WEBVTT

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Let's see, I'm going to read
now a really intense passage.

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[CHUCKLE] But I've
never read, I and I'm

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going to take the
microphone out,

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I think it would be
interesting to try that.

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I've never read
this aloud, so it's

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going to be kind of
interesting to read it aloud.

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I do get to say in
the course of Ceaser,

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both the father and the
son die, and everybody

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assumes that the following
scene is the son dying.

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But in fact, I am
here to tell you

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I wrote it very carefully
so that you don't

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know who's dying,
and it could be

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either the father or the son.

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The title of the chapter--

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it's a very short chapter--

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it's called, "Where
Do We Come From, What

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are We, Where are We Going?"

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Which is my translation of the
title of Gagarin's Fabulous

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Woodcut which fills a whole wall
in the Boston Museum of Fine

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Arts, and if you're
ever in Boston

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you should certainly
seek it out.

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It has an older
woman to one side,

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a couple with a
child in the middle,

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and a young child to one
side-- to the other side,

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and it's called, "Where do
we come from, what are we,

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where are we going"

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The choices are these, breathe
and cough, or don't breathe.

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So he breathes and coughs
and with each cough

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catapults himself into an
altered state of being.

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The pain transports
him beyond pain

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into some parallel universe
where the knowledge of pain

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is impossible.

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Because pain itself forms
the substance and being

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of existence.

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His consciousness
shrinks to a white dwarf

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of a star concentrate of pain,
brilliant pointed star turning

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in the darkness of his chest.

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The clarity and
purity of this feeling

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he has never before
known, it is the closest

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he has come to ecstasy.

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Only anger is keeping him
alive and his family's

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faces he sees his
agony reflected

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as their wholly comprehensible
wish that he hang it up, turn

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it in, and kick the
bucket, call it quits.

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What they don't understand
is that he hangs on

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so as to see their
pain, partly from love.

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How can he let go this dearness
earned so dearly, partly

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from sheer onrightness.

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They are distressed, sorrowful,
they pity his incontinence

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in pain, but they
are not here, they

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are in that other world,
the world of the not sick,

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whose horizons extend
beyond the here and now.

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He's hanging on and
hanging on, and then he

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sees miss Camilla who
totters in one afternoon.

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She is dressed in
white, and at first he

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mistakes her for the
nurse who visits him

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on every shift at the hospital.

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He is barely conscious as
she goes through the routine.

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It's Camilla, Camilla
Perkins, can you hear me?

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Squeeze my hand.

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He retreats into his
private universe of pain.

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He drifts there until
he hears her voice

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from some far and
cavernous place.

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Forgive, he hears her
saying more than once,

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a pesky breathing at his ear.

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He would raise his hand to
brush it away, forgive what?

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What can it matter now?

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But he cannot control his hand,
it drifts off the bed and he is

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following it to where it is
going until he is called back

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to consciousness by
her sour old breath.

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Smell, his nose is as sharp,
maybe sharper than ever.

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She is leaning over him her eyes
bulging, her eyebrows forming

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half moon arcs above his own.

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Let go, she, whispers you
have earned your death.

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Who could have imagined this
happening to him, to anybody.

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He has seen many deaths,
and still this is true.

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He shakes his head as
best he can, no, no.

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She holds up a small
brass corner chest,

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its leather straps dangling.

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I've come to take
your heart, she says.

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He raises his eyebrows, I'm
taking your heart, she repeats.

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Take my heart, he says
loud crazy old maid,

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friend and lover, mother
of sorrows, angel of death.

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As he speaks he breathes, as
he breathes he coughs, as he

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coughs his lungs rack and
swell until his chest bursts,

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and his breastbone splits
cleanly down the middle.

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He is splitting
wood, plunging an axe

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into a thick straight
poplar log that

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divides neatly into halves.

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A few splinters, a gush
of blood from the woods

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pale yellow heart.

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He is gutting dear the
swift, sharp, stroke

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he learned from his father,
and that his father learned

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from the father before
him, and on back

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to whenever there
were knives to wield,

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wherever there were
fathers to teach.

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And the quick spurt
of blood in his

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thought when he first
made this cut years ago.

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Who could have imagined that
a single animal, any animal,

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holds this much blood.

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He is covered with
his own blood,

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until he smells
his flesh burning,

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and the blood
stops, and his chest

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opens wider of its own accord.

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And lifting itself from
his chest, his heart,

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ringed with thorns,
and encircled in flame,

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and rising to hover above
his dissected chest,

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until miss Camilla
holds out her strong box

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and he yields his heart into
her quivering hands that

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guided into this casket of gold,
ciborium of leather and brass.

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His chest knits itself together.

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The pain is as
transcendent as ever,

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but he breathes easier now
that his swollen heart is not

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crowding his fluid filled lungs.

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Now that his heart is
in safe keeping, away

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from these doctors,
this hospital.

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Away even from his blood family.

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He knows what she will do,
she will take his heart

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and place it in the
wood shop stove, which

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she will fire using the badly
glued block of wood from which

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he was to learn or teach.

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And all of him that is of any
count will rise to the clouds

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to join all that
has gone before.

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And when the stove
is cooled, she

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will shovel the ashes
into her strong box

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and drop the whole from
the palate forward bridge,

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so that they may join
all that remains behind.

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This is right and just,
a fitting and proper end

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for the joy and grief,
evanescence and futility

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of human endeavor.

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That was the mid-1980s, that
was a pretty intense period

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of time.

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