.720 align:middle line:84% and he didn't want to get them busted. 00:13:16.720 --> 00:13:20.200 align:middle line:84% But the next morning, early in the morning when I saw him, 00:13:20.200 --> 00:13:22.843 align:middle line:90% he was feeling-- 00:13:22.843 --> 00:13:25.010 align:middle line:84% I guess he's feeling some sort of cowardice over it, 00:13:25.010 --> 00:13:28.300 align:middle line:90% and he had to confess it to me. 00:13:28.300 --> 00:13:34.930 align:middle line:84% And the poem is about that, the response to that street fight. 00:13:34.930 --> 00:13:39.040 align:middle line:84% Last night two young Chicanos called him out flat and simple 00:13:39.040 --> 00:13:41.290 align:middle line:90% as a threat of rain. 00:13:41.290 --> 00:13:44.040 align:middle line:84% He tells me how his streetwise mind imagined 00:13:44.040 --> 00:13:47.830 align:middle line:84% left arm cuffed, elbow a greased socket 00:13:47.830 --> 00:13:51.490 align:middle line:84% and how he rose from the bar stool and left. 00:13:51.490 --> 00:13:54.160 align:middle line:84% All morning I've tagged along in silence 00:13:54.160 --> 00:13:57.010 align:middle line:90% and will not be provoked. 00:13:57.010 --> 00:14:00.880 align:middle line:84% He stops at the corner, the wooden grille of moon frames 00:14:00.880 --> 00:14:05.410 align:middle line:84% his face, his new teeth, the false casts of porcelain 00:14:05.410 --> 00:14:08.650 align:middle line:90% as yet unpaid. 00:14:08.650 --> 00:14:11.650 align:middle line:84% When a man confesses cowardice while waiting for the life 00:14:11.650 --> 00:14:15.230 align:middle line:84% to change, it is an act of faith. 00:14:15.230 --> 00:14:18.790 align:middle line:84% I am a mouth to blame, mouth to forgive, 00:14:18.790 --> 00:14:23.680 align:middle line:84% mouth to explain that nothing matters, but this man whose 00:14:23.680 --> 00:14:29.230 align:middle line:84% strength I forgive before his weaknesses, will not be moved. 00:14:29.230 --> 00:14:34.120 align:middle line:84% The brain grunt, refuses, the muscle stall. 00:14:34.120 --> 00:14:37.150 align:middle line:84% Above his eyes, the glazed scars twitch 00:14:37.150 --> 00:14:40.540 align:middle line:90% and fade like old tattoos. 00:14:40.540 --> 00:14:43.270 align:middle line:84% I want to say age gives us courage 00:14:43.270 --> 00:14:48.790 align:middle line:84% to deny some fools left hook, bad night, but what's the use. 00:14:48.790 --> 00:14:53.740 align:middle line:84% At 35, he still flicks his hair back like a hoodlum. 00:14:53.740 --> 00:14:59.500 align:middle line:84% He turns in ways, his moon face shrinks in the sun with worry. 00:14:59.500 --> 00:15:03.640 align:middle line:84% When we grow up, a good fight was a way of keeping friends, 00:15:03.640 --> 00:15:06.880 align:middle line:84% so I run towards him and cold cock him 00:15:06.880 --> 00:15:11.170 align:middle line:84% and feel his new teeth crumble in my fist. 00:15:11.170 --> 00:15:14.290 align:middle line:84% It is one punch too few, though I believe 00:15:14.290 --> 00:15:17.830 align:middle line:84% he must go easier for trusting me his shame, 00:15:17.830 --> 00:15:22.390 align:middle line:84% and worse for having begun this day the wrong way twice. 00:15:22.390 --> 00:15:26.710 align:middle line:84% Done with rage, two prowls the avenues will not be denied. 00:15:26.710 --> 00:15:37.740 align:middle line:90% 00:15:37.740 --> 00:15:43.890 align:middle line:84% The next is a series of four fairly short poems all of which 00:15:43.890 --> 00:15:48.000 align:middle line:84% were written at different times all about marriage, 00:15:48.000 --> 00:15:51.240 align:middle line:90% problems of marriage, whatever. 00:15:51.240 --> 00:15:55.000 align:middle line:84% And I realized at some point that they seem to go together, 00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:59.940 align:middle line:84% so I link them under the obvious title of The Marriage Poem. 00:15:59.940 --> 00:16:03.450 align:middle line:84% The mood in each poem are different, 00:16:03.450 --> 00:16:07.050 align:middle line:84% some serious, some lighter than others. 00:16:07.050 --> 00:16:09.400 align:middle line:84% But the writing is pretty much the same, 00:16:09.400 --> 00:16:12.450 align:middle line:84% so I felt they linked up together. 00:16:12.450 --> 00:16:15.840 align:middle line:90% The Marriage Poems. 00:16:15.840 --> 00:16:19.420 align:middle line:84% In the gallery, my mistakes repeat themselves. 00:16:19.420 --> 00:16:24.780 align:middle line:84% I take aim, I repeat, small scenes, less pleasure, 00:16:24.780 --> 00:16:28.960 align:middle line:84% we kiss our mistresses, they kiss us back. 00:16:28.960 --> 00:16:31.530 align:middle line:90% Let's face it, a middle class. 00:16:31.530 --> 00:16:35.580 align:middle line:84% Even when I run from my wife, I keep running into her. 00:16:35.580 --> 00:16:39.780 align:middle line:84% I wear grooves so deep, I sleep in them. 00:16:39.780 --> 00:16:43.950 align:middle line:84% Sex falters, but the trail mysteriously gets itself up 00:16:43.950 --> 00:16:48.870 align:middle line:84% over the next hill, and everywhere I go, I follow pain. 00:16:48.870 --> 00:16:51.360 align:middle line:84% If it's comfortable, it's boring. 00:16:51.360 --> 00:16:54.510 align:middle line:90% If it's romantic, I go insane. 00:16:54.510 --> 00:16:58.050 align:middle line:84% If each step were a different stairway, we'd get lost, 00:16:58.050 --> 00:17:02.880 align:middle line:84% and each love a new woman, we'd get dizzy falling at such speed 00:17:02.880 --> 00:17:05.910 align:middle line:84% and never hit bottom riding, riding. 00:17:05.910 --> 00:17:09.569 align:middle line:90% 00:17:09.569 --> 00:17:10.069 align:middle line:90% / 00:17:10.069 --> 00:17:14.900 align:middle line:84% All night we lost our doors, the hard sad mouths. 00:17:14.900 --> 00:17:17.930 align:middle line:84% We stark naked, bedroom to bathroom, 00:17:17.930 --> 00:17:23.270 align:middle line:84% shining like scissors, like silver, leg crosses. 00:17:23.270 --> 00:17:26.930 align:middle line:84% When we lie down, tell me what slips between us, 00:17:26.930 --> 00:17:28.940 align:middle line:90% self-conscious. 00:17:28.940 --> 00:17:35.450 align:middle line:84% We sleep in a coffin, in satin, a wedding waiting for morning. 00:17:35.450 --> 00:17:38.090 align:middle line:84% Look how we look away, revelations 00:17:38.090 --> 00:17:40.580 align:middle line:90% that can almost touch. 00:17:40.580 --> 00:17:42.500 align:middle line:90% Are we the honesties? 00:17:42.500 --> 00:17:45.890 align:middle line:84% We are stars that blink in our night clothes, 00:17:45.890 --> 00:17:49.445 align:middle line:84% like slow turning planets filled with other lies. 00:17:49.445 --> 00:17:53.670 align:middle line:90% 00:17:53.670 --> 00:17:57.180 align:middle line:84% In the middle of marriage of saneness and a loss 00:17:57.180 --> 00:18:00.000 align:middle line:90% no one's love can sustain. 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:03.690 align:middle line:84% When you look gone, I rushed downstairs to greet you. 00:18:03.690 --> 00:18:06.900 align:middle line:90% When you were here, I forgot. 00:18:06.900 --> 00:18:10.530 align:middle line:84% Over the berryhill of the bed, our absence arrives. 00:18:10.530 --> 00:18:14.010 align:middle line:84% It fills up space, we are loveless 00:18:14.010 --> 00:18:18.810 align:middle line:84% though our orbits touch, what is forgiven will hurt. 00:18:18.810 --> 00:18:21.750 align:middle line:84% We toss in sleep, sharing regrets, 00:18:21.750 --> 00:18:26.520 align:middle line:84% sharing our loneliness without photographs of ancestors, 00:18:26.520 --> 00:18:28.725 align:middle line:84% without tiny gold watches to wind. 00:18:28.725 --> 00:18:33.080 align:middle line:90% 00:18:33.080 --> 00:18:36.590 align:middle line:84% To learn to love again, the angel detaches her wings 00:18:36.590 --> 00:18:40.100 align:middle line:84% and sleeps, on this the coldest night, 00:18:40.100 --> 00:18:44.070 align:middle line:84% the self rises over and over again. 