WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.350 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.350 --> 00:00:03.150 align:middle line:84% Another part of this series had to do 00:00:03.150 --> 00:00:05.730 align:middle line:90% with a very particular notion. 00:00:05.730 --> 00:00:11.400 align:middle line:84% I was born a Catholic, but it didn't take. 00:00:11.400 --> 00:00:12.960 align:middle line:84% And one of the reasons it didn't take 00:00:12.960 --> 00:00:15.150 align:middle line:84% is that when we moved from the north end of Boston, 00:00:15.150 --> 00:00:18.510 align:middle line:84% my mother, who never did speak much English, even when 00:00:18.510 --> 00:00:23.280 align:middle line:84% she was 18, ran into the Irish Trinity 00:00:23.280 --> 00:00:25.470 align:middle line:90% and she couldn't believe it. 00:00:25.470 --> 00:00:27.120 align:middle line:84% As far as she was concerned, a priest 00:00:27.120 --> 00:00:29.570 align:middle line:84% who could not speak Italian was a fraud. 00:00:29.570 --> 00:00:30.330 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:30.330 --> 00:00:33.150 align:middle line:90% How could he speak to God? 00:00:33.150 --> 00:00:35.280 align:middle line:84% And certainly she couldn't speak to him. 00:00:35.280 --> 00:00:40.200 align:middle line:84% And I, at that time, I thought the Irish priesthood was rather 00:00:40.200 --> 00:00:42.420 align:middle line:90% arrogant and petty-minded. 00:00:42.420 --> 00:00:45.450 align:middle line:90% And I found it unpleasant. 00:00:45.450 --> 00:00:48.090 align:middle line:84% And I had trouble with it, but not for long. 00:00:48.090 --> 00:00:51.390 align:middle line:90% I got tired of agonizing. 00:00:51.390 --> 00:00:53.160 align:middle line:84% This is called "A Five Year Step." 00:00:53.160 --> 00:00:55.260 align:middle line:84% And it has to do with some of those experiences. 00:00:55.260 --> 00:00:59.250 align:middle line:84% And my mother's native mistrust, as I 00:00:59.250 --> 00:01:02.730 align:middle line:84% say, of a priest who could not speak God's language, 00:01:02.730 --> 00:01:05.985 align:middle line:84% was basically, I think, what saved me a lot of trouble. 00:01:05.985 --> 00:01:08.700 align:middle line:90% 00:01:08.700 --> 00:01:10.140 align:middle line:90% [CLEARS THROAT] 00:01:10.140 --> 00:01:12.150 align:middle line:90% "A Five Year Step." 00:01:12.150 --> 00:01:14.430 align:middle line:84% This began, I guess, when I was about 15, 00:01:14.430 --> 00:01:18.180 align:middle line:84% and it was over by the time I was about 20. 00:01:18.180 --> 00:01:21.000 align:middle line:84% "I don't remember what I was arguing in HH Blanchard's 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:24.420 align:middle line:90% medieval lit at Tufts and 37. 00:01:24.420 --> 00:01:27.090 align:middle line:90% Something to do with numerology. 00:01:27.090 --> 00:01:29.310 align:middle line:84% And I knew about it the way my cousins 00:01:29.310 --> 00:01:33.720 align:middle line:84% knew baseball statistics, by having been raised inside them. 00:01:33.720 --> 00:01:35.790 align:middle line:90% Though I couldn't prove it. 00:01:35.790 --> 00:01:38.880 align:middle line:84% It does sound plausible, said HHB. 00:01:38.880 --> 00:01:42.060 align:middle line:84% But how do you know if you can't document it? 00:01:42.060 --> 00:01:44.970 align:middle line:84% Remember, we're not discussing how we feel, 00:01:44.970 --> 00:01:48.060 align:middle line:84% but what went on in the mind of the Middle Ages. 00:01:48.060 --> 00:01:49.740 align:middle line:84% That's just the point, I told him. 00:01:49.740 --> 00:01:51.900 align:middle line:90% I was born there. 00:01:51.900 --> 00:01:55.740 align:middle line:84% Or else, I was born beforehand to where they came. 00:01:55.740 --> 00:01:59.500 align:middle line:84% And if it was half of flourish for sweet style sake, 00:01:59.500 --> 00:02:02.400 align:middle line:84% not for a class of dotes to titter at. 00:02:02.400 --> 00:02:04.080 align:middle line:84% Though they had to have that titter. 00:02:04.080 --> 00:02:05.430 align:middle line:90% And let them have it. 00:02:05.430 --> 00:02:08.520 align:middle line:84% It still was half as true as I was born. 00:02:08.520 --> 00:02:12.420 align:middle line:84% Maybe half as true as anyone is born and with no proven 00:02:12.420 --> 00:02:14.580 align:middle line:90% Renaissance to follow. 