WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.890 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.890 --> 00:00:09.860 align:middle line:84% I'm going to finish reading from, reading sections from, 00:00:09.860 --> 00:00:13.430 align:middle line:84% a long poem that I just, I think, just finished. 00:00:13.430 --> 00:00:17.660 align:middle line:84% And that will be out as a little book late this spring sometime. 00:00:17.660 --> 00:00:19.203 align:middle line:90% And it's in 20 sections. 00:00:19.203 --> 00:00:20.870 align:middle line:84% I'm only going to read about 10 of them. 00:00:20.870 --> 00:00:24.872 align:middle line:90% They're 23 lines long. 00:00:24.872 --> 00:00:26.830 align:middle line:84% And when I started the poem, and all the time I 00:00:26.830 --> 00:00:28.370 align:middle line:84% was working on it, until recently, 00:00:28.370 --> 00:00:32.240 align:middle line:84% I saw it really as a sequence or a series. 00:00:32.240 --> 00:00:36.830 align:middle line:84% But it doesn't have any real logic. 00:00:36.830 --> 00:00:41.600 align:middle line:84% I can't claim it to be really one poem or even a sequence. 00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:43.970 align:middle line:84% I think the only thing they really have in common is 00:00:43.970 --> 00:00:47.570 align:middle line:90% they're all 23 lines long. 00:00:47.570 --> 00:00:49.400 align:middle line:84% Although there's recurring themes. 00:00:49.400 --> 00:00:52.350 align:middle line:84% There's three or four different ones that come up. 00:00:52.350 --> 00:00:54.710 align:middle line:84% I think I'll read 10 or so of them. 00:00:54.710 --> 00:01:00.910 align:middle line:90% 00:01:00.910 --> 00:01:05.740 align:middle line:84% I used the first line of each one, I'd jerk up as the title, 00:01:05.740 --> 00:01:09.070 align:middle line:84% and then I repeat it as the first line. 00:01:09.070 --> 00:01:14.230 align:middle line:84% The whole poem is called, "At the Far End of a Long Wharf," 00:01:14.230 --> 00:01:15.620 align:middle line:84% although if anybody hears a line, 00:01:15.620 --> 00:01:16.870 align:middle line:90% and I'm serious, if you hear-- 00:01:16.870 --> 00:01:18.130 align:middle line:90% I'm not sure about that title. 00:01:18.130 --> 00:01:21.340 align:middle line:84% If anybody hears a phrase or a line that 00:01:21.340 --> 00:01:23.710 align:middle line:84% would sound like a good title for the poem, let me know. 00:01:23.710 --> 00:01:27.450 align:middle line:90% 00:01:27.450 --> 00:01:30.090 align:middle line:84% "Early On this Decade's Light Smelled." 00:01:30.090 --> 00:01:33.300 align:middle line:90% 00:01:33.300 --> 00:01:38.940 align:middle line:84% "Early on this decade's light smelled like something burning. 00:01:38.940 --> 00:01:42.070 align:middle line:84% And now, of something smoldering. 00:01:42.070 --> 00:01:45.390 align:middle line:90% The end of the decade smells. 00:01:45.390 --> 00:01:51.600 align:middle line:84% The gray forever lingering of limbed smell exploded. 00:01:51.600 --> 00:01:55.230 align:middle line:84% Some bodies, many of our generation 00:01:55.230 --> 00:01:58.860 align:middle line:90% blown ever which way, gone. 00:01:58.860 --> 00:02:03.150 align:middle line:84% And choking on that smell we created another. 00:02:03.150 --> 00:02:09.810 align:middle line:84% The faint, exhausted, perfumed, puffs of ennui. 00:02:09.810 --> 00:02:15.390 align:middle line:84% A whole generation looking over its shoulder retromancing 00:02:15.390 --> 00:02:22.200 align:middle line:84% nothing, using the peripheral nothing, and forward-- 00:02:22.200 --> 00:02:23.760 align:middle line:90% the future. 