00:18:44.070 --> 00:18:48.860 align:middle line:84% The same bed, the same ashes in the grave. 00:18:48.860 --> 00:18:53.630 align:middle line:84% And if a stranger arrives with blood on his lips and promises, 00:18:53.630 --> 00:18:57.590 align:middle line:84% send them away for it is not yet spring. 00:18:57.590 --> 00:19:01.970 align:middle line:84% Outside the door, the smell falls like the passing of hours 00:19:01.970 --> 00:19:04.370 align:middle line:84% with such patience, such abandon. 00:19:04.370 --> 00:19:08.305 align:middle line:90% 00:19:08.305 --> 00:19:09.680 align:middle line:84% I've read in a long time and it's 00:19:09.680 --> 00:19:13.460 align:middle line:84% supposed to get easier after a while, but it seems to do it. 00:19:13.460 --> 00:19:22.990 align:middle line:90% 00:19:22.990 --> 00:19:27.730 align:middle line:84% I read a lot of poems about loss, 00:19:27.730 --> 00:19:30.850 align:middle line:84% about looking back on childhood or some earlier point 00:19:30.850 --> 00:19:33.520 align:middle line:90% in my life. 00:19:33.520 --> 00:19:36.970 align:middle line:84% And so I've got a lot of details of childhood 00:19:36.970 --> 00:19:39.010 align:middle line:90% in several of the poems. 00:19:39.010 --> 00:19:41.470 align:middle line:84% This next poem, which is called My Father's House, 00:19:41.470 --> 00:19:44.260 align:middle line:84% interested me because the nostalgia in the poem 00:19:44.260 --> 00:19:46.150 align:middle line:84% is not really from my childhood, it's 00:19:46.150 --> 00:19:49.420 align:middle line:84% from my father's childhood, which is strange. 00:19:49.420 --> 00:19:55.840 align:middle line:84% He talked so much about it and in such lovely terms, 00:19:55.840 --> 00:19:58.240 align:middle line:84% the way the old-- it was better in the old days, 00:19:58.240 --> 00:19:59.830 align:middle line:90% those kinds of things. 00:19:59.830 --> 00:20:02.410 align:middle line:84% That I grew up thinking in a sense of his childhood 00:20:02.410 --> 00:20:05.950 align:middle line:84% was my own, the same kinds of details of gas lamps 00:20:05.950 --> 00:20:09.730 align:middle line:84% and horse and buggies, that kind of thing. 00:20:09.730 --> 00:20:15.130 align:middle line:84% This is a poem about that, My Father's House. 00:20:15.130 --> 00:20:18.520 align:middle line:84% Seen from a great distance through the morning mist, 00:20:18.520 --> 00:20:23.440 align:middle line:84% under a fathering Elm, returning home for no good reason. 00:20:23.440 --> 00:20:26.230 align:middle line:84% The house invites like those mansions framed 00:20:26.230 --> 00:20:28.000 align:middle line:90% and photographs. 00:20:28.000 --> 00:20:32.440 align:middle line:84% Raw edges disguised by trees and a dog activating 00:20:32.440 --> 00:20:36.160 align:middle line:90% the yard almost to drama. 00:20:36.160 --> 00:20:38.320 align:middle line:84% It is an old home built and built 00:20:38.320 --> 00:20:42.040 align:middle line:84% over by my father's father in late Victorian. 00:20:42.040 --> 00:20:46.300 align:middle line:84% It is porched and screened in and almost black. 00:20:46.300 --> 00:20:49.660 align:middle line:84% In 1950s, we were safe and overslept 00:20:49.660 --> 00:20:54.010 align:middle line:84% on Sundays behind Venetian blinds. 00:20:54.010 --> 00:20:57.580 align:middle line:84% Without a past, this house would invent us, 00:20:57.580 --> 00:21:01.870 align:middle line:84% each room is a small town settled on and favored. 00:21:01.870 --> 00:21:04.550 align:middle line:84% These are the walls that knew their place. 00:21:04.550 --> 00:21:06.760 align:middle line:84% This is the bureau with a detailed lamp 00:21:06.760 --> 00:21:09.580 align:middle line:84% and the mirror with nothing but eyes. 00:21:09.580 --> 00:21:13.210 align:middle line:84% This is the house that kept on growing. 00:21:13.210 --> 00:21:15.940 align:middle line:84% I am grateful for my father's past 00:21:15.940 --> 00:21:21.160 align:middle line:84% Mine, as a dream belongs to me, 1909. 00:21:21.160 --> 00:21:25.030 align:middle line:84% And I walk, he points out odd memorials. 00:21:25.030 --> 00:21:28.870 align:middle line:84% There were horse passed every day, smell the droppings. 00:21:28.870 --> 00:21:29.950 align:middle line:90% Here he wrote his legs-- 00:21:29.950 --> 00:21:33.820 align:middle line:84% Here he broke his leg at soccer and rode his bike home 00:21:33.820 --> 00:21:39.820 align:middle line:84% and the dog bone poked through his pants, my pain. 00:21:39.820 --> 00:21:42.730 align:middle line:84% Some people stray far from their childhoods 00:21:42.730 --> 00:21:45.400 align:middle line:84% into a future they never planned, 00:21:45.400 --> 00:21:49.610 align:middle line:84% even by continual walking, they will not return. 00:21:49.610 --> 00:21:54.280 align:middle line:84% They forget by sleeping, and love without last name. 00:21:54.280 --> 00:21:57.730 align:middle line:84% Often, I want to walk out of doors like a stranger holding 00:21:57.730 --> 00:22:01.600 align:middle line:84% my own hand to be mistrusted as when 00:22:01.600 --> 00:22:04.510 align:middle line:84% a guest in a lapse of conversation 00:22:04.510 --> 00:22:08.350 align:middle line:84% turns over a globe of snow and dreams a pleasant country 00:22:08.350 --> 00:22:10.900 align:middle line:90% scene. 00:22:10.900 --> 00:22:13.810 align:middle line:84% In my father's house, the world pulls in around me 00:22:13.810 --> 00:22:17.950 align:middle line:84% like a sheep, and I am memorizing hats and closets, 00:22:17.950 --> 00:22:23.560 align:middle line:84% rings and secret places, windows marked with an inner shine. 00:22:23.560 --> 00:22:28.060 align:middle line:84% Outside gas lamps like the street, and in the front room, 00:22:28.060 --> 00:22:31.870 align:middle line:84% gazing at a passing horse and a man yelling rags, 00:22:31.870 --> 00:22:35.560 align:middle line:84% rags, building the first radio in town. 00:22:35.560 --> 00:22:38.920 align:middle line:84% Son of a son of a son, waiting to hear 00:22:38.920 --> 00:22:43.270 align:middle line:84% the first crackling of a distant man's real voice over wire. 00:22:43.270 --> 00:22:47.960 align:middle line:90% 00:22:47.960 --> 00:22:51.240 align:middle line:84% Well all of that came back to me, 00:22:51.240 --> 00:22:55.265 align:middle line:84% I think I wrote this next one about five or six years ago, 00:22:55.265 --> 00:22:57.640 align:middle line:84% and it came back to me twice in the last couple of weeks, 00:22:57.640 --> 00:23:00.900 align:middle line:84% so I thought I'd bring it back I put it aside. 00:23:00.900 --> 00:23:03.840 align:middle line:84% A friend of mine had suggested I resurrect it and put it 00:23:03.840 --> 00:23:08.190 align:middle line:84% in the manuscript, and the fellow that I met in a bar 00:23:08.190 --> 00:23:10.710 align:middle line:84% a couple of weeks ago whom I didn't know, 00:23:10.710 --> 00:23:15.660 align:middle line:84% one of the students said he knew of me through that poem. 00:23:15.660 --> 00:23:16.890 align:middle line:90% So here it is. 00:23:16.890 --> 00:23:18.598 align:middle line:90% It's called Keeping Watch. 