WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.850 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.850 --> 00:00:06.270 align:middle line:84% Well, I think I'll read now the end 00:00:06.270 --> 00:00:09.720 align:middle line:84% of my poem, my notorious poem, Litany, 00:00:09.720 --> 00:00:13.770 align:middle line:84% which is in two columns and double columns. 00:00:13.770 --> 00:00:16.920 align:middle line:84% And I've been asked many times how it should be read, 00:00:16.920 --> 00:00:18.960 align:middle line:84% and in fact I had no particular way in mind 00:00:18.960 --> 00:00:21.720 align:middle line:84% because my own way of reading is very sloppy, 00:00:21.720 --> 00:00:24.780 align:middle line:84% and I assumed everybody was the same as me. 00:00:24.780 --> 00:00:26.460 align:middle line:90% [LAUGH] 00:00:26.460 --> 00:00:31.470 align:middle line:84% I did make a recording of it with another poet in which we 00:00:31.470 --> 00:00:35.578 align:middle line:84% read simultaneously so that you could get only a few words, 00:00:35.578 --> 00:00:36.870 align:middle line:90% but on the other hand, I don't. 00:00:36.870 --> 00:00:39.450 align:middle line:90% [LAUGH] 00:00:39.450 --> 00:00:45.300 align:middle line:84% Just because that's the way I hear things myself. 00:00:45.300 --> 00:00:47.880 align:middle line:84% On the other hand, I don't mind it's 00:00:47.880 --> 00:00:51.480 align:middle line:84% being read as separate-- two separate parallel poems, 00:00:51.480 --> 00:00:52.470 align:middle line:90% either. 00:00:52.470 --> 00:00:56.190 align:middle line:84% I'll read a little bit of the left 00:00:56.190 --> 00:00:58.140 align:middle line:84% and then a little bit of the right. 00:00:58.140 --> 00:01:00.270 align:middle line:90% [LAUGH] 00:01:00.270 --> 00:01:02.520 align:middle line:84% Or say that between the effort and the screws 00:01:02.520 --> 00:01:05.220 align:middle line:84% some scorpion intruded, and to top it off, 00:01:05.220 --> 00:01:08.130 align:middle line:84% a storm interfered with the rescue efforts blurring them. 00:01:08.130 --> 00:01:09.330 align:middle line:90% What then? 00:01:09.330 --> 00:01:11.730 align:middle line:84% What do you make of the red traffic light turning 00:01:11.730 --> 00:01:15.690 align:middle line:84% green to admit a few cars farther on in the shuffle when 00:01:15.690 --> 00:01:17.700 align:middle line:84% night finds the tubing with rain, 00:01:17.700 --> 00:01:20.970 align:middle line:84% and you can see yourself only as you used to be in college. 00:01:20.970 --> 00:01:24.300 align:middle line:84% Make you mine, Valentine feeling fine to. 00:01:24.300 --> 00:01:27.180 align:middle line:84% If consumed with energy to be mad and go 00:01:27.180 --> 00:01:29.010 align:middle line:84% on confessing even if it means that the 00:01:29.010 --> 00:01:32.880 align:middle line:84% sought after absolution be rescinded after a time. 00:01:32.880 --> 00:01:35.610 align:middle line:84% And those who looked silently at you for a while 00:01:35.610 --> 00:01:38.970 align:middle line:84% direct their gaze downward to the sunlit tundra. 