00:02:23.760 --> 00:02:25.320 align:middle line:90% It's arrived. 00:02:25.320 --> 00:02:31.320 align:middle line:84% Forgetfulness, jobs, even some money, which we didn't want, 00:02:31.320 --> 00:02:33.000 align:middle line:90% but which we got. 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:36.570 align:middle line:90% Our actual share, actually. 00:02:36.570 --> 00:02:42.310 align:middle line:84% To purchase amnesia it doesn't take much. 00:02:42.310 --> 00:02:47.340 align:middle line:84% We could count the dead and they would be mostly men. 00:02:47.340 --> 00:02:50.770 align:middle line:84% And then we could count the women, whose turn 00:02:50.770 --> 00:02:54.900 align:middle line:90% it is now, mostly alive. 00:02:54.900 --> 00:02:59.730 align:middle line:84% Nailing down each day with an x of something 00:02:59.730 --> 00:03:04.590 align:middle line:84% done on a calendar creeping towards a new century." 00:03:04.590 --> 00:03:07.270 align:middle line:90% 00:03:07.270 --> 00:03:09.370 align:middle line:84% When I say I wrote this before they were talking 00:03:09.370 --> 00:03:12.670 align:middle line:84% about drafting women, I say whose turn it is now, 00:03:12.670 --> 00:03:14.330 align:middle line:90% I don't mean to get drafted. 00:03:14.330 --> 00:03:15.640 align:middle line:90% I mean to try to run things. 00:03:15.640 --> 00:03:22.780 align:middle line:90% 00:03:22.780 --> 00:03:23.890 align:middle line:90% "There Were Some Summers." 00:03:23.890 --> 00:03:26.980 align:middle line:90% 00:03:26.980 --> 00:03:30.640 align:middle line:84% "There were some summers like this-- 00:03:30.640 --> 00:03:34.810 align:middle line:84% the blue barn steaming, some cowbirds 00:03:34.810 --> 00:03:38.440 align:middle line:84% dozing with their heads on each other's shoulders, 00:03:38.440 --> 00:03:44.200 align:middle line:84% the electric fences humming low in the mid-August heat. 00:03:44.200 --> 00:03:51.580 align:middle line:84% So calm the slow sweat existing in half fictive memory. 00:03:51.580 --> 00:03:57.100 align:middle line:84% A boy wandering from house, to hayloft, to coop, 00:03:57.100 --> 00:04:01.060 align:middle line:84% past a dump where a saddle rots on a saw horse, 00:04:01.060 --> 00:04:05.140 align:middle line:84% through the still forest of a corn field, 00:04:05.140 --> 00:04:11.230 align:middle line:84% to a pasture talking to himself or to the bored, baleful 00:04:11.230 --> 00:04:17.829 align:middle line:84% Holsteins nodding beneath the round shade of catalpa, the boy 00:04:17.829 --> 00:04:21.670 align:middle line:84% walking his dumb trail toward the brook 00:04:21.670 --> 00:04:26.380 align:middle line:84% in a deep but mediocre gully, through skunk cabbage 00:04:26.380 --> 00:04:29.990 align:middle line:90% and popweed, down sandbanks-- 00:04:29.990 --> 00:04:33.040 align:middle line:84% a descending quarter acre Sahara-- 00:04:33.040 --> 00:04:36.640 align:middle line:84% the boy wandering, thinking nothing, 00:04:36.640 --> 00:04:43.660 align:middle line:84% thinking-- sweatbox, sweatbox, the boy moving toward a minnow 00:04:43.660 --> 00:04:48.610 align:middle line:84% whose slight beard tells the subtleties of the current, 00:04:48.610 --> 00:04:53.575 align:middle line:84% holding there, in water cold enough to break your ankles." 00:04:53.575 --> 00:05:01.500 align:middle line:90% 00:05:01.500 --> 00:05:04.980 align:middle line:84% Charlie Simic once said that the only time 00:05:04.980 --> 00:05:08.160 align:middle line:84% water tastes good to him is at a poetry reading. 