00:23:18.598 --> 00:23:21.290 align:middle line:90% 00:23:21.290 --> 00:23:24.470 align:middle line:84% In his backyard, he preserves the smallest reminders 00:23:24.470 --> 00:23:28.700 align:middle line:84% of his nakedness, now and then something comes over him 00:23:28.700 --> 00:23:31.730 align:middle line:90% like rain on sleeping dogs. 00:23:31.730 --> 00:23:36.110 align:middle line:84% Termites crawl out of tiny eggs, eat the marvelous wood 00:23:36.110 --> 00:23:38.780 align:middle line:84% and the rainwater will flush them like sails 00:23:38.780 --> 00:23:40.850 align:middle line:90% through clogged veins. 00:23:40.850 --> 00:23:44.570 align:middle line:84% They drown right in front of his eyes. 00:23:44.570 --> 00:23:48.020 align:middle line:84% At twilight he watches as if he were God, the butcher 00:23:48.020 --> 00:23:50.600 align:middle line:90% without hands to play his beef. 00:23:50.600 --> 00:23:52.820 align:middle line:84% The landlord who was always elsewhere 00:23:52.820 --> 00:23:55.880 align:middle line:84% with the food in his back pocket. 00:23:55.880 --> 00:23:58.040 align:middle line:84% Its being eats the thing smaller 00:23:58.040 --> 00:24:01.010 align:middle line:90% without remorse or punishment. 00:24:01.010 --> 00:24:04.730 align:middle line:84% This is why he's been told to keep quiet about. 00:24:04.730 --> 00:24:07.640 align:middle line:84% At night, the air breaks like glass. 00:24:07.640 --> 00:24:11.510 align:middle line:84% He slept through like a scar, the healing messenger, 00:24:11.510 --> 00:24:15.440 align:middle line:84% the angel of insect who has lost his way. 00:24:15.440 --> 00:24:18.710 align:middle line:84% As if an egg burst beneath his sickening skin, 00:24:18.710 --> 00:24:22.475 align:middle line:84% he locks his thighs and tells them this is all there is. 00:24:22.475 --> 00:24:30.170 align:middle line:90% 00:24:30.170 --> 00:24:33.020 align:middle line:84% This one is called Country House, 00:24:33.020 --> 00:24:35.120 align:middle line:84% and about two or three years ago, my wife 00:24:35.120 --> 00:24:37.700 align:middle line:90% and I moved up to Oracle. 00:24:37.700 --> 00:24:42.110 align:middle line:84% And which is the most beautiful town, beautiful country 00:24:42.110 --> 00:24:44.090 align:middle line:84% up there, and despite the fact that we 00:24:44.090 --> 00:24:46.580 align:middle line:84% had good neighbors and good friends up there, 00:24:46.580 --> 00:24:49.070 align:middle line:84% I found out again that I wasn't a country boy. 00:24:49.070 --> 00:24:52.370 align:middle line:90% 00:24:52.370 --> 00:24:56.100 align:middle line:84% This is one of my good neighbors. 00:24:56.100 --> 00:24:58.640 align:middle line:84% Anyway, the sense of it out there taught me 00:24:58.640 --> 00:25:01.310 align:middle line:84% that though I enjoyed it, that I should come back to town, 00:25:01.310 --> 00:25:03.530 align:middle line:90% that's where I belong. 00:25:03.530 --> 00:25:04.370 align:middle line:90% Country house. 00:25:04.370 --> 00:25:10.490 align:middle line:84% Oh, there's some reference you might not know, 00:25:10.490 --> 00:25:13.070 align:middle line:84% the name of a Russian river called the Dnieper, 00:25:13.070 --> 00:25:17.300 align:middle line:84% or "Deh-nee-per," mentioned in the poem. 00:25:17.300 --> 00:25:21.140 align:middle line:84% This house is old, too small to contain lives furnished 00:25:21.140 --> 00:25:25.490 align:middle line:84% with smog, TV, divorce, the trees 00:25:25.490 --> 00:25:28.250 align:middle line:84% I drag like errant children from the hills, 00:25:28.250 --> 00:25:31.250 align:middle line:90% are squandered in the fireplace. 00:25:31.250 --> 00:25:35.300 align:middle line:84% The coyotes howl at nothing, a fiction of household 00:25:35.300 --> 00:25:36.890 align:middle line:90% in the woods. 00:25:36.890 --> 00:25:40.160 align:middle line:84% This antique bed would rot in some garage, 00:25:40.160 --> 00:25:44.600 align:middle line:84% but for my sentiments, goings without type, 00:25:44.600 --> 00:25:48.950 align:middle line:84% land without the small dots of houses cozy and tress, 00:25:48.950 --> 00:25:51.470 align:middle line:90% waste their scars. 00:25:51.470 --> 00:25:54.710 align:middle line:84% We are the new outlanders, here for rest, 00:25:54.710 --> 00:25:57.740 align:middle line:84% and a taste of our father's blood. 00:25:57.740 --> 00:26:01.430 align:middle line:84% We gorge on fresh upcountry air breathe 00:26:01.430 --> 00:26:07.250 align:middle line:84% violent flowers whose incessant odors frightens and consoles. 00:26:07.250 --> 00:26:10.550 align:middle line:84% I imagine my father in this house, child of heart 00:26:10.550 --> 00:26:15.500 align:middle line:84% struck immigrants, dreaming of hard work and a fast buck. 00:26:15.500 --> 00:26:19.160 align:middle line:84% He stands on a street corner in a shally hat and knickers, 00:26:19.160 --> 00:26:23.270 align:middle line:84% shuffling papers under a gas lamp whose past as he 00:26:23.270 --> 00:26:24.890 align:middle line:90% romanticized. 00:26:24.890 --> 00:26:30.500 align:middle line:84% The sour smell of pigs, a Russian slum, no gain in that. 00:26:30.500 --> 00:26:33.920 align:middle line:84% Why do we love what's gone, the innocence 00:26:33.920 --> 00:26:38.450 align:middle line:84% we enshrined in sepia of Sunday picnics under the knife 00:26:38.450 --> 00:26:43.760 align:middle line:84% is equal to our own false lives, greed, and deceit. 00:26:43.760 --> 00:26:46.610 align:middle line:84% Therefore, we live small in a country house 00:26:46.610 --> 00:26:48.950 align:middle line:90% and send out violence. 00:26:48.950 --> 00:26:53.420 align:middle line:84% When autumn comes, we crush the plump food into wine drowned 00:26:53.420 --> 00:26:56.210 align:middle line:84% by the fire, and pump our children 00:26:56.210 --> 00:27:00.845 align:middle line:84% full over past that was sweet, a future ruin before their time. 00:27:00.845 --> 00:27:11.600 align:middle line:90% 00:27:11.600 --> 00:27:13.547 align:middle line:90% It will never come from-- 00:27:13.547 --> 00:27:14.255 align:middle line:90% is it an ashtray? 00:27:14.255 --> 00:27:20.750 align:middle line:90% 00:27:20.750 --> 00:27:23.640 align:middle line:90% Great, can't miss that. 00:27:23.640 --> 00:27:24.140 align:middle line:90% Big bucks. 00:27:24.140 --> 00:27:30.000 align:middle line:90% 00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:33.260 align:middle line:84% On a poem called Tobacco Farm, when I was a kid, summer-- 00:27:33.260 --> 00:27:37.100 align:middle line:84% when I was 13, 14, 15 years old, I picked tobacco. 00:27:37.100 --> 00:27:39.158 align:middle line:90% And this was up in New England. 00:27:39.158 --> 00:27:40.700 align:middle line:84% This is an odd place to grow tobacco, 00:27:40.700 --> 00:27:45.950 align:middle line:84% they just grew the outside leaf on cigars, it is cheap tobacco, 00:27:45.950 --> 00:27:47.160 align:middle line:90% I guess. 00:27:47.160 --> 00:27:49.340 align:middle line:84% But anyway, there was acres and acres of fields 00:27:49.340 --> 00:27:51.980 align:middle line:84% and they were all under white net called shade tobacco. 00:27:51.980 --> 00:27:57.135 align:middle line:84% His nets stretched acres and acres, and there were posts, 00:27:57.135 --> 00:27:59.180 align:middle line:84% you know, tobacco grows and grows 00:27:59.180 --> 00:28:04.970 align:middle line:84% and there were posts every 10 feet or so, and early picking, 00:28:04.970 --> 00:28:07.640 align:middle line:84% the lower leaves you drag along on your knees 00:28:07.640 --> 00:28:09.417 align:middle line:84% and then it gets a little higher, 00:28:09.417 --> 00:28:11.750 align:middle line:84% the leaves get a little higher, you stand up and finally 00:28:11.750 --> 00:28:15.560 align:middle line:84% in the last second season go down the rows like this. 00:28:15.560 --> 00:28:19.880 align:middle line:84% Anyway this is just a short recollection of those times. 