WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.750 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.750 --> 00:00:05.410 align:middle line:84% Welcome to the last reading of this year's series. 00:00:05.410 --> 00:00:08.470 align:middle line:84% I hope all of you can come to the Terrace Room 00:00:08.470 --> 00:00:11.365 align:middle line:84% at the Student Union to meet Mr. Logan following the reading. 00:00:11.365 --> 00:00:14.180 align:middle line:90% 00:00:14.180 --> 00:00:18.290 align:middle line:84% I can't bear not to have at least one announcement. 00:00:18.290 --> 00:00:22.910 align:middle line:84% So I would like to remind you that the Poetry Center 00:00:22.910 --> 00:00:25.800 align:middle line:84% collection is not a circulating collection. 00:00:25.800 --> 00:00:29.510 align:middle line:84% So if any of the books made their way to your house, 00:00:29.510 --> 00:00:31.820 align:middle line:90% would you bring them back? 00:00:31.820 --> 00:00:36.500 align:middle line:84% Just stick them in the mailbox and we won't look. 00:00:36.500 --> 00:00:39.560 align:middle line:84% John Logan has come to us from Hawaii. 00:00:39.560 --> 00:00:41.780 align:middle line:84% He will be soon returning to Buffalo, 00:00:41.780 --> 00:00:45.120 align:middle line:90% where he is poet in residence. 00:00:45.120 --> 00:00:47.270 align:middle line:84% His most recent publication is a Poem 00:00:47.270 --> 00:00:50.283 align:middle line:84% in Progress published by the Dryad Press which he 00:00:50.283 --> 00:00:51.575 align:middle line:90% will be reading for us tonight. 00:00:51.575 --> 00:00:54.310 align:middle line:90% 00:00:54.310 --> 00:00:58.600 align:middle line:84% I'd like to read a quote from James Dickey, 00:00:58.600 --> 00:01:01.450 align:middle line:84% one closes Logan's books thinking, 00:01:01.450 --> 00:01:05.980 align:middle line:84% yes, this is what poetry can sometimes do, 00:01:05.980 --> 00:01:09.130 align:middle line:84% this is what poetry can sometimes be. 00:01:09.130 --> 00:01:12.774 align:middle line:84% And I know you'll enjoy hearing John Logan's poetry. 00:01:12.774 --> 00:01:16.183 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:01:16.183 --> 00:01:23.980 align:middle line:90% 00:01:23.980 --> 00:01:26.530 align:middle line:84% Thank you very much Mrs. Shelton. 00:01:26.530 --> 00:01:29.830 align:middle line:84% I'm delighted that I was invited here. 00:01:29.830 --> 00:01:31.330 align:middle line:90% I've not been to Tucson before. 00:01:31.330 --> 00:01:34.343 align:middle line:84% I spent some time in Albuquerque, 00:01:34.343 --> 00:01:36.010 align:middle line:84% but I think I've only flown through here 00:01:36.010 --> 00:01:39.250 align:middle line:84% and it's a very pleasant experience 00:01:39.250 --> 00:01:42.400 align:middle line:90% to spend some time here. 00:01:42.400 --> 00:01:45.730 align:middle line:84% I'm going to divide the reading into two 00:01:45.730 --> 00:01:51.040 align:middle line:84% parts with a brief intermission in-between. 00:01:51.040 --> 00:01:55.270 align:middle line:84% Lewis mentioned that I just published 00:01:55.270 --> 00:01:56.800 align:middle line:90% a book called Poem in Progress. 00:01:56.800 --> 00:02:00.100 align:middle line:90% It's a book length poem. 00:02:00.100 --> 00:02:02.350 align:middle line:84% When I say book length, I don't mean 00:02:02.350 --> 00:02:05.890 align:middle line:84% the size of Cummings collected poems or anything like that. 00:02:05.890 --> 00:02:09.070 align:middle line:84% It's in eight sections and will take me a little over half 00:02:09.070 --> 00:02:11.595 align:middle line:90% an hour to read. 00:02:11.595 --> 00:02:12.970 align:middle line:84% In the first part of the reading, 00:02:12.970 --> 00:02:21.430 align:middle line:84% I want read a couple of poems I was asked to do and then 00:02:21.430 --> 00:02:23.380 align:middle line:90% get into newer things. 00:02:23.380 --> 00:02:26.560 align:middle line:84% You constantly feel somewhat more in touch, 00:02:26.560 --> 00:02:31.270 align:middle line:84% I think, with the work which is closer. 00:02:31.270 --> 00:02:33.520 align:middle line:84% And so that's what I would like to do, 00:02:33.520 --> 00:02:36.620 align:middle line:90% is to share more recent things. 00:02:36.620 --> 00:02:38.350 align:middle line:84% But first, I want to read an older poem 00:02:38.350 --> 00:02:42.160 align:middle line:84% from the Spring of the Thief, which I talked about 00:02:42.160 --> 00:02:43.750 align:middle line:84% and most of you were in this class 00:02:43.750 --> 00:02:50.830 align:middle line:84% today in which I was asked to read tonight by Doug Canfield. 00:02:50.830 --> 00:02:53.290 align:middle line:84% It's called "On Reading Camus in Early March." 00:02:53.290 --> 00:03:00.560 align:middle line:90% 00:03:00.560 --> 00:03:07.490 align:middle line:84% There's an epigraph to the poem from Connolly's writing. 00:03:07.490 --> 00:03:13.310 align:middle line:84% I discovered inside myself, even in the very midst of winter 00:03:13.310 --> 00:03:21.750 align:middle line:84% and invincible summer that boy in the red coat packing snow 00:03:21.750 --> 00:03:26.700 align:middle line:84% mixes in my mind was the obscure taste for beauty 00:03:26.700 --> 00:03:29.970 align:middle line:90% Connolly's writing stirs. 