00:05:08.160 --> 00:05:11.625 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:05:11.625 --> 00:05:14.595 align:middle line:90% 00:05:14.595 --> 00:05:15.750 align:middle line:90% And he's right. 00:05:15.750 --> 00:05:19.380 align:middle line:90% 00:05:19.380 --> 00:05:25.050 align:middle line:84% "Moon-Annoyed, Cognac's Ashen Thrill." 00:05:25.050 --> 00:05:31.470 align:middle line:84% "Moon-annoyed, cognac's ashen thrill diminishing, 00:05:31.470 --> 00:05:36.300 align:middle line:84% irritated by sunlight, decent sleep, good food, 00:05:36.300 --> 00:05:38.640 align:middle line:90% and piles of money. 00:05:38.640 --> 00:05:43.770 align:middle line:84% Nothing helps the heebie-jeebies when they start, like hunger 00:05:43.770 --> 00:05:47.730 align:middle line:84% revving up, when they begin their tossing cruise 00:05:47.730 --> 00:05:53.280 align:middle line:84% beneath the skin, hauling the spine erect with fear. 00:05:53.280 --> 00:05:54.540 align:middle line:90% Nothing. 00:05:54.540 --> 00:05:56.280 align:middle line:90% Nothing helps. 00:05:56.280 --> 00:05:57.750 align:middle line:90% What are the origins-- 00:05:57.750 --> 00:06:02.250 align:middle line:84% embryo, embryo, where are you going, what do you know?-- 00:06:02.250 --> 00:06:08.610 align:middle line:84% Nobody can say, or will, but it's got to do, you can bet, 00:06:08.610 --> 00:06:12.480 align:middle line:84% with death, which, some people will tell you, 00:06:12.480 --> 00:06:14.820 align:middle line:90% is a part of life. 00:06:14.820 --> 00:06:16.380 align:middle line:90% Right. 00:06:16.380 --> 00:06:20.770 align:middle line:90% Personally, I don't care. 00:06:20.770 --> 00:06:26.640 align:middle line:84% It's over you others I worry, why you worry. 00:06:26.640 --> 00:06:32.070 align:middle line:84% How can you fear what hardly equals the blank wash of rain 00:06:32.070 --> 00:06:35.010 align:middle line:84% on slate shingles, how can you fear 00:06:35.010 --> 00:06:39.600 align:middle line:84% what is not sleep, what is not quiet, 00:06:39.600 --> 00:06:45.360 align:middle line:84% what is sexless, what has no memory, what lacks imagination, 00:06:45.360 --> 00:06:46.515 align:middle line:90% what does not--?" 00:06:46.515 --> 00:06:50.610 align:middle line:90% 00:06:50.610 --> 00:06:52.650 align:middle line:84% "After a Few Whiffs of Another World." 00:06:52.650 --> 00:06:55.620 align:middle line:90% 00:06:55.620 --> 00:06:59.610 align:middle line:84% "After a few whiffs of another world 00:06:59.610 --> 00:07:03.750 align:middle line:84% he decided to stay with the stench of the present. 00:07:03.750 --> 00:07:07.620 align:middle line:84% Dumpster lids everywhere rising like cakes, 00:07:07.620 --> 00:07:12.120 align:middle line:84% garbage scows moving and long orderly lines 00:07:12.120 --> 00:07:14.760 align:middle line:90% across the harbor. 00:07:14.760 --> 00:07:19.140 align:middle line:84% The olfactory-- he loves it even when 00:07:19.140 --> 00:07:23.610 align:middle line:84% it wafts wracking all points of the compass. 00:07:23.610 --> 00:07:27.420 align:middle line:84% It's always invisible and takes its direction 00:07:27.420 --> 00:07:31.710 align:middle line:84% according to the whimsy of wind, or fans, 00:07:31.710 --> 00:07:34.500 align:middle line:90% or the waves of a hand. 00:07:34.500 --> 00:07:38.280 align:middle line:90% Cave dwellers knew it, and dogs. 00:07:38.280 --> 00:07:43.080 align:middle line:84% The bare smell of dirt on cabbage, 00:07:43.080 --> 00:07:46.320 align:middle line:90% the snow-on-your-arm smell. 