00:01:38.970 --> 00:01:42.720 align:middle line:84% And you go out to the party, his toes slip into shoes, 00:01:42.720 --> 00:01:44.880 align:middle line:84% and I am not just left on the corner, 00:01:44.880 --> 00:01:46.620 align:middle line:84% but him as the traveling salesman 00:01:46.620 --> 00:01:50.100 align:middle line:84% of a joke with a permanent hard-on and no luck 00:01:50.100 --> 00:01:53.970 align:middle line:84% and all these samples in this here suitcase want to see them? 00:01:53.970 --> 00:01:56.910 align:middle line:84% Otherwise, why we don't know too much. 00:01:56.910 --> 00:02:00.360 align:middle line:84% Fellow was over here recently from the British Isles 00:02:00.360 --> 00:02:03.150 align:middle line:84% wanted to see something of how the life goes on. 00:02:03.150 --> 00:02:04.830 align:middle line:90% He never made it back. 00:02:04.830 --> 00:02:07.800 align:middle line:84% Well, some of us enjoy that way too as 00:02:07.800 --> 00:02:10.590 align:middle line:84% though we knew life was a picnic or parade down 00:02:10.590 --> 00:02:13.530 align:middle line:84% under the hassles and disrobing, the dust. 00:02:13.530 --> 00:02:16.020 align:middle line:84% But now while we pretend to see otherwise 00:02:16.020 --> 00:02:18.000 align:middle line:84% into the great blue eyes of concrete 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:20.850 align:middle line:84% that best our city in the time of industry 00:02:20.850 --> 00:02:24.510 align:middle line:84% and so panic slowly in the vegetal heart of things until 00:02:24.510 --> 00:02:26.790 align:middle line:84% told the disconnect the operation. 00:02:26.790 --> 00:02:29.460 align:middle line:84% No wonder so many of us get discouraged 00:02:29.460 --> 00:02:32.970 align:middle line:90% know not where to turn. 00:02:32.970 --> 00:02:36.180 align:middle line:84% Some certified nut will try to tell you it's poetry. 00:02:36.180 --> 00:02:37.320 align:middle line:90% It's extraordinary. 00:02:37.320 --> 00:02:39.250 align:middle line:90% It makes a great deal of sense. 00:02:39.250 --> 00:02:42.330 align:middle line:84% But watch out, or he'll start with some new notion or other 00:02:42.330 --> 00:02:46.290 align:middle line:84% and switch to both leaving you wiser and not emptier 00:02:46.290 --> 00:02:48.720 align:middle line:84% though standing on the edge of a hill. 00:02:48.720 --> 00:02:51.780 align:middle line:84% We have to worry about systems and devices. 00:02:51.780 --> 00:02:54.630 align:middle line:84% There is no energy here, no spleen either. 00:02:54.630 --> 00:02:56.940 align:middle line:84% We have to take over the sewer plans. 00:02:56.940 --> 00:03:00.690 align:middle line:84% Otherwise, the coursing clear water plains upon plains of it 00:03:00.690 --> 00:03:02.520 align:middle line:90% will have its day and disappear. 00:03:02.520 --> 00:03:04.260 align:middle line:90% Same goes for business. 00:03:04.260 --> 00:03:06.840 align:middle line:84% Holed up in some office skyscraper, 00:03:06.840 --> 00:03:10.410 align:middle line:84% it's often busy to predict the future for business plans. 00:03:10.410 --> 00:03:12.420 align:middle line:84% But try doing it from down in the street 00:03:12.420 --> 00:03:14.400 align:middle line:90% and see how far it gets you. 00:03:14.400 --> 00:03:16.020 align:middle line:84% Really have to sequester yourself 00:03:16.020 --> 00:03:17.730 align:middle line:84% to see how far you have come, but I'm not 00:03:17.730 --> 00:03:19.890 align:middle line:90% going to talk about that. 00:03:19.890 --> 00:03:21.480 align:middle line:84% I'm fairly well pleased with the way 00:03:21.480 --> 00:03:24.690 align:middle line:84% you and I have come around the hill ignoring and then 00:03:24.690 --> 00:03:27.270 align:middle line:84% anointing its edge even if we felt 00:03:27.270 --> 00:03:29.490 align:middle line:90% it keenly in the back wind. 00:03:29.490 --> 00:03:32.400 align:middle line:84% You were a secretary at first until it came time 00:03:32.400 --> 00:03:33.460 align:middle line:90% to believe you. 00:03:33.460 --> 00:03:36.990 align:middle line:84% And then the Black man replaced your headlights with fuel. 00:03:36.990 --> 00:03:39.360 align:middle line:84% You seemed to grow from no place. 