00:28:19.880 --> 00:28:22.040 align:middle line:90% Tobacco Farm. 00:28:22.040 --> 00:28:26.780 align:middle line:84% Under acres of white nets, the boy crawls on hands and knees, 00:28:26.780 --> 00:28:32.420 align:middle line:84% he thinks too much, he worries about God and sex and death. 00:28:32.420 --> 00:28:35.930 align:middle line:84% Sometimes he'd like to lie in the damp row and dream, 00:28:35.930 --> 00:28:40.640 align:middle line:84% but this is piecework, 12 and 1/2 a bend. 00:28:40.640 --> 00:28:44.930 align:middle line:84% Blazes under the net, but mornings the dew is cool. 00:28:44.930 --> 00:28:48.410 align:middle line:84% At lunch, the straw boss brings beer. 00:28:48.410 --> 00:28:52.640 align:middle line:84% He watches the Polish immigrant, his nose in a grammar book, 00:28:52.640 --> 00:28:55.070 align:middle line:84% he's already learned the vocabulary of fuck 00:28:55.070 --> 00:28:59.180 align:middle line:84% this and fuck that, on the truck ride home, 00:28:59.180 --> 00:29:03.470 align:middle line:84% the boy thinks of a cool bath, supper, and sleep. 00:29:03.470 --> 00:29:08.240 align:middle line:84% Tonight, Babs beach, a dance with the Pennsylvania girl, 00:29:08.240 --> 00:29:09.110 align:middle line:90% he'll drink. 00:29:09.110 --> 00:29:10.790 align:middle line:90% Maybe he'll fight. 00:29:10.790 --> 00:29:14.750 align:middle line:84% He'll watch the stars wheel over the curing barn. 00:29:14.750 --> 00:29:18.290 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile, Ace Cody's got a new tattoo. 00:29:18.290 --> 00:29:21.680 align:middle line:84% The fat kid giggles his tits like a woman. 00:29:21.680 --> 00:29:25.400 align:middle line:84% One day, another field, the same river of nets 00:29:25.400 --> 00:29:27.530 align:middle line:90% all the way to the sea. 00:29:27.530 --> 00:29:30.995 align:middle line:84% Not yet 15 and his father says he knows too much. 00:29:30.995 --> 00:29:36.120 align:middle line:90% 00:29:36.120 --> 00:29:36.620 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:29:36.620 --> 00:29:40.790 align:middle line:90% 00:29:40.790 --> 00:29:46.110 align:middle line:84% This is a poem about another brand. 00:29:46.110 --> 00:29:47.430 align:middle line:90% Partly about another friend. 00:29:47.430 --> 00:29:51.450 align:middle line:90% 00:29:51.450 --> 00:29:55.980 align:middle line:84% Nothing much to say but it's called No Quarter, 00:29:55.980 --> 00:29:57.150 align:middle line:90% takes place in the city. 00:29:57.150 --> 00:30:00.120 align:middle line:90% 00:30:00.120 --> 00:30:02.160 align:middle line:84% Limping among the hookers and drunks, 00:30:02.160 --> 00:30:03.940 align:middle line:90% he tells me he's done it all. 00:30:03.940 --> 00:30:07.080 align:middle line:84% He's done it everywhere as hunter and hunted, 00:30:07.080 --> 00:30:09.570 align:middle line:90% his wide mouth open. 00:30:09.570 --> 00:30:12.000 align:middle line:84% Tonight, he seems boyish, his head 00:30:12.000 --> 00:30:14.850 align:middle line:90% is strangely large for his body. 00:30:14.850 --> 00:30:18.600 align:middle line:84% He's brooding because his father left the sea for a woman, 00:30:18.600 --> 00:30:21.570 align:middle line:84% and that's bad luck for a Portuguese. 00:30:21.570 --> 00:30:24.090 align:middle line:84% Now one brother's in jail, and the other 00:30:24.090 --> 00:30:27.660 align:middle line:84% sits banging his head against wall. 00:30:27.660 --> 00:30:31.470 align:middle line:84% The bars along the side streets are slowly closing. 00:30:31.470 --> 00:30:35.520 align:middle line:84% After hours, the silences between the squares of the city 00:30:35.520 --> 00:30:39.180 align:middle line:84% keep us at arm's length, a kind of grace 00:30:39.180 --> 00:30:42.530 align:middle line:84% and the passing girls refuse his glance. 00:30:42.530 --> 00:30:45.030 align:middle line:84% Here is his motto, he says, here is 00:30:45.030 --> 00:30:51.510 align:middle line:84% what he means beyond the details of a life, no love, no loss. 00:30:51.510 --> 00:30:55.920 align:middle line:84% He pauses at the alley's mouth, he leans into my listening face 00:30:55.920 --> 00:30:58.470 align:middle line:84% and says he's meaner than any man, 00:30:58.470 --> 00:31:02.220 align:middle line:84% and points to his face for proof, the chipped teeth 00:31:02.220 --> 00:31:05.040 align:middle line:84% and caved in portions of brow are 00:31:05.040 --> 00:31:09.120 align:middle line:84% the bad debts of a thief who preys on thieves. 00:31:09.120 --> 00:31:12.810 align:middle line:84% In the black alley, he searches among the tangled veins 00:31:12.810 --> 00:31:16.500 align:middle line:84% in the scarred crook of his arm for the past from heart 00:31:16.500 --> 00:31:22.410 align:middle line:84% to brain, the softest sack where there was no love and no loss, 00:31:22.410 --> 00:31:25.950 align:middle line:84% no temptation to exist beyond this resting place. 00:31:25.950 --> 00:31:31.010 align:middle line:90% 00:31:31.010 --> 00:31:33.620 align:middle line:84% He fixes me with his small blurred eyes 00:31:33.620 --> 00:31:37.400 align:middle line:84% to say he's never killed except by accident, 00:31:37.400 --> 00:31:40.430 align:middle line:84% scared that he will, then squeezes 00:31:40.430 --> 00:31:42.680 align:middle line:90% me to show how gentle he is. 00:31:42.680 --> 00:31:46.235 align:middle line:84% My pal, my shadow, more loving than any man. 00:31:46.235 --> 00:32:01.870 align:middle line:90% 00:32:01.870 --> 00:32:02.468 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:32:02.468 --> 00:32:03.010 align:middle line:90% That's right? 00:32:03.010 --> 00:32:07.600 align:middle line:90% 00:32:07.600 --> 00:32:11.140 align:middle line:84% This next poem is called First Story, and it's-- 00:32:11.140 --> 00:32:13.300 align:middle line:84% I usually have more jokes to pair with something 00:32:13.300 --> 00:32:16.280 align:middle line:84% but for some reason, all I can think of is to read the poem. 00:32:16.280 --> 00:32:20.480 align:middle line:84% So if you want to laugh, that's in a while. 00:32:20.480 --> 00:32:23.490 align:middle line:90% I don't know what it is. 00:32:23.490 --> 00:32:28.060 align:middle line:84% This a poem I wrote when I was rereading a lot of the old Jack 00:32:28.060 --> 00:32:30.550 align:middle line:84% London stories, you know, boy goes up 00:32:30.550 --> 00:32:33.040 align:middle line:84% or man goes up to the northern wilderness 00:32:33.040 --> 00:32:36.430 align:middle line:84% and fights off a wolf, that kind of thing. 00:32:36.430 --> 00:32:40.900 align:middle line:84% And I was getting that boyish adventure, excitement getting 00:32:40.900 --> 00:32:43.180 align:middle line:84% rising in me again, but I remembered 00:32:43.180 --> 00:32:46.360 align:middle line:84% the story, something that had happened to when I was a kid. 00:32:46.360 --> 00:32:49.060 align:middle line:84% I used to take a certain route home from school 00:32:49.060 --> 00:32:54.010 align:middle line:84% through some woods in winter and at one point 00:32:54.010 --> 00:32:59.320 align:middle line:84% found a human hand coming up through the snow, 00:32:59.320 --> 00:33:03.730 align:middle line:84% and I sat down by it and looked at it for a while, 00:33:03.730 --> 00:33:06.912 align:middle line:84% and it was one of those things my father 00:33:06.912 --> 00:33:08.870 align:middle line:84% and I had the kind-- though we never got along, 00:33:08.870 --> 00:33:11.140 align:middle line:84% it was the kind of relationship where I told him just 00:33:11.140 --> 00:33:13.855 align:middle line:84% about everything that happened to me, and this I kept secret. 