00:07:46.320 --> 00:07:49.230 align:middle line:90% Even in the abstract-- 00:07:49.230 --> 00:07:53.190 align:middle line:84% fear-smell, like spit on a knifeblade. 00:07:53.190 --> 00:07:56.190 align:middle line:84% And what the worms inhale, and then 00:07:56.190 --> 00:08:02.580 align:middle line:84% the smell of dew on barbed wire, the sweet thick smell of sex, 00:08:02.580 --> 00:08:07.050 align:middle line:84% slick, our lungs giddy and pink with it. 00:08:07.050 --> 00:08:10.060 align:middle line:84% It's not the world which is good or bad 00:08:10.060 --> 00:08:13.800 align:middle line:84% and so we run our noses over everything. 00:08:13.800 --> 00:08:15.930 align:middle line:90% Even the dumb have this sense." 00:08:15.930 --> 00:08:20.170 align:middle line:90% 00:08:20.170 --> 00:08:23.130 align:middle line:90% "His Job is Honest and Simple." 00:08:23.130 --> 00:08:29.140 align:middle line:84% I used to have a job, I used to have this job this poem talks 00:08:29.140 --> 00:08:31.600 align:middle line:90% about. 00:08:31.600 --> 00:08:34.270 align:middle line:84% "His Job is Honest and Simple Keeping." 00:08:34.270 --> 00:08:40.150 align:middle line:84% "His job is honest and simple, keeping the forest tidy. 00:08:40.150 --> 00:08:45.910 align:middle line:84% He replaces, after repairing, the nests on their branches, 00:08:45.910 --> 00:08:51.910 align:middle line:84% he points every pine needle north, 00:08:51.910 --> 00:08:55.990 align:middle line:84% polishes the owl's stained perch, 00:08:55.990 --> 00:09:00.010 align:middle line:84% feather-dusts the entrance to the weasel's burrow, 00:09:00.010 --> 00:09:03.910 align:middle line:84% soft brushes each chipmunk-- the chinchilla of the forest 00:09:03.910 --> 00:09:05.080 align:middle line:90% banel-- 00:09:05.080 --> 00:09:11.830 align:middle line:84% buffs antlers, gives sympathy to ragweed, tries to convince, 00:09:11.830 --> 00:09:16.420 align:middle line:84% like a paternal and inept psychiatrist, the lowly garter 00:09:16.420 --> 00:09:19.270 align:middle line:84% snake that he should think of himself, as he parts 00:09:19.270 --> 00:09:23.110 align:middle line:84% the grass, as an actor parting the stage curtain 00:09:23.110 --> 00:09:26.080 align:middle line:90% to wild applause. 00:09:26.080 --> 00:09:31.660 align:middle line:84% Arranges in the clearing the great beams of light. 00:09:31.660 --> 00:09:33.250 align:middle line:90% This is his job. 00:09:33.250 --> 00:09:37.720 align:middle line:84% A day's, a week's, a life's calm, continuous, 00:09:37.720 --> 00:09:40.330 align:middle line:90% low-paying devotion. 00:09:40.330 --> 00:09:45.640 align:middle line:84% At dawn he makes a few sandwiches and goes to work. 00:09:45.640 --> 00:09:51.850 align:middle line:84% I love this, he thinks as he passes the wild watercress-- 00:09:51.850 --> 00:09:56.230 align:middle line:84% its green as stunning as surviving a plane crash-- 00:09:56.230 --> 00:09:59.080 align:middle line:84% in the small, inaccessible swamp." 00:09:59.080 --> 00:10:04.800 align:middle line:90% 00:10:04.800 --> 00:10:08.280 align:middle line:90% "It's the Little Towns I Like." 00:10:08.280 --> 00:10:12.180 align:middle line:84% "It's the little towns I like, with their little mills 00:10:12.180 --> 00:10:17.760 align:middle line:84% making ratchets and stanchions, elastic web, spindles, 00:10:17.760 --> 00:10:19.590 align:middle line:90% you name it. 00:10:19.590 --> 00:10:24.360 align:middle line:84% I like them in New England, America, particularly-- 00:10:24.360 --> 00:10:28.170 align:middle line:84% providing bad jobs good enough to live on, 00:10:28.170 --> 00:10:31.380 align:middle line:90% to live in families even. 00:10:31.380 --> 00:10:35.760 align:middle line:84% Kindergarten, church suppers, beach umbrellas. 