00:02:14.580 --> 00:02:16.950 align:middle line:84% At least I haven't met Lorenzo's ghost 00:02:16.950 --> 00:02:21.030 align:middle line:84% in any court I've come to, nor Leonardo at the academy, 00:02:21.030 --> 00:02:24.600 align:middle line:84% nor myself of fire with don enough to strike spires 00:02:24.600 --> 00:02:26.370 align:middle line:90% from the day. 00:02:26.370 --> 00:02:28.920 align:middle line:84% Sometimes I think I've made it out of the dark 00:02:28.920 --> 00:02:30.820 align:middle line:90% but not into the light. 00:02:30.820 --> 00:02:32.460 align:middle line:90% There may be light. 00:02:32.460 --> 00:02:35.490 align:middle line:84% But what's in the control room is a glow dim red 00:02:35.490 --> 00:02:39.810 align:middle line:84% as altar tapers and as faithful to the Holy Ghost of needles 00:02:39.810 --> 00:02:43.670 align:middle line:84% on their dials trembling with presences. 00:02:43.670 --> 00:02:47.070 align:middle line:84% As I was born to dim red glows, I 00:02:47.070 --> 00:02:50.880 align:middle line:84% sensed but could not read, except to know that there 00:02:50.880 --> 00:02:55.050 align:middle line:84% are presences and to learn the first of everything 00:02:55.050 --> 00:03:00.870 align:middle line:84% is a lunacy whose chatter starts before us in the dark. 00:03:00.870 --> 00:03:04.200 align:middle line:84% A cave of colored windows where a God's light came down 00:03:04.200 --> 00:03:07.170 align:middle line:84% in shafts bored through his coral stone 00:03:07.170 --> 00:03:09.720 align:middle line:90% closed me in good and evil. 00:03:09.720 --> 00:03:11.520 align:middle line:90% And I was wrong. 00:03:11.520 --> 00:03:15.840 align:middle line:84% My nature's all vain sinful before starting. 00:03:15.840 --> 00:03:19.830 align:middle line:84% I felt his eyes bore and his great grab 00:03:19.830 --> 00:03:25.290 align:middle line:84% reached to sulfurous ores soul deep in half my dreams. 00:03:25.290 --> 00:03:28.320 align:middle line:84% And from the rails and galleries of that dark 00:03:28.320 --> 00:03:31.710 align:middle line:84% and that its pit heads, black flagged orators 00:03:31.710 --> 00:03:34.470 align:middle line:84% of tongues that were never mine summoned me 00:03:34.470 --> 00:03:37.440 align:middle line:84% through to guilt and the Irish Trinity. 00:03:37.440 --> 00:03:42.435 align:middle line:84% Ma wept to hear how God denied his round Italian for a nose 00:03:42.435 --> 00:03:45.810 align:middle line:90% full of south Boston jeremiads. 00:03:45.810 --> 00:03:49.410 align:middle line:84% Nights I could hear her arguing with pa to take the matter up 00:03:49.410 --> 00:03:54.000 align:middle line:84% with San Miguel or with San Giovanni of his own son's name. 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:57.010 align:middle line:84% But we couldn't be sure he had made it up that high. 00:03:57.010 --> 00:03:57.510 align:middle line:90% What? 00:03:57.510 --> 00:04:00.240 align:middle line:84% We still praying him out of purgatory. 00:04:00.240 --> 00:04:04.110 align:middle line:84% However it was, we never got an answer. 00:04:04.110 --> 00:04:06.990 align:middle line:84% I did what was done to me and fell asleep. 00:04:06.990 --> 00:04:09.900 align:middle line:84% Falling off roofs and clouds to wake 00:04:09.900 --> 00:04:13.380 align:middle line:84% up screaming holding my genitals that had fallen off, 00:04:13.380 --> 00:04:16.290 align:middle line:84% because they belonged to the devil and he'd come for them 00:04:16.290 --> 00:04:20.170 align:middle line:84% and changed me into a girl for punishment. 00:04:20.170 --> 00:04:23.010 align:middle line:84% But in another sleep, I was all escapes. 00:04:23.010 --> 00:04:26.230 align:middle line:84% I killed Cavalcante, who had killed my father. 00:04:26.230 --> 00:04:30.270 align:middle line:84% He shouldn't have driven so fast and ran back home. 00:04:30.270 --> 00:04:32.730 align:middle line:84% And pa himself was there and gave me 00:04:32.730 --> 00:04:36.750 align:middle line:84% wine in three red glasses, because I was his son. 00:04:36.750 --> 00:04:39.570 align:middle line:84% Himself, the tall first number of the bottle 00:04:39.570 --> 00:04:41.040 align:middle line:90% he filled me from. 00:04:41.040 --> 00:04:44.130 align:middle line:90% And ma an eight behind him. 00:04:44.130 --> 00:04:48.000 align:middle line:84% In the two great circles, he had married one. 