00:03:39.360 --> 00:03:42.030 align:middle line:84% And now calmed down like a Corinthian column, 00:03:42.030 --> 00:03:47.130 align:middle line:84% you grow and grow scaling the high plinths of the sky. 00:03:47.130 --> 00:03:50.190 align:middle line:84% The truth is that nowhere in Europe, India, or America 00:03:50.190 --> 00:03:53.190 align:middle line:84% is this a straight line drawn vertically from one point 00:03:53.190 --> 00:03:56.040 align:middle line:84% to another so as to connect them and in so doing 00:03:56.040 --> 00:03:59.170 align:middle line:84% provide a lot of fun and refreshment for the students 00:03:59.170 --> 00:04:02.280 align:middle line:84% so they may never feel insecure again. 00:04:02.280 --> 00:04:03.900 align:middle line:84% Such a line may exist, but it would 00:04:03.900 --> 00:04:06.240 align:middle line:84% be horizontal like the Northwest Passage 00:04:06.240 --> 00:04:08.820 align:middle line:84% and not connect people up with anything else. 00:04:08.820 --> 00:04:11.880 align:middle line:84% It's a wager and emptiness and the warmth 00:04:11.880 --> 00:04:14.310 align:middle line:84% and the color of baked loaves in the sun. 00:04:14.310 --> 00:04:18.269 align:middle line:84% It has no idea of nourishment or where you should go. 00:04:18.269 --> 00:04:20.880 align:middle line:84% Its idea is that the Latin text might also 00:04:20.880 --> 00:04:24.960 align:middle line:84% have existed in German or be so close it doesn't matter anymore 00:04:24.960 --> 00:04:27.270 align:middle line:84% and the cottage be shut up at the end of summer 00:04:27.270 --> 00:04:29.880 align:middle line:84% and be there come early or mid-spring. 00:04:29.880 --> 00:04:33.240 align:middle line:84% But this presupposes a helpless mankind pigeonholed 00:04:33.240 --> 00:04:35.400 align:middle line:84% with a rival deity so that neither 00:04:35.400 --> 00:04:37.350 align:middle line:84% can make the hands of the clock move 00:04:37.350 --> 00:04:40.760 align:middle line:84% and it all goes down in darkness with the sun 00:04:40.760 --> 00:04:42.740 align:middle line:90% to the Supreme moment then. 00:04:42.740 --> 00:04:47.030 align:middle line:84% But it spreads out in sullenness over a vast tidal plane 00:04:47.030 --> 00:04:49.970 align:middle line:84% to dissipate in what it is not even sure is horizon, 00:04:49.970 --> 00:04:51.920 align:middle line:90% is nothing but images. 00:04:51.920 --> 00:04:54.350 align:middle line:84% Earthly inadequacy is indescribable 00:04:54.350 --> 00:04:57.200 align:middle line:84% and heavenly satisfaction needs no description. 00:04:57.200 --> 00:05:01.070 align:middle line:84% But between them, hovering like Satan on airless wing 00:05:01.070 --> 00:05:02.720 align:middle line:90% is the matter at hand. 00:05:02.720 --> 00:05:06.320 align:middle line:84% The essence of it is that all love is intuitive, creative 00:05:06.320 --> 00:05:10.130 align:middle line:90% and that we can't hear it. 00:05:10.130 --> 00:05:11.870 align:middle line:84% Others, the tenor, the doctor, want 00:05:11.870 --> 00:05:14.420 align:middle line:84% us to walk about on it to see how we feel about it 00:05:14.420 --> 00:05:15.890 align:middle line:90% before they attempt anything. 00:05:15.890 --> 00:05:17.870 align:middle line:90% Yet in whose house are we? 00:05:17.870 --> 00:05:19.790 align:middle line:90% Must we not sit quietly? 