00:03:29.970 --> 00:03:32.850 align:middle line:84% I don't say the beauty of the boy 00:03:32.850 --> 00:03:36.570 align:middle line:84% open only through his naked face, 00:03:36.570 --> 00:03:42.660 align:middle line:84% only his eyes drawing the full stores of his emerging life 00:03:42.660 --> 00:03:48.360 align:middle line:84% that seemed to route deeply back toward the dead. 00:03:48.360 --> 00:03:53.760 align:middle line:84% See how the boy stands foot loose in the snow 00:03:53.760 --> 00:04:01.140 align:middle line:84% like some smashed piece of Italian stone, not that 00:04:01.140 --> 00:04:06.900 align:middle line:84% but what he does to the cold pure seed or sand 00:04:06.900 --> 00:04:09.300 align:middle line:90% to his muffled hand. 00:04:09.300 --> 00:04:13.800 align:middle line:84% How he brings the midas touch of art. 00:04:13.800 --> 00:04:21.420 align:middle line:84% I don't care how crude he seems to mold, not sad or old, 00:04:21.420 --> 00:04:29.490 align:middle line:84% not adults, the boy has no more need of art than asaint. 00:04:29.490 --> 00:04:33.630 align:middle line:84% And he throws against a wall shattering 00:04:33.630 --> 00:04:41.250 align:middle line:84% what his hand could form as I feel the older, more yearning 00:04:41.250 --> 00:04:42.880 align:middle line:90% child's alarm. 00:04:42.880 --> 00:04:47.740 align:middle line:90% 00:04:47.740 --> 00:04:53.020 align:middle line:84% Then I have a poem called, "54 or 5 Towns," which I talked 00:04:53.020 --> 00:04:54.550 align:middle line:90% about in a couple of classes. 00:04:54.550 --> 00:05:00.490 align:middle line:84% But I have not read and I was asked to read it. 00:05:00.490 --> 00:05:03.390 align:middle line:90% And I'm glad to do that. 00:05:03.390 --> 00:05:07.950 align:middle line:84% I should mention to you that the poem talks 00:05:07.950 --> 00:05:12.210 align:middle line:84% about a visit to William Carlos Williams, who 00:05:12.210 --> 00:05:17.940 align:middle line:84% lived in Rutherford New York who since has died. 00:05:17.940 --> 00:05:24.130 align:middle line:84% But it also speaks about Paul Blackburn who has also 00:05:24.130 --> 00:05:27.940 align:middle line:84% since died, though he was much younger than Williams 00:05:27.940 --> 00:05:30.400 align:middle line:84% but he died of cancer about three years ago. 00:05:30.400 --> 00:05:40.200 align:middle line:90% 00:05:40.200 --> 00:05:42.690 align:middle line:84% I dedicate this poem to James Wright who at the time 00:05:42.690 --> 00:05:44.700 align:middle line:90% I wrote that I had never met. 00:05:44.700 --> 00:05:48.357 align:middle line:84% And he was in the hospital badly off. 00:05:48.357 --> 00:05:50.190 align:middle line:84% I sent it to him because we could correspond 00:05:50.190 --> 00:05:51.815 align:middle line:84% and he said that he liked it very much. 00:05:51.815 --> 00:05:55.350 align:middle line:90% So I gave it to him. 00:05:55.350 --> 00:06:00.600 align:middle line:84% You find the poem dated a reference to the Capital 00:06:00.600 --> 00:06:05.250 align:middle line:84% Viscount Airlines at the end would be one way of dating it. 00:06:05.250 --> 00:06:12.380 align:middle line:84% That airline has for a long time merged with various others. 00:06:12.380 --> 00:06:16.780 align:middle line:84% I don't know where it's trace finally ended up. 00:06:16.780 --> 00:06:21.700 align:middle line:84% But also Williams was alive when I had visited him 00:06:21.700 --> 00:06:24.040 align:middle line:90% and when he wrote the poem. 00:06:24.040 --> 00:06:28.120 align:middle line:84% Before he died, he was working on his posthumous book composed 00:06:28.120 --> 00:06:29.750 align:middle line:90% by Bruegel. 00:06:29.750 --> 00:06:33.670 align:middle line:84% A poem's based on paintings by Bruegel. 00:06:33.670 --> 00:06:37.450 align:middle line:84% He had had a stroke and wasn't able to read them, 00:06:37.450 --> 00:06:39.100 align:middle line:90% had never heard them. 00:06:39.100 --> 00:06:42.250 align:middle line:84% So we read them to him for the first time, 00:06:42.250 --> 00:06:43.840 align:middle line:90% but I changed that in the poem. 00:06:43.840 --> 00:06:45.820 align:middle line:84% One of the great things about being a poet 00:06:45.820 --> 00:06:50.230 align:middle line:84% is that you don't have to tell it the way it is, instead 00:06:50.230 --> 00:06:52.960 align:middle line:90% you tell it the way it is. 00:06:52.960 --> 00:06:55.840 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:06:55.840 --> 00:06:59.200 align:middle line:90% 00:06:59.200 --> 00:07:03.580 align:middle line:84% The gold colored skin of my Lebanese friends, 00:07:03.580 --> 00:07:09.580 align:middle line:84% their deep lightless eyes, the serene inner careful balance 00:07:09.580 --> 00:07:17.900 align:middle line:84% they share, the conjugal smile of either for either, 00:07:17.900 --> 00:07:20.660 align:middle line:84% this belly-chewing, shoe-soaking, factory, 00:07:20.660 --> 00:07:26.120 align:middle line:84% dug up hill-smothering Pittsburgh weather, 00:07:26.120 --> 00:07:32.420 align:middle line:84% I wait for a cab in the smart mahogany lobby of the seminary. 