00:10:35.760 --> 00:10:41.220 align:middle line:84% The towns are real, so fragile in their loneliness 00:10:41.220 --> 00:10:45.210 align:middle line:84% a flood could come along, and floods have, and cut them 00:10:45.210 --> 00:10:47.940 align:middle line:90% in two, in half. 00:10:47.940 --> 00:10:51.150 align:middle line:84% There is no mayor, the town council's 00:10:51.150 --> 00:10:55.380 align:middle line:84% not prepared for this, three of the four policemen 00:10:55.380 --> 00:10:57.810 align:middle line:90% are stranded on their roofs. 00:10:57.810 --> 00:11:00.720 align:middle line:90% And it doesn't stop raining. 00:11:00.720 --> 00:11:03.960 align:middle line:84% The mountain is so thick with water, parts of it 00:11:03.960 --> 00:11:06.840 align:middle line:90% just slide down on the heifers-- 00:11:06.840 --> 00:11:11.340 align:middle line:84% soggy, suicidal-- in the pastures below. 00:11:11.340 --> 00:11:14.490 align:middle line:84% It rains, it rains in these towns 00:11:14.490 --> 00:11:17.850 align:middle line:84% and because there's no other way, 00:11:17.850 --> 00:11:22.170 align:middle line:84% your father gets in a rowboat so he can go to work." 00:11:22.170 --> 00:11:28.120 align:middle line:90% 00:11:28.120 --> 00:11:30.715 align:middle line:84% "A Lit Match Was Dropped in a Saucer." 00:11:30.715 --> 00:11:33.520 align:middle line:90% 00:11:33.520 --> 00:11:38.860 align:middle line:84% "A lit match is dropped in a saucer of milk. 00:11:38.860 --> 00:11:42.560 align:middle line:84% The day might end this way or begin. 00:11:42.560 --> 00:11:46.390 align:middle line:84% You might or might not like the sound, 00:11:46.390 --> 00:11:51.820 align:middle line:84% like an ant snapping awake, like stale bread dipped in water, 00:11:51.820 --> 00:11:54.430 align:middle line:90% and cut in fear. 00:11:54.430 --> 00:11:59.380 align:middle line:84% It's bad etiquette, you know, to put a match out in a saucer, 00:11:59.380 --> 00:12:02.080 align:middle line:90% particularly of milk. 00:12:02.080 --> 00:12:04.810 align:middle line:84% It is too pure, milk, and should not 00:12:04.810 --> 00:12:09.130 align:middle line:84% be burned in this or any other way. 00:12:09.130 --> 00:12:10.900 align:middle line:90% The smell? 00:12:10.900 --> 00:12:15.490 align:middle line:84% Imagine the after burn of a vulture dropping down 00:12:15.490 --> 00:12:17.410 align:middle line:90% on a corpse. 00:12:17.410 --> 00:12:22.330 align:middle line:84% Sensory, sensory we sit at a table with matches, 00:12:22.330 --> 00:12:28.480 align:middle line:84% with milk, our brains as powerful and dull as pickaxes, 00:12:28.480 --> 00:12:31.840 align:middle line:84% the bright morning outside raging. 00:12:31.840 --> 00:12:36.040 align:middle line:84% We sit inventing some work to forgive us, 00:12:36.040 --> 00:12:41.530 align:middle line:84% or a god, who, as everyone knows, is not in the sky 00:12:41.530 --> 00:12:43.120 align:middle line:90% but inside us. 00:12:43.120 --> 00:12:48.190 align:middle line:84% Look, those are his eyes pushing up like half moons 00:12:48.190 --> 00:12:51.380 align:middle line:84% beneath your own two blind thumbnails." 00:12:51.380 --> 00:12:59.740 align:middle line:90% 00:12:59.740 --> 00:13:01.750 align:middle line:90% "You Go to School." 00:13:01.750 --> 00:13:04.360 align:middle line:84% I'm thinking of here, my own public school 00:13:04.360 --> 00:13:08.140 align:middle line:84% education in a small town in Massachusetts 00:13:08.140 --> 00:13:09.415 align:middle line:90% in the 50s and 60s. 00:13:09.415 --> 00:13:13.750 align:middle line:90% 00:13:13.750 --> 00:13:16.270 align:middle line:90% "You Go to School to Learn." 