00:33:13.855 --> 00:33:16.780 align:middle line:90% 00:33:16.780 --> 00:33:19.480 align:middle line:84% So I guess it was important to me because it was-- 00:33:19.480 --> 00:33:22.120 align:middle line:84% a little kid's got to learn how to lie and keep secrets, 00:33:22.120 --> 00:33:26.920 align:middle line:84% and it took me longer than most to learn how to do that. 00:33:26.920 --> 00:33:31.600 align:middle line:84% Eventually he found out when the snow went away in spring, 00:33:31.600 --> 00:33:34.510 align:middle line:84% it was a some old drunken bum or something 00:33:34.510 --> 00:33:38.485 align:middle line:84% like that, it would fall asleep and brought it from the snow. 00:33:38.485 --> 00:33:41.050 align:middle line:90% 00:33:41.050 --> 00:33:43.750 align:middle line:84% And it was also I guess my first experience 00:33:43.750 --> 00:33:45.490 align:middle line:90% with some kind of death. 00:33:45.490 --> 00:33:49.300 align:middle line:84% OK, the poem is called First Story and every at 00:33:49.300 --> 00:33:52.960 align:middle line:84% the end of every stanza, there is a Jack London kind 00:33:52.960 --> 00:33:56.140 align:middle line:84% of story about a guy up in the North Woods who's wounded 00:33:56.140 --> 00:33:59.740 align:middle line:84% and a wolf is coming after him and I'll sort of indicate 00:33:59.740 --> 00:34:00.820 align:middle line:90% when those lines come. 00:34:00.820 --> 00:34:04.748 align:middle line:90% 00:34:04.748 --> 00:34:10.429 align:middle line:84% Thick snow the path, an evergreen hung above an ice locked stream, 00:34:10.429 --> 00:34:12.710 align:middle line:84% home through the woods, he found a hand 00:34:12.710 --> 00:34:14.960 align:middle line:90% up thrusting from the snow. 00:34:14.960 --> 00:34:19.159 align:middle line:84% His dog growled, the hand was frozen blue, 00:34:19.159 --> 00:34:23.270 align:middle line:84% he was afraid to tell his father whom he told all his secrets, 00:34:23.270 --> 00:34:26.270 align:middle line:84% afraid to touch the stiff curled fingers 00:34:26.270 --> 00:34:28.940 align:middle line:90% or enter the cave of palm. 00:34:28.940 --> 00:34:31.190 align:middle line:84% But numb with winter, he came back 00:34:31.190 --> 00:34:35.150 align:middle line:84% to sit in the widening circle of story. 00:34:35.150 --> 00:34:39.710 align:middle line:84% A man laid by a northern stream, lost in trout depths, 00:34:39.710 --> 00:34:43.760 align:middle line:84% feverish, his gashed leg refused to heal. 00:34:43.760 --> 00:34:48.080 align:middle line:84% That night the wolf returned to snarl. 00:34:48.080 --> 00:34:49.489 align:middle line:90% Sunday, when the others knelt-- 00:34:49.489 --> 00:34:53.420 align:middle line:90% 00:34:53.420 --> 00:34:55.880 align:middle line:84% Sunday when the others knelt in church, he 00:34:55.880 --> 00:34:58.610 align:middle line:84% pressed the blue fire of palm and bound 00:34:58.610 --> 00:35:03.560 align:middle line:84% their hands in prayer, he passed out in the pitiless snow. 00:35:03.560 --> 00:35:07.130 align:middle line:84% The tree let down its branches over a boy who could not 00:35:07.130 --> 00:35:10.730 align:middle line:84% stay away from the dead, or the soon to be dead, 00:35:10.730 --> 00:35:14.300 align:middle line:84% and an owl from a storybook sang of another world, 00:35:14.300 --> 00:35:16.610 align:middle line:90% the underground. 00:35:16.610 --> 00:35:18.620 align:middle line:84% It snowed and the stream froze up, 00:35:18.620 --> 00:35:21.290 align:middle line:90% and dark clouds hid the stars. 00:35:21.290 --> 00:35:24.860 align:middle line:84% In his dream, they were friends, wolf and man 00:35:24.860 --> 00:35:28.400 align:middle line:90% under a shell of dark. 00:35:28.400 --> 00:35:32.510 align:middle line:84% Far off in the upper world, the miraculous living moved, 00:35:32.510 --> 00:35:34.850 align:middle line:90% nothing ended but the day. 00:35:34.850 --> 00:35:37.580 align:middle line:84% A father storied his son to sleep, 00:35:37.580 --> 00:35:40.490 align:middle line:84% children woke and went to school. 00:35:40.490 --> 00:35:43.640 align:middle line:84% The boy moved through them, a ghost counting 00:35:43.640 --> 00:35:46.610 align:middle line:90% the unborn males of his hand. 00:35:46.610 --> 00:35:50.210 align:middle line:84% Cold voices urged him back to the woods. 00:35:50.210 --> 00:35:54.710 align:middle line:84% Under the tree, the story was ending, and when he died, 00:35:54.710 --> 00:35:56.960 align:middle line:90% steam rose from his flesh. 00:35:56.960 --> 00:35:59.000 align:middle line:90% The wolf moaned and ran. 00:35:59.000 --> 00:36:02.690 align:middle line:90% The body slipped under snow. 00:36:02.690 --> 00:36:05.420 align:middle line:84% Then spring and the snow loosed over rock 00:36:05.420 --> 00:36:08.120 align:middle line:90% to unveil a man's body. 00:36:08.120 --> 00:36:10.490 align:middle line:84% He watched them wrap it in a sack, 00:36:10.490 --> 00:36:12.890 align:middle line:84% and saw that the eyes were blind, 00:36:12.890 --> 00:36:16.460 align:middle line:84% the mouth too dumb for grief or story. 00:36:16.460 --> 00:36:20.450 align:middle line:84% But their hands had locked, friends one whole winter 00:36:20.450 --> 00:36:22.820 align:middle line:84% until the spring broke and blessed him 00:36:22.820 --> 00:36:25.310 align:middle line:90% with its cold skill. 00:36:25.310 --> 00:36:28.610 align:middle line:84% He heard icy veins roaring underground, 00:36:28.610 --> 00:36:32.240 align:middle line:84% he didn't know the dead could live so long, nor pain, 00:36:32.240 --> 00:36:33.560 align:middle line:90% nor numbness, end. 00:36:33.560 --> 00:36:56.340 align:middle line:90% 00:36:56.340 --> 00:37:01.470 align:middle line:84% This is a poem called The Jewish Family. 00:37:01.470 --> 00:37:04.658 align:middle line:84% Someone once told me that some editor 00:37:04.658 --> 00:37:07.200 align:middle line:84% didn't like my poems because he didn't like the way I treated 00:37:07.200 --> 00:37:08.130 align:middle line:90% the Jewish theme. 00:37:08.130 --> 00:37:14.820 align:middle line:90% 00:37:14.820 --> 00:37:17.040 align:middle line:90% The Jewish family. 00:37:17.040 --> 00:37:20.070 align:middle line:84% Mothers on their bed playing solitaire refusing 00:37:20.070 --> 00:37:24.300 align:middle line:84% to sleep, why is she suddenly old and bitter 00:37:24.300 --> 00:37:27.570 align:middle line:84% and without sex to save her or pills to put her 00:37:27.570 --> 00:37:30.060 align:middle line:90% under like a little girl. 00:37:30.060 --> 00:37:32.730 align:middle line:84% Their father striding the huge cracks 00:37:32.730 --> 00:37:35.580 align:middle line:84% because nothing is wrong, dignified 00:37:35.580 --> 00:37:39.270 align:middle line:84% in his long coat like a paintbrush spreading sickness, 00:37:39.270 --> 00:37:41.880 align:middle line:90% smiles, and fix it. 00:37:41.880 --> 00:37:45.660 align:middle line:84% When we can't sleep, we roll over and over. 00:37:45.660 --> 00:37:48.360 align:middle line:84% We make up stories to fit the bad things 00:37:48.360 --> 00:37:53.160 align:middle line:84% and by turns we are heroes or victims, when we can't remember 00:37:53.160 --> 00:37:55.560 align:middle line:90% what's to become of us. 00:37:55.560 --> 00:37:57.900 align:middle line:84% One night we decided to be heroes 00:37:57.900 --> 00:38:01.200 align:middle line:84% to kiss our enemies until they were Jewish. 00:38:01.200 --> 00:38:03.360 align:middle line:84% Then the grocer refused us credit, 00:38:03.360 --> 00:38:06.780 align:middle line:84% then it took forever just to make mistakes. 00:38:06.780 --> 00:38:08.130 align:middle line:90% Whose story is this? 00:38:08.130 --> 00:38:09.900 align:middle line:90% Whose lifetime? 00:38:09.900 --> 00:38:11.490 align:middle line:90% No one's to blame. 00:38:11.490 --> 00:38:16.080 align:middle line:84% We dawdle around the table like wisely unattempted lives, 00:38:16.080 --> 00:38:18.270 align:middle line:90% totaling up our accounts. 