00:07:32.420 --> 00:07:38.050 align:middle line:84% The marble Pieta is flanked around with fake fern. 00:07:38.050 --> 00:07:43.000 align:middle line:84% She cherishes her dead son stretched along her womb, 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:46.390 align:middle line:90% he triple across. 00:07:46.390 --> 00:07:51.580 align:middle line:90% A small slipper priest pads up. 00:07:51.580 --> 00:07:53.620 align:middle line:90% Who you seek, my son. 00:07:53.620 --> 00:07:56.440 align:middle line:90% 00:07:56.440 --> 00:08:03.700 align:middle line:84% Father, I've come in out of the rain. 00:08:03.700 --> 00:08:09.505 align:middle line:84% I seek refuge from the elemental tears for my heavy Earth 00:08:09.505 --> 00:08:15.370 align:middle line:84% and body runs to grief, and I am apt to drown 00:08:15.370 --> 00:08:20.740 align:middle line:84% in this small and underhanded rain that drops its droste so 00:08:20.740 --> 00:08:26.560 align:middle line:84% delicately on the hairs of the flowers and my father 00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:30.160 align:middle line:84% and follows down the veins of leaves 00:08:30.160 --> 00:08:33.130 align:middle line:90% and weeping quiet in the woods. 00:08:33.130 --> 00:08:35.770 align:middle line:90% 00:08:35.770 --> 00:08:40.780 align:middle line:84% My yellow cab never came, but I did not 00:08:40.780 --> 00:08:45.550 align:middle line:84% confess beneath the painted Jesus Christ. 00:08:45.550 --> 00:08:51.460 align:middle line:84% I left and never saved myself at all that night 00:08:51.460 --> 00:08:54.250 align:middle line:90% in that late winter rain. 00:08:54.250 --> 00:08:57.580 align:middle line:90% 00:08:57.580 --> 00:09:02.530 align:middle line:90% In Washington, was it spring? 00:09:02.530 --> 00:09:04.720 align:middle line:90% I took the plane. 00:09:04.720 --> 00:09:11.590 align:middle line:84% I heard on either side the soft executives' manicured and fat 00:09:11.590 --> 00:09:15.880 align:middle line:90% fucking this and fucking that. 00:09:15.880 --> 00:09:22.880 align:middle line:84% My heavy second breakfast lay across my lap. 00:09:22.880 --> 00:09:26.480 align:middle line:84% That porch in the great concourse 00:09:26.480 --> 00:09:34.580 align:middle line:84% I could not walk to city bus or cab or limousine, 00:09:34.580 --> 00:09:39.170 align:middle line:84% I swept with shock, with havoc of the 100 00:09:39.170 --> 00:09:46.550 align:middle line:84% kinds of time trembling like a man away from home. 00:09:46.550 --> 00:09:50.180 align:middle line:84% At the national strip show where the girls wriggle 00:09:50.180 --> 00:09:54.740 align:middle line:84% right and slow, I find I want to see 00:09:54.740 --> 00:10:01.400 align:middle line:84% in under the Sequin step in and then my later dream 00:10:01.400 --> 00:10:06.380 align:middle line:84% of the Negro girls' room strong with ancient sweat. 00:10:06.380 --> 00:10:11.570 align:middle line:84% And with her thick aroma, I seem to play a melodrama 00:10:11.570 --> 00:10:17.210 align:middle line:84% as her great red dog barks twice and I stab it 00:10:17.210 --> 00:10:18.770 align:middle line:90% with my pocket knife. 00:10:18.770 --> 00:10:22.240 align:middle line:90% 00:10:22.240 --> 00:10:27.130 align:middle line:84% In Richmond, the azealia banks burst 00:10:27.130 --> 00:10:34.030 align:middle line:84% in rose and purple goalies by the car, muted in the soft weta 00:10:34.030 --> 00:10:36.880 align:middle line:90% pple twilight. 00:10:36.880 --> 00:10:43.030 align:middle line:84% The old estates were pruned and rolled fresh with spring, 00:10:43.030 --> 00:10:48.640 align:middle line:84% with splendor touching the graceful stride of the boy who 00:10:48.640 --> 00:10:50.005 align:middle line:90% brings the paper. 00:10:50.005 --> 00:10:52.670 align:middle line:90% 00:10:52.670 --> 00:10:57.880 align:middle line:84% My friend has a redheaded mother capable of love 00:10:57.880 --> 00:11:01.730 align:middle line:90% in any kind of weather. 00:11:01.730 --> 00:11:06.500 align:middle line:84% I am not sure what she passes to her daughters. 00:11:06.500 --> 00:11:11.070 align:middle line:84% But from her brown eye and from her breast, 00:11:11.070 --> 00:11:18.020 align:middle line:84% she passes wit and spunk to her big son. 00:11:18.020 --> 00:11:23.000 align:middle line:84% And she is small and pleased when they put their arms 00:11:23.000 --> 00:11:27.320 align:middle line:90% around her, having caught her. 00:11:27.320 --> 00:11:31.070 align:middle line:84% They cut the grass naked to the way, 00:11:31.070 --> 00:11:36.740 align:middle line:84% they cure the handsome skins of chipmunks and the snakes. 00:11:36.740 --> 00:11:40.010 align:middle line:84% And when I I wake in her attic room, 00:11:40.010 --> 00:11:44.900 align:middle line:84% a climb down the latter, half asleep, 00:11:44.900 --> 00:11:50.840 align:middle line:84% feeling the rungs pressure in their bare feet. 00:11:50.840 --> 00:11:55.310 align:middle line:84% The shirt tails out, brown eyes shut. 00:11:55.310 --> 00:12:00.230 align:middle line:90% They eat what she cooks. 