WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.730 align:middle line:84% Since I mentioned Adam and Eve in the last poem, 00:00:02.730 --> 00:00:03.810 align:middle line:90% I'll read another poem. 00:00:03.810 --> 00:00:06.917 align:middle line:84% This poem is done with the Dada method 00:00:06.917 --> 00:00:08.250 align:middle line:90% that I was talking about before. 00:00:08.250 --> 00:00:12.230 align:middle line:90% 00:00:12.230 --> 00:00:13.950 align:middle line:90% It's called "Tender Acre." 00:00:13.950 --> 00:00:19.150 align:middle line:90% 00:00:19.150 --> 00:00:21.940 align:middle line:84% As you slept, the pulse flickering on your neck 00:00:21.940 --> 00:00:25.810 align:middle line:84% like a trick of light, I thought how earlier, 00:00:25.810 --> 00:00:29.890 align:middle line:84% beside the sleeping shape, Adam labored that first night 00:00:29.890 --> 00:00:32.320 align:middle line:84% to stay awake, afraid she'd vanish 00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:35.320 align:middle line:90% in the morning with the moon. 00:00:35.320 --> 00:00:37.900 align:middle line:84% Out of the Earth sprang the planet's blurred, 00:00:37.900 --> 00:00:40.180 align:middle line:90% unpredictable life. 00:00:40.180 --> 00:00:42.400 align:middle line:90% The pulse of the near hill-- 00:00:42.400 --> 00:00:46.660 align:middle line:84% or was it the shudder he was born with? --rocked him. 00:00:46.660 --> 00:00:49.840 align:middle line:84% The animals also, who yesterday brushed like wind 00:00:49.840 --> 00:00:53.920 align:middle line:84% against his body, were now given form. 00:00:53.920 --> 00:00:57.730 align:middle line:84% On a branch beneath a sheer canopy of leaves, 00:00:57.730 --> 00:01:01.720 align:middle line:84% a yard-long icicle began to melt. It hung, 00:01:01.720 --> 00:01:05.530 align:middle line:84% glistening and patient, while a zipper of vertebrae 00:01:05.530 --> 00:01:08.530 align:middle line:84% inched all the way down its back. 00:01:08.530 --> 00:01:12.730 align:middle line:84% Then, bands of bargello stitched the skin. 00:01:12.730 --> 00:01:18.550 align:middle line:84% Tiny sawtooth flames of dull gold and rust, rust and gold. 00:01:18.550 --> 00:01:22.270 align:middle line:90% This he named snake. 00:01:22.270 --> 00:01:24.820 align:middle line:84% On the topmost branch of the tree, 00:01:24.820 --> 00:01:28.180 align:middle line:84% a bird bristled with little white thorns. 00:01:28.180 --> 00:01:31.570 align:middle line:84% Then, each thorn fanned out like a palm frond, 00:01:31.570 --> 00:01:34.510 align:middle line:90% and the bird flew away. 00:01:34.510 --> 00:01:37.150 align:middle line:84% All day Adam watched and listened, 00:01:37.150 --> 00:01:40.240 align:middle line:84% but he couldn't name his loneliness. 00:01:40.240 --> 00:01:46.720 align:middle line:84% The long oh of sorrow, the ooh of hallelujah. 00:01:46.720 --> 00:01:50.290 align:middle line:84% 11 curved knife blades of his rib cage, 00:01:50.290 --> 00:01:53.200 align:middle line:84% and the 12th that cut his flesh without injury 00:01:53.200 --> 00:02:00.220 align:middle line:84% he accepted, as he accepts these other gifts placed before him. 00:02:00.220 --> 00:02:02.710 align:middle line:84% All night Adam watched and listened 00:02:02.710 --> 00:02:08.080 align:middle line:84% and memorized her human shape so that later, were she not there, 00:02:08.080 --> 00:02:12.760 align:middle line:84% his memory could reconstruct that absent body from the air 00:02:12.760 --> 00:02:16.960 align:middle line:84% and wrench him from his solitude before the tender acre 00:02:16.960 --> 00:02:18.130 align:middle line:90% cradles her. 00:02:18.130 --> 00:02:21.510 align:middle line:90% 00:02:21.510 --> 00:02:23.940 align:middle line:84% Those poems are a lot denser than the ones 00:02:23.940 --> 00:02:26.963 align:middle line:90% that I start off with an idea. 00:02:26.963 --> 00:02:28.380 align:middle line:84% One thing that happened with them, 00:02:28.380 --> 00:02:30.150 align:middle line:84% I started writing in a much longer line, 00:02:30.150 --> 00:02:34.310 align:middle line:84% much more complicated, and they're harder to read too.