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:51.000 align:middle line:84% I didn't know then my dreams were from a mountain 00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:54.570 align:middle line:84% where every town defended its own virgin just as the Greeks 00:04:54.570 --> 00:04:56.940 align:middle line:90% had left her, in a cave. 00:04:56.940 --> 00:05:00.030 align:middle line:84% But I could tell St. Patrick was none of mine. 00:05:00.030 --> 00:05:02.130 align:middle line:84% Though at St. Joe's, his feast day 00:05:02.130 --> 00:05:05.415 align:middle line:84% waved more flags than God broke out for Easter and Christmas 00:05:05.415 --> 00:05:07.080 align:middle line:90% together. 00:05:07.080 --> 00:05:11.310 align:middle line:90% What was I then 13 maybe 14. 00:05:11.310 --> 00:05:14.640 align:middle line:84% Like ma, I half believed I was safe in God 00:05:14.640 --> 00:05:16.980 align:middle line:90% and what God we were safe in. 00:05:16.980 --> 00:05:20.160 align:middle line:84% I couldn't have guessed we were Greeks who spoke ourselves 00:05:20.160 --> 00:05:23.100 align:middle line:84% in bad Italian from a parish of goat thickets 00:05:23.100 --> 00:05:26.580 align:middle line:84% civil war and hot blood on the mountain. 00:05:26.580 --> 00:05:30.990 align:middle line:84% All our saints disguised as Catholic but as mountain rank 00:05:30.990 --> 00:05:34.680 align:middle line:84% as a days sweat on the ledges of the starved who put 00:05:34.680 --> 00:05:37.110 align:middle line:90% their prayers into thickets. 00:05:37.110 --> 00:05:41.280 align:middle line:84% I had left St. Joe's before I left and didn't know it. 00:05:41.280 --> 00:05:44.100 align:middle line:84% It took a clown to rip my thicket loose. 00:05:44.100 --> 00:05:47.880 align:middle line:84% And in came father Ryan blowing his nose 00:05:47.880 --> 00:05:51.330 align:middle line:84% one warm March day, to lather the Sunday school 00:05:51.330 --> 00:05:54.270 align:middle line:84% into his own idea of a hagiological rally 00:05:54.270 --> 00:05:56.820 align:middle line:90% for the big green team. 00:05:56.820 --> 00:06:01.080 align:middle line:84% And sent the mountains sliding down on the cave forever. 00:06:01.080 --> 00:06:05.610 align:middle line:84% His nose well blown, he stood above us outside the altar rail 00:06:05.610 --> 00:06:09.690 align:middle line:84% and worked the boys up to three last green cheers. 00:06:09.690 --> 00:06:12.930 align:middle line:90% Where did St. Patrick come from? 00:06:12.930 --> 00:06:15.600 align:middle line:90% Ireland, the saved screamed. 00:06:15.600 --> 00:06:18.240 align:middle line:84% And where did he bring his blessing? 00:06:18.240 --> 00:06:20.310 align:middle line:90% Again, Ireland. 00:06:20.310 --> 00:06:23.130 align:middle line:84% And where did your fathers come from? 00:06:23.130 --> 00:06:27.840 align:middle line:84% Once again, he got his chorus, but he lost my soul. 00:06:27.840 --> 00:06:32.940 align:middle line:84% I heard a bellowing of lunatic treason, from Italy, by God. 00:06:32.940 --> 00:06:36.090 align:middle line:84% And didn't know I was the lunatic till he grabbed my ear 00:06:36.090 --> 00:06:37.770 align:middle line:90% and dragged me to the altar. 00:06:37.770 --> 00:06:39.390 align:middle line:90% Pray for your soul. 00:06:39.390 --> 00:06:42.180 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:06:42.180 --> 00:06:44.790 align:middle line:90% Well, I'd be damned first. 00:06:44.790 --> 00:06:48.150 align:middle line:84% I stamped out of there running the wrong raids of the blind 00:06:48.150 --> 00:06:49.920 align:middle line:84% who have no world or would sooner 00:06:49.920 --> 00:06:52.140 align:middle line:90% knock it over than be trapped. 00:06:52.140 --> 00:06:56.190 align:middle line:84% Later, he said I stamped my heel on his instep. 00:06:56.190 --> 00:06:57.390 align:middle line:90% I won't deny it. 00:06:57.390 --> 00:07:00.030 align:middle line:90% He did limp for two weeks. 00:07:00.030 --> 00:07:01.740 align:middle line:84% And world as it was though, I was 00:07:01.740 --> 00:07:03.630 align:middle line:84% innocent by memory and intention. 00:07:03.630 --> 00:07:07.740 align:middle line:84% I'd use that trick a time or two to make a fool let go. 00:07:07.740 --> 00:07:10.980 align:middle line:84% I'd had my skull cracked once for being slow. 00:07:10.980 --> 00:07:14.370 align:middle line:84% And Toots Fitzgerald still has a bad shoulder 00:07:14.370 --> 00:07:16.800 align:middle line:90% from learning I learned fast. 00:07:16.800 --> 00:07:18.960 align:middle line:84% He ran me down with obvious intent 00:07:18.960 --> 00:07:22.230 align:middle line:84% to teach me something I wasn't inclined to learn. 