00:05:19.790 --> 00:05:22.190 align:middle line:84% For we would not do this at home. 00:05:22.190 --> 00:05:24.500 align:middle line:84% A splattering of trumpets against the very high 00:05:24.500 --> 00:05:28.340 align:middle line:84% pockmarked wall and a forgetting of spiny palm trees, 00:05:28.340 --> 00:05:31.310 align:middle line:84% and it is over for us all not just us. 00:05:31.310 --> 00:05:33.050 align:middle line:84% And yet on the inside it was doomed 00:05:33.050 --> 00:05:36.800 align:middle line:84% to happen again over and over like a wave on a beach that 00:05:36.800 --> 00:05:39.830 align:middle line:84% thinks it's had this tremendous idea coming to crash 00:05:39.830 --> 00:05:41.210 align:middle line:90% on the beach like that. 00:05:41.210 --> 00:05:41.990 align:middle line:90% And it's true. 00:05:41.990 --> 00:05:42.860 align:middle line:90% It has. 00:05:42.860 --> 00:05:45.080 align:middle line:84% Yet others have gone before and still others 00:05:45.080 --> 00:05:47.420 align:middle line:84% will follow and far from undermining 00:05:47.420 --> 00:05:50.540 align:middle line:84% the spiciness of this individual act, this knowledge 00:05:50.540 --> 00:05:52.550 align:middle line:84% plants a seed of eternal endeavor 00:05:52.550 --> 00:05:56.450 align:middle line:84% for fear of happening just once and goes on its way. 00:05:56.450 --> 00:05:59.210 align:middle line:84% And yet the originality should not deter our vision 00:05:59.210 --> 00:06:01.760 align:middle line:84% from the drain that absorbs night and day, 00:06:01.760 --> 00:06:04.610 align:middle line:84% all our equations makes us brittle, 00:06:04.610 --> 00:06:07.640 align:middle line:90% emancipated, not men in a word. 00:06:07.640 --> 00:06:09.830 align:middle line:84% Dying of fright in the vial at night, 00:06:09.830 --> 00:06:12.830 align:middle line:84% you come to understand how it looked to the ancestors 00:06:12.830 --> 00:06:15.840 align:middle line:84% and what there was about it that moved them and are come 00:06:15.840 --> 00:06:17.750 align:middle line:84% no closer to the divine riddle which 00:06:17.750 --> 00:06:21.650 align:middle line:84% is aging so beautiful in the eternal honey of the sun 00:06:21.650 --> 00:06:24.740 align:middle line:84% and spurs us on to a higher pitch of elocution 00:06:24.740 --> 00:06:26.720 align:middle line:90% that the company will not buy. 00:06:26.720 --> 00:06:28.820 align:middle line:84% And so back to our grandstand seat 00:06:28.820 --> 00:06:31.550 align:middle line:84% with a feeling of having mended the contrary principles 00:06:31.550 --> 00:06:34.910 align:middle line:84% with a cat gut of abstract sleek ideas that 00:06:34.910 --> 00:06:37.190 align:middle line:84% come only once in the night to be born 00:06:37.190 --> 00:06:38.960 align:middle line:84% and are gone forever after leaving 00:06:38.960 --> 00:06:41.510 align:middle line:84% their trace after the stitches had been removed. 00:06:41.510 --> 00:06:44.150 align:middle line:84% But who was to say they are traces of what really went 00:06:44.150 --> 00:06:47.030 align:middle line:90% on and not today's palimpsest? 00:06:47.030 --> 00:06:50.090 align:middle line:84% For what is remarkable about our chronic reverie, 00:06:50.090 --> 00:06:52.940 align:middle line:84% a watch that is always too slow or too fast, 00:06:52.940 --> 00:06:54.890 align:middle line:84% is a lively sense of accomplishment 00:06:54.890 --> 00:06:56.960 align:middle line:90% that halos it from afar. 00:06:56.960 --> 00:06:59.420 align:middle line:84% There is no need to approach closely. 