00:38:18.270 --> 00:38:20.490 align:middle line:84% This pain is for father for looking away. 00:38:20.490 --> 00:38:23.580 align:middle line:90% 00:38:23.580 --> 00:38:25.980 align:middle line:84% For frowning, this pain is for mother 00:38:25.980 --> 00:38:29.490 align:middle line:84% who keeps it inside and sickens into gallstones, 00:38:29.490 --> 00:38:31.890 align:middle line:90% into one lonely breast. 00:38:31.890 --> 00:38:34.260 align:middle line:84% Remember the house, daddy, bristling 00:38:34.260 --> 00:38:37.260 align:middle line:84% with sores that wouldn't scar, and the cops who 00:38:37.260 --> 00:38:41.460 align:middle line:84% kept finding me under pillows and porches, sooty and weeping, 00:38:41.460 --> 00:38:43.500 align:middle line:90% confessing. 00:38:43.500 --> 00:38:45.810 align:middle line:84% Every friend I have is a hoodlum. 00:38:45.810 --> 00:38:49.320 align:middle line:84% Every girl I take is a bad girl with toothless parents 00:38:49.320 --> 00:38:53.670 align:middle line:84% and dirty hair, and I fall forever for our sins. 00:38:53.670 --> 00:38:56.280 align:middle line:84% If you love me, daddy, do it good. 00:38:56.280 --> 00:39:00.660 align:middle line:84% Beat me up laughing, not crying like a sorry old man. 00:39:00.660 --> 00:39:04.290 align:middle line:84% Why is love like dying, why don't we ever leave home? 00:39:04.290 --> 00:39:06.812 align:middle line:90% 00:39:06.812 --> 00:39:07.770 align:middle line:90% It wasn't all that bad. 00:39:07.770 --> 00:39:23.110 align:middle line:90% 00:39:23.110 --> 00:39:26.170 align:middle line:84% There's a poem called Beverly, and it's 00:39:26.170 --> 00:39:29.980 align:middle line:84% about the girl upstairs and Beverly 00:39:29.980 --> 00:39:34.510 align:middle line:84% was the girl who introduced all the guys in the neighborhood 00:39:34.510 --> 00:39:35.740 align:middle line:90% to the joys of sex. 00:39:35.740 --> 00:39:39.560 align:middle line:90% 00:39:39.560 --> 00:39:43.228 align:middle line:84% And this is a memory called In Praise of Beverly. 00:39:43.228 --> 00:39:46.300 align:middle line:90% 00:39:46.300 --> 00:39:49.330 align:middle line:84% When you walked downstairs and touched my route, 00:39:49.330 --> 00:39:52.180 align:middle line:84% God knows what brought you homing there, 00:39:52.180 --> 00:39:56.110 align:middle line:84% barely 14, already known as the town pump 00:39:56.110 --> 00:39:59.770 align:middle line:84% and proud of your clear attributes. 00:39:59.770 --> 00:40:02.140 align:middle line:84% I don't think we ever kissed, but lay 00:40:02.140 --> 00:40:04.510 align:middle line:84% in a rocky ditch all one awful summer 00:40:04.510 --> 00:40:08.530 align:middle line:90% night, alive in love with heat. 00:40:08.530 --> 00:40:11.320 align:middle line:84% At dawn, we toasted marshmallows and when 00:40:11.320 --> 00:40:14.920 align:middle line:84% the fire caught the weeds, and lit the Hillside, 00:40:14.920 --> 00:40:17.530 align:middle line:84% you held me tight and whispered, let's wait 00:40:17.530 --> 00:40:20.560 align:middle line:90% and see the fire engines come. 00:40:20.560 --> 00:40:24.010 align:middle line:84% You got sent up early to the House of Good Shepherd 00:40:24.010 --> 00:40:27.670 align:middle line:84% because the mothers were jealous, forgive them. 00:40:27.670 --> 00:40:30.580 align:middle line:84% When the friendly leering cop told me, 00:40:30.580 --> 00:40:33.160 align:middle line:84% I heard you dip the wick in Beverly, 00:40:33.160 --> 00:40:36.220 align:middle line:84% I blushed and stammered proud, then 00:40:36.220 --> 00:40:40.180 align:middle line:84% lied forgive us all to save my skin. 00:40:40.180 --> 00:40:44.320 align:middle line:84% Beverly, the night they took you away, I imagined myself 00:40:44.320 --> 00:40:47.740 align:middle line:84% in the ditch, my flesh on fire, curled 00:40:47.740 --> 00:40:51.580 align:middle line:84% against your careless breathing, plotting love. 00:40:51.580 --> 00:40:54.130 align:middle line:84% I dreamed your face, and your hands that 00:40:54.130 --> 00:40:59.110 align:middle line:84% parted the dark were mine, and grown to share your misery, 00:40:59.110 --> 00:41:00.910 align:middle line:90% but I found mine in good time. 00:41:00.910 --> 00:41:23.230 align:middle line:90% 00:41:23.230 --> 00:41:24.130 align:middle line:90% I find that one. 00:41:24.130 --> 00:41:28.661 align:middle line:84% This is called Versions of Departure. 00:41:28.661 --> 00:41:32.270 align:middle line:90% 00:41:32.270 --> 00:41:37.460 align:middle line:84% Three short poems about leaving home. 00:41:37.460 --> 00:41:39.530 align:middle line:84% The first is about leaving home as a little kid 00:41:39.530 --> 00:41:42.080 align:middle line:84% to go to kindergarten or whatever. 00:41:42.080 --> 00:41:47.030 align:middle line:84% The second section is a boy, maybe 12 years old or so, 00:41:47.030 --> 00:41:49.550 align:middle line:84% who wants to run away from home and is out in the yard 00:41:49.550 --> 00:41:53.120 align:middle line:84% late at night and doesn't quite make it. 00:41:53.120 --> 00:41:57.140 align:middle line:84% And the third is about an adult returning 00:41:57.140 --> 00:42:03.020 align:middle line:84% to a place like his home and then departing from it. 00:42:03.020 --> 00:42:07.160 align:middle line:84% It starts as my bald father rises to put me off to school, 00:42:07.160 --> 00:42:10.940 align:middle line:84% and kisses my turn cheek, undoing all 00:42:10.940 --> 00:42:14.000 align:middle line:84% that my nights dreaming has done. 00:42:14.000 --> 00:42:16.370 align:middle line:84% Down the walk to the street, the sky 00:42:16.370 --> 00:42:19.730 align:middle line:84% descends through the torn kite of the Elm, 00:42:19.730 --> 00:42:22.220 align:middle line:90% the high hedge bristles. 00:42:22.220 --> 00:42:26.090 align:middle line:84% I try not to notice the grisly worms underfoot or the mutt 00:42:26.090 --> 00:42:30.470 align:middle line:84% named Jeep whimpering on the third story porch or my mother 00:42:30.470 --> 00:42:34.310 align:middle line:84% and her gown behind the bedroom curtains. 00:42:34.310 --> 00:42:38.630 align:middle line:84% The year is 1948, for a moment, nothing moves. 00:42:38.630 --> 00:42:40.580 align:middle line:84% Then I hear the screen door click 00:42:40.580 --> 00:42:44.660 align:middle line:84% shut as though my father had taken the snapshot. 00:42:44.660 --> 00:42:47.840 align:middle line:84% Dragging my feet, my father's son, 00:42:47.840 --> 00:42:51.770 align:middle line:84% I turn and wave to the faces that float in the window, wave 00:42:51.770 --> 00:42:53.195 align:middle line:90% and turn away towards school. 00:42:53.195 --> 00:42:57.090 align:middle line:90% 00:42:57.090 --> 00:42:59.730 align:middle line:84% Sleepwalking in a grove of lilac, 00:42:59.730 --> 00:43:02.370 align:middle line:84% he turns toward the darkened house, 00:43:02.370 --> 00:43:05.610 align:middle line:84% his bedroom window yawns half open. 00:43:05.610 --> 00:43:08.850 align:middle line:84% Then toward the barn, the city hills and Woods 00:43:08.850 --> 00:43:12.420 align:middle line:90% and beyond the far spaces. 00:43:12.420 --> 00:43:15.270 align:middle line:84% At night this backyard is not safe for a boy 00:43:15.270 --> 00:43:17.520 align:middle line:90% who dreams of running away. 00:43:17.520 --> 00:43:21.150 align:middle line:84% The nail and the jump up fence snares his cuff. 00:43:21.150 --> 00:43:25.740 align:middle line:84% Overhead, a basketball hoop creaks on its final pin. 00:43:25.740 --> 00:43:29.670 align:middle line:84% And the old boxer in the hayloft champ of shadow boxing 00:43:29.670 --> 00:43:33.600 align:middle line:84% cries out, wakes to his phantoms. 