00:07:22.230 --> 00:07:26.490 align:middle line:84% He was 15 and I was a snotty 10 the day of our lesson. 00:07:26.490 --> 00:07:28.620 align:middle line:84% Though as it happened, I ended up 00:07:28.620 --> 00:07:32.340 align:middle line:84% teaching him what I hadn't learned myself before I did it. 00:07:32.340 --> 00:07:34.830 align:middle line:84% I took off down the middle of Summer Street 00:07:34.830 --> 00:07:36.450 align:middle line:90% but with too little start. 00:07:36.450 --> 00:07:39.990 align:middle line:84% Toots pounded after, five good years faster, 00:07:39.990 --> 00:07:43.630 align:middle line:84% and had me or would have had me in one more step. 00:07:43.630 --> 00:07:46.050 align:middle line:84% But when I heard his breath hot at my shoulder, 00:07:46.050 --> 00:07:49.350 align:middle line:84% I dropped into a ball and tripped him on the fly. 00:07:49.350 --> 00:07:52.950 align:middle line:84% He hit macadam like a potato sack dropped off a truck. 00:07:52.950 --> 00:07:55.260 align:middle line:84% And may have been still skidding by the time 00:07:55.260 --> 00:07:58.050 align:middle line:84% I jumped the Kerry's fence and was home safe. 00:07:58.050 --> 00:08:01.070 align:middle line:84% I didn't stay around to pick him up. 00:08:01.070 --> 00:08:03.200 align:middle line:84% His father came that night and wanted ma 00:08:03.200 --> 00:08:06.050 align:middle line:84% to pay for a doctor and a ruined coat. 00:08:06.050 --> 00:08:08.340 align:middle line:84% But even he when he saw me could figure out, 00:08:08.340 --> 00:08:11.570 align:middle line:84% Toots had five years, better than 20 pounds, and at least 00:08:11.570 --> 00:08:13.820 align:middle line:90% a foot and a few inches on me. 00:08:13.820 --> 00:08:18.170 align:middle line:84% He had to admit, I weighed in as the defender and that was that. 00:08:18.170 --> 00:08:21.620 align:middle line:84% I took my beating later when Toots could run again. 00:08:21.620 --> 00:08:23.720 align:middle line:90% Off to one side. 00:08:23.720 --> 00:08:26.240 align:middle line:90% He'd learned to avoid my wake. 00:08:26.240 --> 00:08:29.390 align:middle line:84% And when he caught me, he only hit for form sake. 00:08:29.390 --> 00:08:31.490 align:middle line:84% Better that then take a rock in the head 00:08:31.490 --> 00:08:33.200 align:middle line:90% when he wasn't looking. 00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:36.870 align:middle line:84% He knew it, and I knew it, and we were quits. 00:08:36.870 --> 00:08:39.620 align:middle line:84% But I didn't know I knew it till it was done. 00:08:39.620 --> 00:08:41.330 align:middle line:84% And even then I wasn't sure of who 00:08:41.330 --> 00:08:43.880 align:middle line:90% had done it, for me or to me. 00:08:43.880 --> 00:08:46.580 align:middle line:90% Nor even what had been done. 00:08:46.580 --> 00:08:50.750 align:middle line:84% The day I broke up Father Ryan's rally for the big green saint 00:08:50.750 --> 00:08:54.650 align:middle line:84% was one more education than what I have known about myself, even 00:08:54.650 --> 00:08:55.850 align:middle line:90% to guess about. 00:08:55.850 --> 00:09:00.080 align:middle line:84% Till I lay hiding among the river cattails, red as murder, 00:09:00.080 --> 00:09:03.890 align:middle line:84% and filling the wax museum with bloody poses of Trovatore 00:09:03.890 --> 00:09:07.160 align:middle line:84% howling down on Carmen with without blades out and no one 00:09:07.160 --> 00:09:11.300 align:middle line:84% giving an inch, while Rigoletto opened his bloody sack. 00:09:11.300 --> 00:09:14.030 align:middle line:84% That was beside a river too, I remembered. 00:09:14.030 --> 00:09:16.970 align:middle line:84% And the goddamn duke picking up the wrong cue, 00:09:16.970 --> 00:09:19.610 align:middle line:84% kept yelling la commedia รจ finita. 00:09:19.610 --> 00:09:22.190 align:middle line:90% 00:09:22.190 --> 00:09:25.670 align:middle line:84% I played it out, my belly in a knot and the weather 00:09:25.670 --> 00:09:28.100 align:middle line:90% slanting cold into the night. 00:09:28.100 --> 00:09:30.650 align:middle line:84% I'd gone to communion that morning. 