00:12:00.230 --> 00:12:04.340 align:middle line:84% One shot a gorgeous colored hawk and posed 00:12:04.340 --> 00:12:10.310 align:middle line:84% with it proud arms and full wings spraying 00:12:10.310 --> 00:12:17.120 align:middle line:84% and one at the beach balanced on his hands posed stripped. 00:12:17.120 --> 00:12:22.550 align:middle line:84% In the void of sand, limbs a rudder in the wind 00:12:22.550 --> 00:12:27.920 align:middle line:90% amid the lonely blasted wood. 00:12:27.920 --> 00:12:34.500 align:middle line:84% And the two sons run swift rooms in the high summer grass. 00:12:34.500 --> 00:12:39.510 align:middle line:84% Now I would guess her daughter's had at least the same grace 00:12:39.510 --> 00:12:43.740 align:middle line:84% and beauty as their mother, though I have only 00:12:43.740 --> 00:12:47.580 align:middle line:90% seen their picture. 00:12:47.580 --> 00:12:52.050 align:middle line:84% I know she is happy with her three strong sons 00:12:52.050 --> 00:12:55.980 align:middle line:84% about her or they are not clumsy. 00:12:55.980 --> 00:13:04.140 align:middle line:84% One calm, so calmly, Ben's good ear to his guitar. 00:13:04.140 --> 00:13:09.870 align:middle line:84% And they are not dull, one built a small electric shaft 00:13:09.870 --> 00:13:11.790 align:middle line:90% topped with a glowing ball. 00:13:11.790 --> 00:13:14.880 align:middle line:90% 00:13:14.880 --> 00:13:19.050 align:middle line:84% In New York, I got drunk to tell the truth, 00:13:19.050 --> 00:13:22.140 align:middle line:84% and almost got locked up when a beat friend with me 00:13:22.140 --> 00:13:26.290 align:middle line:84% took a leak in a telephone booth. 00:13:26.290 --> 00:13:32.396 align:middle line:84% E.E Cummings on the Paris lawn [SPEAKING FRENCH] American. 00:13:32.396 --> 00:13:35.490 align:middle line:90% 00:13:35.490 --> 00:13:39.180 align:middle line:84% At 2 o'clock, he got knocked out horning in with the girl 00:13:39.180 --> 00:13:41.850 align:middle line:90% in the room over him. 00:13:41.850 --> 00:13:48.410 align:middle line:84% Her boyfriend was still sober and too thin. 00:13:48.410 --> 00:13:53.740 align:middle line:84% I saw the blood of a poet flow on the sidewalk. 00:13:53.740 --> 00:13:56.300 align:middle line:90% 00:13:56.300 --> 00:14:02.450 align:middle line:84% Oh, if I'm monarch, it is without charge. 00:14:02.450 --> 00:14:06.110 align:middle line:84% I thought of the torn limbs of Orpheus 00:14:06.110 --> 00:14:10.400 align:middle line:84% scattered in the grass on the hills of strange. 00:14:10.400 --> 00:14:16.520 align:middle line:84% The poets have to have such trouble with the female race. 00:14:16.520 --> 00:14:18.950 align:middle line:90% I do not know. 00:14:18.950 --> 00:14:25.880 align:middle line:84% But if they bleed, I lose heart also. 00:14:25.880 --> 00:14:33.200 align:middle line:84% When he reads, oh, when he reads small but deep voice, 00:14:33.200 --> 00:14:35.300 align:middle line:90% he reads well. 00:14:35.300 --> 00:14:39.470 align:middle line:90% Now weeps, now is cynical. 00:14:39.470 --> 00:14:46.070 align:middle line:84% His large horned eyes very black and cheerful. 00:14:46.070 --> 00:14:50.240 align:middle line:84% And when we visited a poet father, the road to Jersey 00:14:50.240 --> 00:14:57.960 align:middle line:84% on a motor scooter, my tie on tweeds looped in the wind. 00:14:57.960 --> 00:15:03.860 align:middle line:84% I choked in the wake of the Holland pipe and cops under 00:15:03.860 --> 00:15:06.410 align:middle line:90% glass like Karp's. 00:15:06.410 --> 00:15:07.010 align:middle line:90% I'd ask. 00:15:07.010 --> 00:15:10.910 align:middle line:90% 00:15:10.910 --> 00:15:17.060 align:middle line:84% That old father was so mellow and generous, easy to pain, 00:15:17.060 --> 00:15:23.000 align:middle line:84% wide, open, and at peace, and of good taste 00:15:23.000 --> 00:15:25.640 align:middle line:90% like his Rutherford house. 00:15:25.640 --> 00:15:33.200 align:middle line:84% And he read very loud and regal 16 new poems based on paintings 00:15:33.200 --> 00:15:36.230 align:middle line:90% by Bruegel. 00:15:36.230 --> 00:15:41.750 align:middle line:84% The last night out before I climbed on the formal capital 00:15:41.750 --> 00:15:48.290 align:middle line:84% account and was shot home, high pure and clear 00:15:48.290 --> 00:15:53.786 align:middle line:84% seemed like the right time to disappear. 00:15:53.786 --> 00:15:57.230 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:15:57.230 --> 00:16:08.080 align:middle line:90% 00:16:08.080 --> 00:16:12.360 align:middle line:84% In this poem, I went to Europe this summer 00:16:12.360 --> 00:16:19.760 align:middle line:84% and visited Ireland, the first trip over there. 00:16:19.760 --> 00:16:23.450 align:middle line:84% I went to Sligo where Yates lived 00:16:23.450 --> 00:16:25.550 align:middle line:84% and about which he wrote so many poems. 00:16:25.550 --> 00:16:30.860 align:middle line:84% And near Sligo ago at Drumcliffe Churchyard, 00:16:30.860 --> 00:16:38.070 align:middle line:84% he's buried in the shadow of Ben Bowman Mountain, which he also 00:16:38.070 --> 00:16:41.330 align:middle line:90% had so much to say about. 