00:13:16.270 --> 00:13:20.200 align:middle line:84% "You go to school to learn to read and add, 00:13:20.200 --> 00:13:22.680 align:middle line:90% to someday make some money. 00:13:22.680 --> 00:13:25.210 align:middle line:90% It-- money-- makes sense. 00:13:25.210 --> 00:13:29.080 align:middle line:84% You need a better tractor, an addition to the gameroom, 00:13:29.080 --> 00:13:33.020 align:middle line:84% you prefer to buy your beancurd by the barrel. 00:13:33.020 --> 00:13:36.130 align:middle line:84% There's no other way to get the goods you need. 00:13:36.130 --> 00:13:40.000 align:middle line:84% Besides, it keeps people busy working-- 00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:41.250 align:middle line:90% for it. 00:13:41.250 --> 00:13:45.220 align:middle line:84% It's sensible and, therefore, you go to school to learn, 00:13:45.220 --> 00:13:48.280 align:middle line:84% and the teacher, having learned, gets paid to teach you, 00:13:48.280 --> 00:13:49.910 align:middle line:90% how to get it. 00:13:49.910 --> 00:13:51.400 align:middle line:90% Fine. 00:13:51.400 --> 00:13:55.660 align:middle line:84% But-- you're taught away from poetry 00:13:55.660 --> 00:13:58.600 align:middle line:84% or, say, dancing, "that's nice, dear, 00:13:58.600 --> 00:14:00.526 align:middle line:90% but there's no dough in it." 00:14:00.526 --> 00:14:02.470 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:14:02.470 --> 00:14:05.140 align:middle line:90% No poem ever bought a hamburger, 00:14:05.140 --> 00:14:06.550 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:14:06.550 --> 00:14:07.465 align:middle line:90% Or not too many. 00:14:07.465 --> 00:14:10.180 align:middle line:90% 00:14:10.180 --> 00:14:13.420 align:middle line:84% It's true, and so, every morning-- 00:14:13.420 --> 00:14:18.670 align:middle line:84% it's still dark-- you see them, the children, like angels 00:14:18.670 --> 00:14:22.810 align:middle line:84% being marched off to execution, or banks. 00:14:22.810 --> 00:14:26.470 align:middle line:84% Their bodies luminous in the headlights. 00:14:26.470 --> 00:14:27.685 align:middle line:90% Going to school." 00:14:27.685 --> 00:14:30.270 align:middle line:90% 00:14:30.270 --> 00:14:33.521 align:middle line:84% Our main cause, of course, has nothing to do with it. 00:14:33.521 --> 00:14:36.330 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:14:36.330 --> 00:14:37.560 align:middle line:90% 00:14:37.560 --> 00:14:40.430 align:middle line:90% Three more sections. 00:14:40.430 --> 00:14:42.025 align:middle line:84% This is probably the most recent. 00:14:42.025 --> 00:14:44.680 align:middle line:90% 00:14:44.680 --> 00:14:48.328 align:middle line:84% I worked on this poem for a solid year, 00:14:48.328 --> 00:14:49.870 align:middle line:84% and this is probably the most recent. 00:14:49.870 --> 00:14:57.910 align:middle line:84% And it's touched off by the Iranian thing and thoughts 00:14:57.910 --> 00:15:01.450 align:middle line:84% of the draft being reinstated, et cetera, thinking 00:15:01.450 --> 00:15:05.980 align:middle line:84% about the possibility of our country being at war again, 00:15:05.980 --> 00:15:09.070 align:middle line:84% which, for those of you, and I'm sure most of you do it, 00:15:09.070 --> 00:15:13.990 align:middle line:84% only a few years ago we were involved in war. 00:15:13.990 --> 00:15:18.610 align:middle line:84% "If You Snap the Aerial Photographs." 