00:06:59.420 --> 00:07:01.760 align:middle line:84% It will be done from here and work out better. 00:07:01.760 --> 00:07:04.460 align:middle line:90% You'll see. 00:07:04.460 --> 00:07:07.070 align:middle line:84% Oh once a long time ago in towns and cities, 00:07:07.070 --> 00:07:08.750 align:middle line:90% the line was different. 00:07:08.750 --> 00:07:12.530 align:middle line:84% We lived in differently then, but perhaps more accurately. 00:07:12.530 --> 00:07:15.390 align:middle line:84% And once it was over, we knew what to do with it. 00:07:15.390 --> 00:07:17.480 align:middle line:84% We carried out our neighbors' lives, 00:07:17.480 --> 00:07:20.270 align:middle line:84% and they had our instructions about where to go. 00:07:20.270 --> 00:07:23.030 align:middle line:84% We lived inadequately blushing, but we 00:07:23.030 --> 00:07:26.360 align:middle line:84% knew we were on the outside and that only one thing prevented 00:07:26.360 --> 00:07:27.860 align:middle line:90% us from traveling inward. 00:07:27.860 --> 00:07:29.900 align:middle line:84% And that thing was our knowledge of how little 00:07:29.900 --> 00:07:32.750 align:middle line:84% we imagined everything as though a door were 00:07:32.750 --> 00:07:34.640 align:middle line:84% enough to stop the average person 00:07:34.640 --> 00:07:37.950 align:middle line:84% and he would just curl up on the doormat forever. 00:07:37.950 --> 00:07:40.820 align:middle line:84% But this person turned out to be mass produced. 00:07:40.820 --> 00:07:43.310 align:middle line:84% He was funny and knew about elegance, 00:07:43.310 --> 00:07:45.230 align:middle line:90% how to dress for an occasion. 00:07:45.230 --> 00:07:47.780 align:middle line:84% Yet the error that incites us to duplication 00:07:47.780 --> 00:07:50.030 align:middle line:90% was missing or inexact. 00:07:50.030 --> 00:07:51.650 align:middle line:90% We have not spoken to him. 00:07:51.650 --> 00:07:53.750 align:middle line:84% It should be outrageous to do so. 00:07:53.750 --> 00:07:57.410 align:middle line:84% Yet to ignore him will bring no light. 00:07:57.410 --> 00:08:01.370 align:middle line:84% But to get it right, we might ask this once, 00:08:01.370 --> 00:08:03.650 align:middle line:90% how goes it down there? 00:08:03.650 --> 00:08:05.420 align:middle line:84% What objects have you found recently? 00:08:05.420 --> 00:08:09.140 align:middle line:90% 00:08:09.140 --> 00:08:11.450 align:middle line:84% So the giant slabs of material came 00:08:11.450 --> 00:08:14.400 align:middle line:84% to be in precious little else and no information about them, 00:08:14.400 --> 00:08:16.850 align:middle line:84% but that was all right for the present century. 00:08:16.850 --> 00:08:19.820 align:middle line:84% Later on, we'd see how it might be in some other epoch. 00:08:19.820 --> 00:08:21.875 align:middle line:84% But for the time being, it was neither your 00:08:21.875 --> 00:08:24.530 align:middle line:84% nor the population's concern and may 00:08:24.530 --> 00:08:26.270 align:middle line:90% have glittered as it declined. 00:08:26.270 --> 00:08:30.170 align:middle line:84% But for now, it would have to do as any magic as the right kind 00:08:30.170 --> 00:08:31.400 align:middle line:90% at the right time. 00:08:31.400 --> 00:08:34.940 align:middle line:84% There is no soothsaying, yet it happens in rose, 00:08:34.940 --> 00:08:37.834 align:middle line:84% wind rose you call him in your far country. 