00:43:33.600 --> 00:43:36.960 align:middle line:84% Something has happened between a boy and his father, 00:43:36.960 --> 00:43:38.700 align:middle line:90% now still dreaming. 00:43:38.700 --> 00:43:41.610 align:middle line:84% He shinnies up to the elm's highest bower, 00:43:41.610 --> 00:43:46.140 align:middle line:84% and in the shagged pinched crotch, he talks to himself. 00:43:46.140 --> 00:43:49.500 align:middle line:84% He waits for his older brother to try his pale shoulders 00:43:49.500 --> 00:43:51.100 align:middle line:90% on the lawn. 00:43:51.100 --> 00:43:53.460 align:middle line:84% He waits for egg man's truck to arrive 00:43:53.460 --> 00:43:55.980 align:middle line:84% crying the fruits of the Earth, looking 00:43:55.980 --> 00:43:59.190 align:middle line:90% for lice in a small boy's hair. 00:43:59.190 --> 00:44:03.210 align:middle line:84% No one sees a boy wandering, weaving out of the green dark 00:44:03.210 --> 00:44:06.960 align:middle line:84% a shape for himself, a story, a place to be. 00:44:06.960 --> 00:44:10.220 align:middle line:90% 00:44:10.220 --> 00:44:14.570 align:middle line:84% The sun setting the hills on fire, the house and yard 00:44:14.570 --> 00:44:17.750 align:middle line:90% smaller than they seemed before. 00:44:17.750 --> 00:44:21.950 align:middle line:84% I came to see winter afternoon darken to supper time. 00:44:21.950 --> 00:44:25.490 align:middle line:84% The stove is hot, the table laid, 00:44:25.490 --> 00:44:30.110 align:middle line:84% but this time, the child refused to go home because of the stars 00:44:30.110 --> 00:44:33.890 align:middle line:84% appearing like unspent wishes, and the path from the white 00:44:33.890 --> 00:44:38.030 align:middle line:84% yard a strip heading deeper into woods. 00:44:38.030 --> 00:44:41.660 align:middle line:84% Far off a woman slams the door, a tired man 00:44:41.660 --> 00:44:44.060 align:middle line:90% quarrels with his stoop. 00:44:44.060 --> 00:44:49.280 align:middle line:84% I came for what the child saw, standing just outside his life, 00:44:49.280 --> 00:44:51.770 align:middle line:84% though the scene was brief, the house 00:44:51.770 --> 00:44:55.700 align:middle line:84% of strangers, the light in the kitchen window fainter 00:44:55.700 --> 00:44:57.290 align:middle line:90% than any light I'd seen before. 00:44:57.290 --> 00:45:06.020 align:middle line:90% 00:45:06.020 --> 00:45:08.170 align:middle line:84% The poem, I'll just read a few more. 00:45:08.170 --> 00:45:10.970 align:middle line:84% There's a poem called The Perfect One, 00:45:10.970 --> 00:45:14.300 align:middle line:84% and it arose from a sentence somebody 00:45:14.300 --> 00:45:16.550 align:middle line:84% once spoke to me that I didn't like very much, 00:45:16.550 --> 00:45:18.150 align:middle line:90% but I guess he was right. 00:45:18.150 --> 00:45:22.940 align:middle line:84% He says, told me that I didn't understand women very well, 00:45:22.940 --> 00:45:25.580 align:middle line:84% as if they were somehow different creatures, 00:45:25.580 --> 00:45:29.960 align:middle line:84% and the poem came out of that criticism, 00:45:29.960 --> 00:45:32.720 align:middle line:90% and it's called The Perfect One. 00:45:32.720 --> 00:45:34.520 align:middle line:84% My friend tells me I don't understand 00:45:34.520 --> 00:45:38.900 align:middle line:84% women, a good question to ask myself in private. 00:45:38.900 --> 00:45:43.940 align:middle line:84% Consider my suicides, my wives who gave birth to me daily. 00:45:43.940 --> 00:45:46.910 align:middle line:84% Under their wings I was slick and charming, 00:45:46.910 --> 00:45:49.670 align:middle line:84% they were the cuddlers who kept me. 00:45:49.670 --> 00:45:53.300 align:middle line:84% To the shadows of their breasts, I brought my grief, 00:45:53.300 --> 00:45:59.030 align:middle line:84% but the man, the elusive one, hid his eyes and slept. 00:45:59.030 --> 00:46:02.840 align:middle line:84% Consider the advice my mother gave me wheezing on her knee, 00:46:02.840 --> 00:46:06.350 align:middle line:84% never marry a girl who can't sing in your sleep. 00:46:06.350 --> 00:46:10.370 align:middle line:84% I never did, I couldn't find her, I lay awake, 00:46:10.370 --> 00:46:14.060 align:middle line:84% a boy takes wives by being forcefully inept, 00:46:14.060 --> 00:46:18.260 align:middle line:84% a man steps into a woman's life by being blunt. 00:46:18.260 --> 00:46:20.840 align:middle line:84% But mother's gone the way of most perfection, 00:46:20.840 --> 00:46:24.710 align:middle line:84% and father turned out to be right after all. 00:46:24.710 --> 00:46:27.170 align:middle line:84% When I was crazy I touched a tree 00:46:27.170 --> 00:46:30.770 align:middle line:84% and asked it what it was beyond itself, 00:46:30.770 --> 00:46:35.450 align:middle line:84% I think I suffered a long time without knowing. 00:46:35.450 --> 00:46:40.040 align:middle line:84% In the mornings, a lady comes to rouse me, she is not my lover, 00:46:40.040 --> 00:46:43.140 align:middle line:84% she is not my mother, she is the future, 00:46:43.140 --> 00:46:45.590 align:middle line:84% and she is desperate to please me. 00:46:45.590 --> 00:46:48.860 align:middle line:84% When she hands me my toothbrush, I tell her, wait, 00:46:48.860 --> 00:46:52.790 align:middle line:84% you are the perfect one, I can see right through you. 00:46:52.790 --> 00:46:55.760 align:middle line:84% In the next bed, my father writes everything 00:46:55.760 --> 00:46:58.430 align:middle line:90% will happen in its time. 00:46:58.430 --> 00:47:01.550 align:middle line:84% I had a dream last night in which you came from me, 00:47:01.550 --> 00:47:03.980 align:middle line:84% I'm not ready, I said but she was all 00:47:03.980 --> 00:47:06.980 align:middle line:90% smiles like the bark of a tree. 00:47:06.980 --> 00:47:10.940 align:middle line:84% As I grew smaller, she grew more perfectly large, 00:47:10.940 --> 00:47:14.690 align:middle line:84% then she found it, my birthmark, and entered my body 00:47:14.690 --> 00:47:17.780 align:middle line:84% through that one remaining hole without teeth. 00:47:17.780 --> 00:47:21.320 align:middle line:84% Get out, I told her, you're just like me. 00:47:21.320 --> 00:47:24.590 align:middle line:84% She smelled like death as I breathed her out. 00:47:24.590 --> 00:47:26.990 align:middle line:84% All of this is written in the book my father wrote. 00:47:26.990 --> 00:47:35.790 align:middle line:90% 00:47:35.790 --> 00:47:39.458 align:middle line:84% This is an older poem and it's the title poem of the chapbook 00:47:39.458 --> 00:47:41.000 align:middle line:84% that I just published and it's called 00:47:41.000 --> 00:47:52.600 align:middle line:84% Sleeping on Doors, and for Carol Marcus 1946 to 1969. 00:47:52.600 --> 00:47:55.540 align:middle line:84% If we could only see further, we could look through 00:47:55.540 --> 00:47:59.440 align:middle line:84% to the other side, such impossibilities, 00:47:59.440 --> 00:48:02.380 align:middle line:84% the death of a sister in August, leave 00:48:02.380 --> 00:48:04.630 align:middle line:84% us standing in a kingdom of tongues 00:48:04.630 --> 00:48:10.030 align:middle line:84% without mouths, without even silence to contain our doubts. 00:48:10.030 --> 00:48:13.810 align:middle line:84% When we sigh, we encounter her breathing. 00:48:13.810 --> 00:48:18.040 align:middle line:84% To each ghost we assign lamentations like zeros, 00:48:18.040 --> 00:48:22.570 align:middle line:84% like seeds, we would people whole accessible universes 00:48:22.570 --> 00:48:28.090 align:middle line:84% with our need, entrances, exits, as if we could accept loss 00:48:28.090 --> 00:48:29.770 align:middle line:90% forever. 