00:16:41.330 --> 00:16:43.130 align:middle line:84% There were a couple of extraordinary things 00:16:43.130 --> 00:16:47.160 align:middle line:90% about that gravesite. 00:16:47.160 --> 00:16:50.580 align:middle line:84% One was the fact that his wife who died since he died 00:16:50.580 --> 00:16:54.830 align:middle line:84% is buried with him and that her name was George. 00:16:54.830 --> 00:16:57.800 align:middle line:84% And another is the fact that there's 00:16:57.800 --> 00:17:05.450 align:middle line:84% a great cephalic prehistoric standing stone standing still 00:17:05.450 --> 00:17:08.000 align:middle line:84% in the wall of the churchyard which 00:17:08.000 --> 00:17:17.650 align:middle line:84% has been built around it with the cultic high cross. 00:17:17.650 --> 00:17:23.359 align:middle line:90% 00:17:23.359 --> 00:17:29.210 align:middle line:84% This is for John Unterecker, my colleague at Hawaii 00:17:29.210 --> 00:17:33.260 align:middle line:84% and who taught at the eight summer school 00:17:33.260 --> 00:17:36.890 align:middle line:84% which I visited on the occasion of his form 00:17:36.890 --> 00:17:41.420 align:middle line:84% at Drumcliffe Churchyard County Sligo, 00:17:41.420 --> 00:17:45.590 align:middle line:84% that great feather, the minds, wind drives 00:17:45.590 --> 00:17:51.800 align:middle line:84% over the greys on which lights then stays on the tomb of Yates 00:17:51.800 --> 00:17:57.920 align:middle line:84% is made of skin and the thin stone akin to Cliffe, 00:17:57.920 --> 00:18:01.400 align:middle line:90% akin to Drum. 00:18:01.400 --> 00:18:06.080 align:middle line:84% On this ancient monastic spot, I feel the shocks 00:18:06.080 --> 00:18:10.250 align:middle line:84% of rhythm underfoot gigantic hooves 00:18:10.250 --> 00:18:14.390 align:middle line:84% of heaving Irish horses, their riders weaving 00:18:14.390 --> 00:18:20.180 align:middle line:84% with ecstasy as their long godlike legs stretch and cleave 00:18:20.180 --> 00:18:24.650 align:middle line:84% tight, breaking up the patterning of the light-- 00:18:24.650 --> 00:18:28.850 align:middle line:84% brown, the black, the room, the mottled hides 00:18:28.850 --> 00:18:33.290 align:middle line:84% that give off like the sun shining and then 00:18:33.290 --> 00:18:40.010 align:middle line:84% not through mist in bursts along being Lovins back. 00:18:40.010 --> 00:18:45.710 align:middle line:84% Wild long-haired men and the wild long-haired women 00:18:45.710 --> 00:18:51.770 align:middle line:90% ride and merge and are gone. 00:18:51.770 --> 00:18:56.770 align:middle line:84% Yates grave lifts to heaven the body of a man, 00:18:56.770 --> 00:19:03.590 align:middle line:84% the body of a woman, himself, his wife, his wife, himself, 00:19:03.590 --> 00:19:09.290 align:middle line:84% and his ambiguous epitaph celebrates his birth forever 00:19:09.290 --> 00:19:11.990 align:middle line:90% back into life. 00:19:11.990 --> 00:19:19.130 align:middle line:84% The great cold eye now opens in a soaring growl 00:19:19.130 --> 00:19:20.795 align:middle line:90% of a man to woman. 00:19:20.795 --> 00:19:23.820 align:middle line:90% 00:19:23.820 --> 00:19:28.580 align:middle line:84% So this gravesite is a bridge of Sun, 00:19:28.580 --> 00:19:31.550 align:middle line:84% and it is a bridge of space between the valley 00:19:31.550 --> 00:19:35.540 align:middle line:84% and the mountain, between the long free flanks 00:19:35.540 --> 00:19:39.860 align:middle line:90% of the land and the fossil sea. 00:19:39.860 --> 00:19:45.620 align:middle line:84% It is a bridge of time for the round stone tower still 00:19:45.620 --> 00:19:50.510 align:middle line:84% stands where the medieval monks hovered over the church cloth 00:19:50.510 --> 00:19:56.180 align:middle line:84% and silver when the swift marauding Vikings came 00:19:56.180 --> 00:20:01.430 align:middle line:84% and the Celtic rock high cross, figuring 00:20:01.430 --> 00:20:07.630 align:middle line:84% how Christian love joins Adam and Eve while Cain's hate kills 00:20:07.630 --> 00:20:13.580 align:middle line:84% Abel is raised along the selfsame wall where 00:20:13.580 --> 00:20:18.050 align:middle line:84% a prehistoric standing stone covered with its weathered skin 00:20:18.050 --> 00:20:22.850 align:middle line:84% tapers hard toward the moon and sun. 00:20:22.850 --> 00:20:28.970 align:middle line:84% Its erect substance teeming full of the tiny bright seed 00:20:28.970 --> 00:20:32.278 align:middle line:90% of shell. 00:20:32.278 --> 00:20:36.370 align:middle line:84% Oh, I can feel the mine's wind blow 00:20:36.370 --> 00:20:43.910 align:middle line:84% still over the graves, the church, and then woven hill. 00:20:43.910 --> 00:20:48.240 align:middle line:90% Wait, touch your cheek. 00:20:48.240 --> 00:20:54.045 align:middle line:84% Well, there's feathers breath breeze too upon you. 00:20:54.045 --> 00:21:00.410 align:middle line:90% 00:21:00.410 --> 00:21:06.700 align:middle line:84% Now this is poem for my brother read the poet, 00:21:06.700 --> 00:21:09.880 align:middle line:84% and editor Michael Kennedy, who lives here in Tucson. 