00:09:30.650 --> 00:09:32.600 align:middle line:84% I could hear Sparafucile cackling 00:09:32.600 --> 00:09:36.140 align:middle line:84% among the damned to think what day that was. 00:09:36.140 --> 00:09:38.240 align:middle line:90% And had no breakfast. 00:09:38.240 --> 00:09:40.730 align:middle line:84% I didn't dare go home till after midnight. 00:09:40.730 --> 00:09:42.470 align:middle line:90% And didn't dare go then. 00:09:42.470 --> 00:09:44.870 align:middle line:84% And almost didn't, at least in the role 00:09:44.870 --> 00:09:47.150 align:middle line:90% I was half sure I was playing. 00:09:47.150 --> 00:09:50.360 align:middle line:84% For a coat and a sandwich, I'd have topped a trolley, 00:09:50.360 --> 00:09:53.060 align:middle line:84% stolen a first ride into Sullivan Square, 00:09:53.060 --> 00:09:55.460 align:middle line:84% and jumped whatever was heading into Boston 00:09:55.460 --> 00:09:57.215 align:middle line:90% and out the other side. 00:09:57.215 --> 00:10:01.280 align:middle line:84% Or so at least I told myself and what other part I was playing. 00:10:01.280 --> 00:10:06.470 align:middle line:84% Knowing at curtain time, ma would be waiting. 00:10:06.470 --> 00:10:08.870 align:middle line:84% Those days, she was no one to fool with. 00:10:08.870 --> 00:10:12.410 align:middle line:84% Some damn cousin had worked a sheet of leather into a roll, 00:10:12.410 --> 00:10:16.600 align:middle line:84% bound up one end, and cut the rest to cattails. 00:10:16.600 --> 00:10:19.430 align:middle line:90% Ma kept it for tribal sessions. 00:10:19.430 --> 00:10:22.190 align:middle line:90% This would be tribal. 00:10:22.190 --> 00:10:26.030 align:middle line:84% Nor had I ever been closer to the tribe in my own mood. 00:10:26.030 --> 00:10:27.650 align:middle line:90% I knew what was coming next. 00:10:27.650 --> 00:10:29.015 align:middle line:90% I thought I did. 00:10:29.015 --> 00:10:32.180 align:middle line:84% And thought I had outgrown it before it happens. 00:10:32.180 --> 00:10:33.860 align:middle line:90% Let her play it hot. 00:10:33.860 --> 00:10:35.940 align:middle line:90% I'd play it cold. 00:10:35.940 --> 00:10:39.920 align:middle line:84% She was sitting in the kitchen like a stone Sibyl hissing. 00:10:39.920 --> 00:10:43.310 align:middle line:84% The leather cat, it was my day for cattails, 00:10:43.310 --> 00:10:47.300 align:middle line:84% on the table like a dried, familiar, dead but hissing 00:10:47.300 --> 00:10:48.440 align:middle line:90% back. 00:10:48.440 --> 00:10:51.770 align:middle line:84% I let her work me over till the welts bled through my shirt. 00:10:51.770 --> 00:10:56.360 align:middle line:84% And wouldn't make a sound except to say, you having a good time. 00:10:56.360 --> 00:10:58.040 align:middle line:90% It broke her fit. 00:10:58.040 --> 00:11:00.680 align:middle line:90% She was the one to cry. 00:11:00.680 --> 00:11:03.560 align:middle line:84% But everyone played his part in our asylum. 00:11:03.560 --> 00:11:06.140 align:middle line:84% She dropped the cat and stood crying. 00:11:06.140 --> 00:11:08.870 align:middle line:84% I picked it up and tossed it into the garbage. 00:11:08.870 --> 00:11:10.610 align:middle line:90% And she kissed me. 00:11:10.610 --> 00:11:13.820 align:middle line:84% And both of us knew it was my confirmation. 00:11:13.820 --> 00:11:17.090 align:middle line:84% Yes, from Pagliacci or from Rigoletto. 00:11:17.090 --> 00:11:18.830 align:middle line:90% And yet it was real enough. 00:11:18.830 --> 00:11:21.680 align:middle line:84% And I was a man and frightened her. 00:11:21.680 --> 00:11:23.930 align:middle line:84% Had it been Italy, she thought, she 00:11:23.930 --> 00:11:25.760 align:middle line:84% might have watched me climb the mountain 00:11:25.760 --> 00:11:28.790 align:middle line:84% as wrong men go to vengeance where they find it. 00:11:28.790 --> 00:11:31.190 align:middle line:84% Wherever the madhouse rocks of history 00:11:31.190 --> 00:11:33.650 align:middle line:84% spin out the numbers of whatever they are 00:11:33.650 --> 00:11:36.620 align:middle line:84% and let a fool in the crumbs of what he has come through 00:11:36.620 --> 00:11:37.790 align:middle line:90% to be taken. 00:11:37.790 --> 00:11:41.100 align:middle line:84% She could see me dying with Carabinieri smoking out 00:11:41.100 --> 00:11:44.480 align:middle line:84% the blood around the rock I leaped from. 00:11:44.480 --> 00:11:46.040 align:middle line:90% It was that. 00:11:46.040 --> 00:11:49.040 align:middle line:84% Guessing what mad histories she read me from 00:11:49.040 --> 00:11:51.140 align:middle line:90% broke my own madness. 