00:15:18.610 --> 00:15:22.840 align:middle line:84% "If you snap the aerial photographs from the bomber's 00:15:22.840 --> 00:15:26.230 align:middle line:84% belly and later, you develop them, 00:15:26.230 --> 00:15:30.250 align:middle line:84% they might look like cheese or the only part 00:15:30.250 --> 00:15:33.430 align:middle line:90% of a doughnut you remember. 00:15:33.430 --> 00:15:38.770 align:middle line:84% Or maybe, in the red light or in the fatigue of horror, 00:15:38.770 --> 00:15:42.730 align:middle line:84% like a green on a golf course miraculously 00:15:42.730 --> 00:15:45.430 align:middle line:90% riddled with holes. 00:15:45.430 --> 00:15:48.280 align:middle line:84% The rubble around the rim of each crater 00:15:48.280 --> 00:15:52.840 align:middle line:84% is finer than the sand around an ant's hole, 00:15:52.840 --> 00:15:56.080 align:middle line:90% or so it appears from here. 00:15:56.080 --> 00:16:01.360 align:middle line:84% And the real earth within the parameters 00:16:01.360 --> 00:16:05.800 align:middle line:84% of this particular grid, a few water buffalo 00:16:05.800 --> 00:16:11.260 align:middle line:84% stumble around, deaf and dumber than ever, 00:16:11.260 --> 00:16:13.810 align:middle line:90% bleeding from their ears. 00:16:13.810 --> 00:16:15.880 align:middle line:90% It's not nice. 00:16:15.880 --> 00:16:20.290 align:middle line:84% The chickens hang upside down on their roosts, 00:16:20.290 --> 00:16:24.340 align:middle line:84% and you see, even if a crop survives, 00:16:24.340 --> 00:16:26.830 align:middle line:84% the roots and the earth around them 00:16:26.830 --> 00:16:32.140 align:middle line:84% is so shocked everything grows trembling, or not at all. 00:16:32.140 --> 00:16:38.080 align:middle line:84% Nothing good will come of this art, this photography. 00:16:38.080 --> 00:16:41.770 align:middle line:84% And, it might be added, when they explode, 00:16:41.770 --> 00:16:43.060 align:middle line:90% bombs kill humans." 00:16:43.060 --> 00:16:48.960 align:middle line:90% 00:16:48.960 --> 00:16:52.365 align:middle line:84% "Like a Wide Anvil from the Moon the Light." 00:16:52.365 --> 00:16:55.970 align:middle line:90% 00:16:55.970 --> 00:17:02.570 align:middle line:84% "Like a wide anvil from the moon the light on the cold radiator 00:17:02.570 --> 00:17:08.240 align:middle line:84% and all the windows in a row along the spine close, 00:17:08.240 --> 00:17:11.450 align:middle line:90% zeros winding tight. 00:17:11.450 --> 00:17:13.220 align:middle line:84% And to make the rattlesnakes feel 00:17:13.220 --> 00:17:16.970 align:middle line:90% at home, a private cactus fern. 00:17:16.970 --> 00:17:21.560 align:middle line:84% There's not an eke's chance of getting out of here. 00:17:21.560 --> 00:17:27.740 align:middle line:84% Some apples, bruised, mute, and nailed back to their branches, 00:17:27.740 --> 00:17:33.530 align:middle line:84% and the south wind's low, hot ash cruises through a crook 00:17:33.530 --> 00:17:36.410 align:middle line:90% in the apple tree's trunk. 00:17:36.410 --> 00:17:39.920 align:middle line:84% The dirt, not known for its tenderness, 00:17:39.920 --> 00:17:46.670 align:middle line:84% on its knees somewhat, and one munificent ant carries a crumb 00:17:46.670 --> 00:17:48.770 align:middle line:90% to the crumbless. 00:17:48.770 --> 00:17:52.580 align:middle line:90% Every pond on Earth agrees. 00:17:52.580 --> 00:17:56.900 align:middle line:84% They are tired of being dragged, all those hooks, 00:17:56.900 --> 00:17:59.510 align:middle line:90% for drowned children. 