00:21:09.880 --> 00:21:16.450 align:middle line:84% I published in his magazine, Ironwood, which by the way, 00:21:16.450 --> 00:21:21.690 align:middle line:84% is one of the best magazines any place. 00:21:21.690 --> 00:21:28.090 align:middle line:84% Started with this ring, which is lapis lazuli. 00:21:28.090 --> 00:21:29.860 align:middle line:90% I never buy blue things. 00:21:29.860 --> 00:21:31.850 align:middle line:84% I always buy brown and red things. 00:21:31.850 --> 00:21:34.240 align:middle line:84% And I knew at the time I bought it 00:21:34.240 --> 00:21:38.620 align:middle line:84% that there was something going on in me, I needed to explore, 00:21:38.620 --> 00:21:44.350 align:middle line:84% and that's how the poem happened, 00:21:44.350 --> 00:21:48.830 align:middle line:84% Blue is my older brother's color. 00:21:48.830 --> 00:21:52.970 align:middle line:90% One is brown you see. 00:21:52.970 --> 00:21:58.760 align:middle line:84% So today I bought this ring of gold and lapis lazuli flecked 00:21:58.760 --> 00:22:01.880 align:middle line:90% with a bright bronze. 00:22:01.880 --> 00:22:06.940 align:middle line:84% His blue is the light hue of his eyes. 00:22:06.940 --> 00:22:12.160 align:middle line:84% Brown the color of our dead mother's long hair, which 00:22:12.160 --> 00:22:18.790 align:middle line:84% fell so beautifully about her young shoulders in the picture 00:22:18.790 --> 00:22:24.680 align:middle line:84% and of my own eyes I can't tell her. 00:22:24.680 --> 00:22:27.560 align:middle line:90% I love my brother. 00:22:27.560 --> 00:22:30.920 align:middle line:84% Well, I never quite know what to think. 00:22:30.920 --> 00:22:33.350 align:middle line:84% For example, he would beat me up as soon 00:22:33.350 --> 00:22:37.760 align:middle line:84% as the folks left the house and I would cry, 00:22:37.760 --> 00:22:43.250 align:middle line:90% be loud covered in tears. 00:22:43.250 --> 00:22:46.330 align:middle line:84% He was good at sports and played football. 00:22:46.330 --> 00:22:51.700 align:middle line:84% And so instead, I was in the marching band. 00:22:51.700 --> 00:22:57.100 align:middle line:84% My brother stole rubbers from the store and smoked cigars 00:22:57.100 --> 00:23:02.250 align:middle line:90% and pipes which made me sick. 00:23:02.250 --> 00:23:08.820 align:middle line:84% Not once, we swam together and then [INAUDIBLE] Bachner River 00:23:08.820 --> 00:23:14.040 align:middle line:84% near home naked, our blue overalls 00:23:14.040 --> 00:23:17.280 align:middle line:90% piled together by the water. 00:23:17.280 --> 00:23:23.220 align:middle line:84% Their cover buttons like the bronze glint in my ring. 00:23:23.220 --> 00:23:28.020 align:middle line:84% I remember once when I was very young, 00:23:28.020 --> 00:23:34.120 align:middle line:84% I looked deep into a pool of blue water. 00:23:34.120 --> 00:23:38.670 align:middle line:84% We had no mirror and I was so amazed. 00:23:38.670 --> 00:23:42.870 align:middle line:84% I looked over my shoulder for I did not 00:23:42.870 --> 00:23:49.620 align:middle line:84% imagine it was me caught in that cerulean sky. 00:23:49.620 --> 00:23:52.800 align:middle line:84% Thinking it was someone other, I tell you 00:23:52.800 --> 00:23:58.640 align:middle line:84% I confused myself with my brother, 00:23:58.640 --> 00:24:02.890 align:middle line:90% nothing goes with gold. 00:24:02.890 --> 00:24:08.410 align:middle line:84% What I can see in this rich blue stone, 00:24:08.410 --> 00:24:11.680 align:middle line:84% the meeting of our clothes like the touching 00:24:11.680 --> 00:24:17.350 align:middle line:84% of hands when he taught me to hold my fishing pole well 00:24:17.350 --> 00:24:20.890 align:middle line:90% and wound up the real for me. 00:24:20.890 --> 00:24:23.990 align:middle line:90% 00:24:23.990 --> 00:24:27.440 align:middle line:84% Blue is the last of the primary colors 00:24:27.440 --> 00:24:32.890 align:middle line:84% to be named while some primitive societies still have 00:24:32.890 --> 00:24:37.920 align:middle line:90% no word for it except dark. 00:24:37.920 --> 00:24:42.700 align:middle line:90% It's associated with black. 00:24:42.700 --> 00:24:47.620 align:middle line:84% In the night, my brother and I would play at games 00:24:47.620 --> 00:24:51.320 align:middle line:84% that neither of us could understand. 00:24:51.320 --> 00:24:57.060 align:middle line:84% But this is not a confession, it is a question. 00:24:57.060 --> 00:25:03.840 align:middle line:84% We've moved apart and don't lie and our children don't even 00:25:03.840 --> 00:25:06.480 align:middle line:90% know their own cousin. 00:25:06.480 --> 00:25:13.490 align:middle line:84% So I would have you know I want this ring to be 00:25:13.490 --> 00:25:18.730 align:middle line:84% and engagement and reconciliation. 00:25:18.730 --> 00:25:23.640 align:middle line:90% Blue is the color of the heart. 00:25:23.640 --> 00:25:29.270 align:middle line:84% I won't live forever, is it too late now 00:25:29.270 --> 00:25:33.260 align:middle line:90% to be a brother to my brother? 00:25:33.260 --> 00:25:39.620 align:middle line:84% Let the golden snake bend round again to touch itself 00:25:39.620 --> 00:25:43.775 align:middle line:84% and all at once burst into azure. 