00:11:51.140 --> 00:11:53.120 align:middle line:90% How could we ever meet? 00:11:53.120 --> 00:11:54.710 align:middle line:90% I had escaped her. 00:11:54.710 --> 00:11:57.110 align:middle line:84% Though she washed my back and oiled it. 00:11:57.110 --> 00:11:59.450 align:middle line:84% Sobbing her first mood in reverse 00:11:59.450 --> 00:12:02.630 align:middle line:84% and brought me soup and heated over spaghetti. 00:12:02.630 --> 00:12:04.820 align:middle line:90% I had escaped her. 00:12:04.820 --> 00:12:07.380 align:middle line:90% Would she escape me? 00:12:07.380 --> 00:12:09.920 align:middle line:84% I'd sooner have lost the Iliad and The Odyssey 00:12:09.920 --> 00:12:12.410 align:middle line:84% than the purity of her madness, which was 00:12:12.410 --> 00:12:15.560 align:middle line:90% love in its own numbered cave. 00:12:15.560 --> 00:12:18.760 align:middle line:84% I kissed her forehead, and told her to go to bed. 00:12:18.760 --> 00:12:23.150 align:middle line:84% And she went to bed, radiant with my found manhood. 00:12:23.150 --> 00:12:26.810 align:middle line:84% As if she'd dreamed I had killed the Carabinieri, gotten away, 00:12:26.810 --> 00:12:29.270 align:middle line:84% gone off to sea, and the numbers of destiny 00:12:29.270 --> 00:12:32.810 align:middle line:84% to lux great seven, and home in a Cadillac chauffeured 00:12:32.810 --> 00:12:35.630 align:middle line:90% by a colonel of Bersaglieri. 00:12:35.630 --> 00:12:38.870 align:middle line:84% I went to bed myself, almost believing I was a man 00:12:38.870 --> 00:12:41.150 align:middle line:90% and had snapped ropes in two. 00:12:41.150 --> 00:12:44.930 align:middle line:84% Though I have smelled the grease paint in my fraud. 00:12:44.930 --> 00:12:48.260 align:middle line:84% The skin of my back was pulled too tight for wearing, 00:12:48.260 --> 00:12:51.980 align:middle line:84% but I wasn't about to take off up a mountain that 00:12:51.980 --> 00:12:53.390 align:middle line:90% wasn't there. 00:12:53.390 --> 00:12:55.250 align:middle line:90% I had my moods to climb. 00:12:55.250 --> 00:12:57.980 align:middle line:84% And had climbed out of them when I'd played them through, 00:12:57.980 --> 00:13:02.240 align:middle line:84% till the next lunacy came from the casting office. 00:13:02.240 --> 00:13:05.660 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile, at liberty, as unemployed hams 00:13:05.660 --> 00:13:09.440 align:middle line:84% used to announce in Variety, meaning nowhere 00:13:09.440 --> 00:13:12.500 align:middle line:84% with nothing to do about it but sit and think. 00:13:12.500 --> 00:13:14.180 align:middle line:90% What had been done? 00:13:14.180 --> 00:13:16.490 align:middle line:90% Who did what had been done? 00:13:16.490 --> 00:13:20.030 align:middle line:84% It was so small a step from God that morning 00:13:20.030 --> 00:13:24.020 align:middle line:84% and took me five more years to finish taking, sometimes 00:13:24.020 --> 00:13:27.260 align:middle line:84% in real sweat, sometimes in real greasepaint, 00:13:27.260 --> 00:13:29.270 align:middle line:90% and often enough in both. 00:13:29.270 --> 00:13:33.410 align:middle line:84% But I had left the cave forever, even when I went back still 00:13:33.410 --> 00:13:36.710 align:middle line:84% fingering a guilt like the dry scab of a cut someone 00:13:36.710 --> 00:13:38.060 align:middle line:90% had given me. 00:13:38.060 --> 00:13:41.600 align:middle line:84% As I left that cat of 20 tails in a day's garbage 00:13:41.600 --> 00:13:44.120 align:middle line:84% curling the question marks on the chicken bones, 00:13:44.120 --> 00:13:48.590 align:middle line:84% as if to ask, who chooses what we do? 00:13:48.590 --> 00:13:52.250 align:middle line:84% I found one part of one answer five years later. 00:13:52.250 --> 00:13:56.210 align:middle line:84% And took 30 more to learn there was not much more. 00:13:56.210 --> 00:13:58.070 align:middle line:90% It was a June day. 00:13:58.070 --> 00:14:01.550 align:middle line:84% I was home from school and curled up by my window reading 00:14:01.550 --> 00:14:05.510 align:middle line:84% William James' on the Varieties of Religious Experience, 00:14:05.510 --> 00:14:08.060 align:middle line:84% because a nice nelly neighbor, half a priest, 00:14:08.060 --> 00:14:10.460 align:middle line:84% and home from the seminary had sermoned me, 00:14:10.460 --> 00:14:13.310 align:middle line:84% when he met me coming from the library and saw it under 00:14:13.310 --> 00:14:14.540 align:middle line:90% my arm. 00:14:14.540 --> 00:14:18.020 align:middle line:84% Well, I'd met to read her or I wouldn't have taken it out. 00:14:18.020 --> 00:14:20.750 align:middle line:84% But when he horned in, I decided to take notes 00:14:20.750 --> 00:14:24.050 align:middle line:84% to needle with him and was working at that. 00:14:24.050 --> 00:14:28.010 align:middle line:84% Besides, I was having a fling at being country gentleman. 