00:08:37.834 --> 00:08:40.350 align:middle line:90% 00:08:40.350 --> 00:08:42.570 align:middle line:90% There are no trade winds. 00:08:42.570 --> 00:08:45.330 align:middle line:84% The ocean too, is someone's idea. 00:08:45.330 --> 00:08:48.450 align:middle line:84% The pleasant banter of the elements cannot disguise this 00:08:48.450 --> 00:08:52.560 align:middle line:84% basically send concept nor remove us from contemplation 00:08:52.560 --> 00:08:53.130 align:middle line:90% of it. 00:08:53.130 --> 00:08:57.240 align:middle line:84% And that is the best answer that may precede the question. 00:08:57.240 --> 00:09:00.090 align:middle line:84% Until later when the shooting fires light up 00:09:00.090 --> 00:09:04.350 align:middle line:84% the sides of the volcano and each task and catastrophe 00:09:04.350 --> 00:09:07.740 align:middle line:84% become clear and succinct, by that time, 00:09:07.740 --> 00:09:10.950 align:middle line:84% kindness will have replaced effort. 00:09:10.950 --> 00:09:14.130 align:middle line:84% Why keep on seating the chairs when the future is night, 00:09:14.130 --> 00:09:16.500 align:middle line:90% and no one knows what he wants. 00:09:16.500 --> 00:09:18.540 align:middle line:84% It would probably be best, though to hang on 00:09:18.540 --> 00:09:21.180 align:middle line:84% to these words if only for the rhyme. 00:09:21.180 --> 00:09:24.330 align:middle line:84% Little enough, but later on at the summit, 00:09:24.330 --> 00:09:25.800 align:middle line:84% it won't matter so much that they 00:09:25.800 --> 00:09:28.410 align:middle line:84% fled like arrows from the taut string 00:09:28.410 --> 00:09:32.370 align:middle line:84% of a restrained consciousness only that they mattered. 00:09:32.370 --> 00:09:35.820 align:middle line:84% For the present, our not knowing delights them. 00:09:35.820 --> 00:09:39.420 align:middle line:84% Probably they won't be devoured by the lions like the others 00:09:39.420 --> 00:09:42.780 align:middle line:84% but be released after a certain time. 00:09:42.780 --> 00:09:45.660 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile, keep careful count of the rows 00:09:45.660 --> 00:09:49.680 align:middle line:84% of windows overlooking the deep blue sky behind the factory. 00:09:49.680 --> 00:09:52.030 align:middle line:90% We'll need them. 00:09:52.030 --> 00:09:55.050 align:middle line:84% That's the end of the left hand column 00:09:55.050 --> 00:09:57.825 align:middle line:84% and the right hand finishes thus. 00:09:57.825 --> 00:10:00.450 align:middle line:90% 00:10:00.450 --> 00:10:02.910 align:middle line:90% But you are leaving. 00:10:02.910 --> 00:10:05.340 align:middle line:84% Some months ago, I got an offer from Columbia Tape Club, 00:10:05.340 --> 00:10:09.120 align:middle line:84% Terre Haute, Ind, where I could buy one tape 00:10:09.120 --> 00:10:10.680 align:middle line:90% and get another free. 00:10:10.680 --> 00:10:14.160 align:middle line:84% I accepted the deal, paid for one tape and chose a free one. 00:10:14.160 --> 00:10:17.550 align:middle line:84% But since I've been repeatedly billed for my free tape. 00:10:17.550 --> 00:10:20.850 align:middle line:84% I've written them several times but can't straighten it out. 00:10:20.850 --> 00:10:22.592 align:middle line:90% Would you try? 00:10:22.592 --> 00:10:24.038 align:middle line:90% [LAUGH] 00:10:24.038 --> 00:10:34.650 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:10:34.650 --> 00:10:41.780 align:middle line:84% I'll just read a couple more recent ones, more recent ones. 00:10:41.780 --> 00:10:44.494 align:middle line:90%