00:25:43.775 --> 00:25:48.160 align:middle line:90% 00:25:48.160 --> 00:25:51.030 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:25:51.030 --> 00:25:56.090 align:middle line:90% 00:25:56.090 --> 00:25:57.890 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:25:57.890 --> 00:26:05.000 align:middle line:84% I have another prose poem which involves these same colors 00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:07.370 align:middle line:90% and the figure of my brother. 00:26:07.370 --> 00:26:09.200 align:middle line:84% It's called "Prose Poem from My Brother 00:26:09.200 --> 00:26:12.710 align:middle line:90% and for My Teacher, Gregory." 00:26:12.710 --> 00:26:14.750 align:middle line:84% And it's prefaced with an epigraph 00:26:14.750 --> 00:26:20.240 align:middle line:84% from Roberto Assagioli who was an Italian psychoanalyst who 00:26:20.240 --> 00:26:22.000 align:middle line:90% studied with Freud. 00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:24.980 align:middle line:84% He felt something very deeply missing with Freud 00:26:24.980 --> 00:26:27.470 align:middle line:84% and began a new school, which has 00:26:27.470 --> 00:26:30.200 align:middle line:90% been called psychosynthesis. 00:26:30.200 --> 00:26:36.050 align:middle line:84% This is a quotation from him, we suffer from the repression 00:26:36.050 --> 00:26:36.980 align:middle line:90% of the sublime. 00:26:36.980 --> 00:26:40.890 align:middle line:90% 00:26:40.890 --> 00:26:45.375 align:middle line:84% The first part of the poem describes 00:26:45.375 --> 00:26:49.020 align:middle line:84% an extraordinary blocks the kind of sculpture 00:26:49.020 --> 00:26:55.470 align:middle line:84% with vertical and horizontal wires built into it 00:26:55.470 --> 00:26:57.300 align:middle line:90% harpsichord wires. 00:26:57.300 --> 00:26:59.190 align:middle line:84% And at the intersection of these wires, 00:26:59.190 --> 00:27:02.655 align:middle line:90% were some granite stones. 00:27:02.655 --> 00:27:06.130 align:middle line:90% 00:27:06.130 --> 00:27:08.275 align:middle line:84% I just feel I should tell people about this book, 00:27:08.275 --> 00:27:10.150 align:middle line:84% because it was made by a friend of mine who's 00:27:10.150 --> 00:27:13.750 align:middle line:84% a school campaigner in Seattle, Joseph Goldberg. 00:27:13.750 --> 00:27:16.510 align:middle line:84% And I never feel sure that the poem catches the quality 00:27:16.510 --> 00:27:20.360 align:middle line:90% of that piece of work. 00:27:20.360 --> 00:27:24.440 align:middle line:84% The sculptured open box of mahogany, 00:27:24.440 --> 00:27:28.880 align:middle line:84% ivory white inside is strong both with 00:27:28.880 --> 00:27:34.760 align:middle line:84% vertical and horizontal layers of musical wires 00:27:34.760 --> 00:27:40.790 align:middle line:84% that sing when struck and bits of bright granite rock 00:27:40.790 --> 00:27:44.110 align:middle line:90% tremble at the intersect. 00:27:44.110 --> 00:27:48.640 align:middle line:84% These gems flash in the candle light. 00:27:48.640 --> 00:27:53.560 align:middle line:84% And before me, all my beloved childhood looms 00:27:53.560 --> 00:28:00.970 align:middle line:84% and the humming levels, each one deeper, older than the other, 00:28:00.970 --> 00:28:05.860 align:middle line:84% I chip this artist box and my child 00:28:05.860 --> 00:28:11.890 align:middle line:84% laughs and moves there in his own time. 00:28:11.890 --> 00:28:15.700 align:middle line:84% You will hear me move or you will 00:28:15.700 --> 00:28:20.680 align:middle line:84% hear me moan with all the sheer pleasure of what I 00:28:20.680 --> 00:28:24.820 align:middle line:90% thought I lost come back again. 00:28:24.820 --> 00:28:25.690 align:middle line:90% Why? 00:28:25.690 --> 00:28:30.760 align:middle line:90% We have never left our home. 00:28:30.760 --> 00:28:36.910 align:middle line:84% On the leather lace fixed about my neck, blue, yellow, red, 00:28:36.910 --> 00:28:41.650 align:middle line:84% brown, and black glass, African trading beads 00:28:41.650 --> 00:28:48.940 align:middle line:84% begin to glow, their colors all weave and newly flow 00:28:48.940 --> 00:28:53.350 align:middle line:84% like translucent and angelic worms together. 00:28:53.350 --> 00:29:01.120 align:middle line:84% And beneath these, my neck is as alive with gentle white beads 00:29:01.120 --> 00:29:05.000 align:middle line:90% as is a woman's breast. 00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:08.250 align:middle line:84% [? Aside ?] and in the light river, 00:29:08.250 --> 00:29:13.830 align:middle line:84% the figures come on stage exactly as they are needed. 00:29:13.830 --> 00:29:18.025 align:middle line:84% I tell you, I conduct my own act. 00:29:18.025 --> 00:29:20.760 align:middle line:90% 00:29:20.760 --> 00:29:26.610 align:middle line:84% A boy poise is so youngly, so beautifully, 00:29:26.610 --> 00:29:34.470 align:middle line:84% his arms, a graceful arrow over his brown head and he dies. 00:29:34.470 --> 00:29:41.220 align:middle line:84% His limbs and body pushed supple as a whole school of fish 00:29:41.220 --> 00:29:44.340 align:middle line:84% and then his vacant place is taken 00:29:44.340 --> 00:29:50.400 align:middle line:84% by another, a man in denim and in boots of red rubber. 