00:14:28.010 --> 00:14:31.160 align:middle line:84% Come Monday, I'd have to start another summer as gang 00:14:31.160 --> 00:14:33.290 align:middle line:90% jackhammering for the Gas Co. 00:14:33.290 --> 00:14:36.830 align:middle line:84% or for Di Piedro, who subcontracted for the Gas Co. 00:14:36.830 --> 00:14:37.940 align:middle line:90% Sweat. 00:14:37.940 --> 00:14:40.340 align:middle line:84% It always took two weeks on the damned hammer 00:14:40.340 --> 00:14:43.400 align:middle line:84% before I could hold my breakfast until lunch. 00:14:43.400 --> 00:14:47.060 align:middle line:84% And at night, I'd be hitting my bed too tired for supper. 00:14:47.060 --> 00:14:49.460 align:middle line:84% Then in two seconds it would be 5:00 o'clock 00:14:49.460 --> 00:14:51.830 align:middle line:90% and time to start again. 00:14:51.830 --> 00:14:53.330 align:middle line:90% But this was Thursday. 00:14:53.330 --> 00:14:55.400 align:middle line:90% And I was still a scholar. 00:14:55.400 --> 00:14:57.590 align:middle line:90% Ma was outside. 00:14:57.590 --> 00:15:00.500 align:middle line:84% My abdicated matriarch and my daughter 00:15:00.500 --> 00:15:04.400 align:middle line:84% fussing her flowers to bridle by my window. 00:15:04.400 --> 00:15:06.650 align:middle line:84% She was a witch of flowers and could 00:15:06.650 --> 00:15:09.170 align:middle line:84% some of them out of the ground as if they lay full 00:15:09.170 --> 00:15:13.010 align:middle line:84% blossomed and wrapped in mulch waiting for her to call. 00:15:13.010 --> 00:15:16.580 align:middle line:84% Flowers were her light and gifted as her dark, 00:15:16.580 --> 00:15:21.290 align:middle line:84% with tongues she knew and things did, but no other. 00:15:21.290 --> 00:15:25.010 align:middle line:84% I heard her cooing incantations to them in the same rhythms 00:15:25.010 --> 00:15:27.440 align:middle line:84% I would hear her hiss when she attacked 00:15:27.440 --> 00:15:29.840 align:middle line:90% a dust sent to offend her. 00:15:29.840 --> 00:15:32.070 align:middle line:84% It wasn't enough to scrub it from the floor. 00:15:32.070 --> 00:15:35.870 align:middle line:84% She had to hate it out of the universe, 00:15:35.870 --> 00:15:39.710 align:middle line:84% as she needed now to love her flowers to bloom. 00:15:39.710 --> 00:15:43.430 align:middle line:84% I was taking a killing note on nitrous oxide-- 00:15:43.430 --> 00:15:46.790 align:middle line:84% that by the way, I'd tell him, is laughing gas-- 00:15:46.790 --> 00:15:49.880 align:middle line:84% and on what the stuff could do for seminarians who are running 00:15:49.880 --> 00:15:51.750 align:middle line:90% short of mystical experiences-- 00:15:51.750 --> 00:15:53.240 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:15:53.240 --> 00:15:55.040 align:middle line:84% --when I heard a step on the walk. 00:15:55.040 --> 00:15:57.650 align:middle line:84% And then the nose you know which father talked through, 00:15:57.650 --> 00:16:00.230 align:middle line:90% asking to know if I was home. 00:16:00.230 --> 00:16:03.110 align:middle line:84% I didn't have to be told what local priestlet had gone 00:16:03.110 --> 00:16:05.390 align:middle line:84% to mass that morning and stayed to discuss 00:16:05.390 --> 00:16:08.060 align:middle line:90% my soul with what local knows. 00:16:08.060 --> 00:16:11.610 align:middle line:84% We all came out being crazy our own way. 00:16:11.610 --> 00:16:14.150 align:middle line:90% But ma got my soul's medal. 00:16:14.150 --> 00:16:16.580 align:middle line:84% He's in the home, I heard her say, 00:16:16.580 --> 00:16:19.400 align:middle line:90% defending me on my mountain. 00:16:19.400 --> 00:16:21.980 align:middle line:84% It was as good as any laughing gas, 00:16:21.980 --> 00:16:24.150 align:middle line:90% for lifting me to a vision. 