00:17:59.510 --> 00:18:05.480 align:middle line:84% All this beneath the ceaseless lineage of comets. 00:18:05.480 --> 00:18:09.800 align:middle line:84% Books help a little, grown, soaked, 00:18:09.800 --> 00:18:13.520 align:middle line:90% one broken et cetera, thief. 00:18:13.520 --> 00:18:16.970 align:middle line:84% Tree surgeons lost above tree lines, 00:18:16.970 --> 00:18:24.260 align:middle line:84% chasmed sidewalks, a hat full of blanks, sore gut four. 00:18:24.260 --> 00:18:30.140 align:middle line:84% Yes-- it does, it does feel exactly fine, 00:18:30.140 --> 00:18:34.040 align:middle line:84% crawling ashore, emptying the boots of water. 00:18:34.040 --> 00:18:39.525 align:middle line:84% And frankly, here's to the clouds the color of bone. 00:18:39.525 --> 00:18:43.940 align:middle line:84% Here's to the indecipherable path home. 00:18:43.940 --> 00:18:49.390 align:middle line:84% Here's to the worms wet in the loam." 00:18:49.390 --> 00:18:50.050 align:middle line:90% Last poem. 00:18:50.050 --> 00:18:53.650 align:middle line:90% 00:18:53.650 --> 00:18:56.350 align:middle line:84% "Beneath the Apple Branches Bent Dumbly." 00:18:56.350 --> 00:18:57.940 align:middle line:90% I just noticed I use the word-- 00:18:57.940 --> 00:19:01.630 align:middle line:84% I have about 14 ants in my poems. 00:19:01.630 --> 00:19:06.310 align:middle line:84% I must have an obsession with those little ants. 00:19:06.310 --> 00:19:10.660 align:middle line:84% "Beneath the Apple Branches Bent Dumbly." 00:19:10.660 --> 00:19:14.620 align:middle line:84% "Beneath the apple branches bent dumbly 00:19:14.620 --> 00:19:17.650 align:middle line:84% with the blank weight of their blossoms, 00:19:17.650 --> 00:19:22.240 align:middle line:84% the grass in me completely alive with one 00:19:22.240 --> 00:19:25.570 align:middle line:84% thud like a shin struck with an ax. 00:19:25.570 --> 00:19:29.080 align:middle line:90% What is the same each summer? 00:19:29.080 --> 00:19:33.190 align:middle line:84% I know that the ring of cold slung through my chest 00:19:33.190 --> 00:19:38.620 align:middle line:84% grows colder, that the mountain's lowly crags grow 00:19:38.620 --> 00:19:41.650 align:middle line:90% imperceptibly rounder. 00:19:41.650 --> 00:19:45.220 align:middle line:90% But what is the same? 00:19:45.220 --> 00:19:48.640 align:middle line:84% Not the driveway littered, in a few months, 00:19:48.640 --> 00:19:53.110 align:middle line:84% with crushed apples, aswarm with yellow jackets, 00:19:53.110 --> 00:19:55.690 align:middle line:90% those cruel insects. 00:19:55.690 --> 00:19:59.110 align:middle line:84% Not the hackneyed rock garden, its pool 00:19:59.110 --> 00:20:02.410 align:middle line:84% for goldfish long filled in with dirt, 00:20:02.410 --> 00:20:05.950 align:middle line:90% and a few ill bred petunias. 00:20:05.950 --> 00:20:10.540 align:middle line:84% Not the heat bugs and their high whine. 00:20:10.540 --> 00:20:13.630 align:middle line:90% What is the same? 00:20:13.630 --> 00:20:20.200 align:middle line:84% Only the incomparable chins of horses, only a 00:20:20.200 --> 00:20:27.550 align:middle line:84% desire to place the mural of a pond horizontal, as it belongs. 00:20:27.550 --> 00:20:32.110 align:middle line:84% Only the long haul in the linear world. 00:20:32.110 --> 00:20:34.240 align:middle line:90% Ongoing." 00:20:34.240 --> 00:20:35.259 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:20:35.259 --> 00:20:38.682 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:20:38.682 --> 00:20:55.800 align:middle line:90% 00:20:55.800 --> 00:20:57.650 align:middle line:90% Thank you.