00:48:29.770 --> 00:48:33.220 align:middle line:84% Tonight is the first closed door, the stone, 00:48:33.220 --> 00:48:37.750 align:middle line:84% and we lie down on it, sleep on the door, on the door, 00:48:37.750 --> 00:48:42.130 align:middle line:84% sleep on the door, a way of seeing past the darkness, 00:48:42.130 --> 00:48:44.665 align:middle line:84% as though we could come and go as we pleased. 00:48:44.665 --> 00:49:02.880 align:middle line:90% 00:49:02.880 --> 00:49:03.880 align:middle line:90% Getting down to the end. 00:49:03.880 --> 00:49:11.870 align:middle line:90% 00:49:11.870 --> 00:49:13.820 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:49:13.820 --> 00:49:21.190 align:middle line:84% This is a poem called The Last Hurrah, and it's about two men, 00:49:21.190 --> 00:49:25.540 align:middle line:84% the two characters in the poem are on an island, 00:49:25.540 --> 00:49:29.800 align:middle line:84% and at the edge of the island, of the big city in the island, 00:49:29.800 --> 00:49:32.212 align:middle line:84% is a place called La Perla, which 00:49:32.212 --> 00:49:33.295 align:middle line:90% is the red light district. 00:49:33.295 --> 00:49:36.280 align:middle line:90% 00:49:36.280 --> 00:49:40.090 align:middle line:84% The last horse, midnight in the red lights 00:49:40.090 --> 00:49:43.600 align:middle line:84% waken in La Perla at the island's edge, 00:49:43.600 --> 00:49:47.260 align:middle line:84% along the sea wall, cold eyed sharks in business suits 00:49:47.260 --> 00:49:49.690 align:middle line:90% lean and advise. 00:49:49.690 --> 00:49:52.390 align:middle line:84% If I were warm, the fishermen and foolish 00:49:52.390 --> 00:49:56.230 align:middle line:84% with the tired man's face, I would start up from shore 00:49:56.230 --> 00:50:00.670 align:middle line:84% and enter the first beached whale of flesh. 00:50:00.670 --> 00:50:02.740 align:middle line:84% But these are the tourist tropics, 00:50:02.740 --> 00:50:07.600 align:middle line:84% my friend Federico explains, where love swarms and the women 00:50:07.600 --> 00:50:10.720 align:middle line:84% are flowering out of every door, even 00:50:10.720 --> 00:50:15.640 align:middle line:84% the wine of the cripple selling ices blooms into song. 00:50:15.640 --> 00:50:18.190 align:middle line:84% Upstairs, in the rose of Lima ballroom, 00:50:18.190 --> 00:50:20.800 align:middle line:84% we watch two lesbians fondle each other 00:50:20.800 --> 00:50:23.980 align:middle line:90% on stage in a Velvet bed. 00:50:23.980 --> 00:50:27.790 align:middle line:84% Their breasts are purple bruises spreading over the sailors 00:50:27.790 --> 00:50:30.700 align:middle line:84% and cruising girls over my friend who 00:50:30.700 --> 00:50:33.310 align:middle line:90% says he loves all women. 00:50:33.310 --> 00:50:36.340 align:middle line:84% Though he is rich, and their time is money, 00:50:36.340 --> 00:50:39.070 align:middle line:84% they sit for what he offers around the table 00:50:39.070 --> 00:50:41.770 align:middle line:90% scarred with drink. 00:50:41.770 --> 00:50:43.900 align:middle line:84% Rilly the black Dominican flares 00:50:43.900 --> 00:50:49.420 align:middle line:84% across the room, tattooed spiders clamber up her thighs. 00:50:49.420 --> 00:50:53.200 align:middle line:84% They talk and drink, bargain and refuse 00:50:53.200 --> 00:50:56.950 align:middle line:84% until she is soft, approximate, turning 00:50:56.950 --> 00:51:02.350 align:middle line:84% the way his hands turn like a block of wood on a lathe. 00:51:02.350 --> 00:51:05.560 align:middle line:84% Given the right word or the whim or whatever 00:51:05.560 --> 00:51:08.620 align:middle line:84% moves us to break faith with what we know, 00:51:08.620 --> 00:51:11.740 align:middle line:84% she might walk out and settle on the outskirts 00:51:11.740 --> 00:51:13.990 align:middle line:90% of Ciudad Trujillo. 00:51:13.990 --> 00:51:17.980 align:middle line:84% Proprietress of bar or beauty shop, and my friend 00:51:17.980 --> 00:51:22.240 align:middle line:84% go home to his loving daughter and his Cuban wife, 00:51:22.240 --> 00:51:27.490 align:middle line:84% and yet as she turns, the vowels he shapes but does not speak, 00:51:27.490 --> 00:51:32.620 align:middle line:84% arela per like the mark words of wisdom in a borrowed book. 00:51:32.620 --> 00:51:35.170 align:middle line:84% Just under the sheet, the last name 00:51:35.170 --> 00:51:38.860 align:middle line:84% chosen from a field of flowers steals his breath 00:51:38.860 --> 00:51:42.700 align:middle line:84% and pushes him past the spider gate. 00:51:42.700 --> 00:51:47.350 align:middle line:84% He is the last of many to enter the wide of custom dark. 00:51:47.350 --> 00:51:51.160 align:middle line:84% They drift on the bed toward dawn, the last man 00:51:51.160 --> 00:51:55.600 align:middle line:84% and the last whore going down like the moon over La Perla 00:51:55.600 --> 00:51:57.445 align:middle line:90% until they sleep or drown. 00:51:57.445 --> 00:52:01.060 align:middle line:90% 00:52:01.060 --> 00:52:05.080 align:middle line:84% And one more, this is a poem called The Best Halves 00:52:05.080 --> 00:52:09.550 align:middle line:84% of our Lives, and it's about getting together 00:52:09.550 --> 00:52:12.550 align:middle line:84% with old friends once a year or so 00:52:12.550 --> 00:52:15.820 align:middle line:84% from what passes between you at times. 00:52:15.820 --> 00:52:21.010 align:middle line:84% The poem was written when I was in Europe and faraway 00:52:21.010 --> 00:52:27.250 align:middle line:84% from friends and was near a lake so the images are of a lake. 00:52:27.250 --> 00:52:30.430 align:middle line:90% The Best Halves of our Lives. 00:52:30.430 --> 00:52:35.050 align:middle line:84% The dark lake's emptiness spreads to its receding shores, 00:52:35.050 --> 00:52:37.930 align:middle line:84% the last red flag of day breaks down, 00:52:37.930 --> 00:52:42.610 align:middle line:84% and I look back and dream, patient for miracles. 00:52:42.610 --> 00:52:45.730 align:middle line:84% I am glad to be alone to evoke your images 00:52:45.730 --> 00:52:48.280 align:middle line:90% around a table playing cards. 00:52:48.280 --> 00:52:52.210 align:middle line:84% Old friends with little to say, at our feet 00:52:52.210 --> 00:52:55.270 align:middle line:90% the dogs sleep fitfully. 00:52:55.270 --> 00:52:59.110 align:middle line:84% Our wives who keep us together and apart 00:52:59.110 --> 00:53:03.070 align:middle line:84% rise to remind us of our daily lives. 00:53:03.070 --> 00:53:05.980 align:middle line:84% I stand by the water watching clouds, 00:53:05.980 --> 00:53:09.430 align:middle line:84% four whole days remembering nothing at all, here 00:53:09.430 --> 00:53:12.280 align:middle line:90% at the edges less matters. 00:53:12.280 --> 00:53:15.610 align:middle line:84% I measure life by seasons away from friends, 00:53:15.610 --> 00:53:18.550 align:middle line:84% imagining each and his storybook house, 00:53:18.550 --> 00:53:21.250 align:middle line:84% writing letters which are sent with their secrets 00:53:21.250 --> 00:53:26.020 align:middle line:84% towards silence to settle miles away on my roof, 00:53:26.020 --> 00:53:29.650 align:middle line:84% and the angel in the lake, imperfect friend, 00:53:29.650 --> 00:53:32.380 align:middle line:84% finds me in this other place when 00:53:32.380 --> 00:53:36.370 align:middle line:84% with maturity and distance, watching a Kingfisher 00:53:36.370 --> 00:53:40.090 align:middle line:84% and a swallow dip in a last evening flight 00:53:40.090 --> 00:53:43.990 align:middle line:84% and meet their shadows rising in the water. 00:53:43.990 --> 00:53:45.780 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:53:45.780 --> 00:54:28.000 align:middle line:90%