00:16:24.150 --> 00:16:28.490 align:middle line:84% I saw time stripped to Plotinus's and Teresa's bones 00:16:28.490 --> 00:16:31.370 align:middle line:84% and built again to walls and terraces. 00:16:31.370 --> 00:16:33.260 align:middle line:84% Up the whole mountain I had never 00:16:33.260 --> 00:16:37.580 align:middle line:84% seen, out of whose caves my ax came looking for me, 00:16:37.580 --> 00:16:40.565 align:middle line:84% like the dark and lighted numbers of a fate stocked 00:16:40.565 --> 00:16:44.660 align:middle line:84% by Carabinieri, while the sibyl crouched in a thicket. 00:16:44.660 --> 00:16:47.270 align:middle line:84% Hiss them to the bone edge and sent them 00:16:47.270 --> 00:16:50.180 align:middle line:90% spinning with a bolt of hate. 00:16:50.180 --> 00:16:53.990 align:middle line:84% A nose blew through my dream and blew it back. 00:16:53.990 --> 00:16:56.960 align:middle line:84% And Father Ryan was pouring it in on ma 00:16:56.960 --> 00:17:01.040 align:middle line:84% to think of her own soul and of the sin of letting her son be 00:17:01.040 --> 00:17:02.900 align:middle line:84% rotted through by evil till he was 00:17:02.900 --> 00:17:07.460 align:middle line:84% pitchfork screaming into hell to wail in the broth forever. 00:17:07.460 --> 00:17:09.950 align:middle line:84% Ma didn't exactly catch all the words. 00:17:09.950 --> 00:17:12.410 align:middle line:90% But she made out the tune. 00:17:12.410 --> 00:17:14.869 align:middle line:84% If she was my daughter now, she was still 00:17:14.869 --> 00:17:19.079 align:middle line:84% a fury to any wrong nose that twitched up the mountain. 00:17:19.079 --> 00:17:23.359 align:middle line:84% I heard her scald 3,000 guardian years of a pure, mother, 00:17:23.359 --> 00:17:26.990 align:middle line:84% Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin cave dialect. 00:17:26.990 --> 00:17:30.020 align:middle line:84% You name the tongue that suffers birth. 00:17:30.020 --> 00:17:32.870 align:middle line:84% And if it came out broken through a slapstick 00:17:32.870 --> 00:17:36.440 align:middle line:84% turn of history, it was still sung from a peak 00:17:36.440 --> 00:17:38.870 align:middle line:90% higher than all laughing gases. 00:17:38.870 --> 00:17:42.646 align:middle line:84% You leave a my Johnny alone, you Irish a you, he's a good boy. 00:17:42.646 --> 00:17:44.310 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:17:44.310 --> 00:17:46.890 align:middle line:84% And I was the oaf at the window when 00:17:46.890 --> 00:17:51.330 align:middle line:84% the flowered covenant of language split the holy truths. 00:17:51.330 --> 00:17:55.290 align:middle line:84% I allow sublimates and wept whole fabliaux 00:17:55.290 --> 00:17:56.910 align:middle line:90% for history's daughter. 00:17:56.910 --> 00:18:01.830 align:middle line:84% Tall from her root of love, my comic source, my radiant 00:18:01.830 --> 00:18:05.700 align:middle line:84% witch of first made lunacies and priestess of the tongues 00:18:05.700 --> 00:18:07.680 align:middle line:90% before a man. 00:18:07.680 --> 00:18:11.520 align:middle line:84% Ma, I whispered laughing through to prayer. 00:18:11.520 --> 00:18:15.180 align:middle line:84% I thought you did not know me, nor I you. 00:18:15.180 --> 00:18:18.990 align:middle line:84% But what we are is first milk and last candle 00:18:18.990 --> 00:18:21.750 align:middle line:84% and indivisibly ahead of thought. 00:18:21.750 --> 00:18:26.900 align:middle line:84% And I am no man till I am your son. 00:18:26.900 --> 00:18:30.890 align:middle line:84% And close my great born five year step away 00:18:30.890 --> 00:18:36.050 align:middle line:84% into the first love I identified my whole way back through time. 00:18:36.050 --> 00:18:43.580 align:middle line:84% My first deed done back to the cave our madness happens from." 00:18:43.580 --> 00:18:46.580 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:18:46.580 --> 00:18:47.580 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:18:47.580 --> 00:18:57.580 align:middle line:90% 00:18:57.580 --> 00:18:59.251 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:18:59.251 --> 00:19:02.410 align:middle line:84% I'm afraid those poems make too much 00:19:02.410 --> 00:19:03.940 align:middle line:90% of a demand on an audience. 00:19:03.940 --> 00:19:07.330 align:middle line:84% I better shift to some shorter things for what time 00:19:07.330 --> 00:19:09.240 align:middle line:90% we have left. 00:19:09.240 --> 00:19:12.000 align:middle line:90%