00:29:50.400 --> 00:29:54.420 align:middle line:84% He is wrenched from the shore and pulled 00:29:54.420 --> 00:29:58.830 align:middle line:84% through the fresh busy stream by a kid 00:29:58.830 --> 00:30:04.170 align:middle line:84% who tugs on one of his hands and holds a fishing rod. 00:30:04.170 --> 00:30:08.820 align:middle line:84% And too, this man is dragged in the opposite direction 00:30:08.820 --> 00:30:13.650 align:middle line:84% by a dog on a leash shaking his wet coach 00:30:13.650 --> 00:30:16.320 align:middle line:90% into the stippled light. 00:30:16.320 --> 00:30:22.110 align:middle line:84% That man sashayed, he's zigzag this way and that. 00:30:22.110 --> 00:30:26.160 align:middle line:90% The man is me. 00:30:26.160 --> 00:30:31.380 align:middle line:84% You see a blue Jay does a dance for us. 00:30:31.380 --> 00:30:38.580 align:middle line:84% He hops beside a tree that rises inside myself. 00:30:38.580 --> 00:30:43.750 align:middle line:84% He half glides his iridescent blue back, 00:30:43.750 --> 00:30:49.980 align:middle line:84% striking like a brush of Gogan on the bare canvas of the air, 00:30:49.980 --> 00:30:56.850 align:middle line:84% and then he flies leaving behind a perfect feather which 00:30:56.850 --> 00:31:02.550 align:middle line:84% I find shades from blue into brown as my brother's color 00:31:02.550 --> 00:31:05.250 align:middle line:90% into mine. 00:31:05.250 --> 00:31:09.360 align:middle line:84% Now in the single space, the diver and the booted fellow 00:31:09.360 --> 00:31:10.140 align:middle line:90% left. 00:31:10.140 --> 00:31:15.540 align:middle line:84% My brother and I are there fishing together, 00:31:15.540 --> 00:31:21.690 align:middle line:84% our poles glinting in the water, and my mouth moves. 00:31:21.690 --> 00:31:25.020 align:middle line:90% My eyes are alive. 00:31:25.020 --> 00:31:29.180 align:middle line:90% I cry to him with joy. 00:31:29.180 --> 00:31:36.890 align:middle line:84% Last blue Jay was a messenger of what I want. 00:31:36.890 --> 00:31:45.140 align:middle line:84% My friend, my guide, Gregory, on this voyage seems benign. 00:31:45.140 --> 00:31:50.120 align:middle line:84% He brushes my chest and my stretched naked arms 00:31:50.120 --> 00:31:55.400 align:middle line:84% open to the sun with a branch of fragrant pine. 00:31:55.400 --> 00:32:03.510 align:middle line:84% Be healed, he chants with each glancing stroke, be healed. 00:32:03.510 --> 00:32:08.550 align:middle line:84% The needles prick my skin back into life 00:32:08.550 --> 00:32:13.410 align:middle line:84% and I go down to bathe my feet in the stream. 00:32:13.410 --> 00:32:19.350 align:middle line:84% The blue veins form a mottled web along my white heel. 00:32:19.350 --> 00:32:23.700 align:middle line:84% I can feel my kinship with the pine, 00:32:23.700 --> 00:32:29.460 align:middle line:84% the Jay, the luminescent stream, and with him; 00:32:29.460 --> 00:32:33.600 align:middle line:90% or is he her, the mother? 00:32:33.600 --> 00:32:39.400 align:middle line:90% Gregory, my oracle, my teacher. 00:32:39.400 --> 00:32:43.030 align:middle line:84% He leans there in the door of our cabin 00:32:43.030 --> 00:32:48.100 align:middle line:84% by the river, his face glowing, hair long 00:32:48.100 --> 00:32:51.190 align:middle line:90% and shining as a woman. 00:32:51.190 --> 00:32:55.340 align:middle line:90% His belly fat with life. 00:32:55.340 --> 00:32:58.900 align:middle line:84% He is pregnant with the two of us-- 00:32:58.900 --> 00:33:03.460 align:middle line:84% my brother and I, unborn twins who 00:33:03.460 --> 00:33:10.030 align:middle line:84% lie entangled in each other's developing limbs. 00:33:10.030 --> 00:33:14.610 align:middle line:90% Soon, we will be born. 00:33:14.610 --> 00:33:20.210 align:middle line:84% He and I will taste of milk for the very first time, 00:33:20.210 --> 00:33:25.760 align:middle line:84% and of strawberry pop, and of a bright bananas. 00:33:25.760 --> 00:33:31.970 align:middle line:84% And we will eat, my brother and I, a great shining Autumn 00:33:31.970 --> 00:33:36.590 align:middle line:84% red apple fallen from our father's tree 00:33:36.590 --> 00:33:40.460 align:middle line:90% as if from the long sky. 00:33:40.460 --> 00:33:48.250 align:middle line:84% And you too will taste this apple with us. 00:33:48.250 --> 00:33:54.000 align:middle line:84% Let us all embrace while we all have the same mother 00:33:54.000 --> 00:33:56.745 align:middle line:90% and her name is Grace. 00:33:56.745 --> 00:34:01.058 align:middle line:90% 00:34:01.058 --> 00:34:04.430 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:34:04.430 --> 00:34:05.246 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:34:05.246 --> 00:34:07.526 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:34:07.526 --> 00:34:08.900 align:middle line:90% 00:34:08.900 --> 00:34:12.020 align:middle line:84% This is great, I have paused that for long. 00:34:12.020 --> 00:34:13.880 align:middle line:90% Doesn't often happen that way. 00:34:13.880 --> 00:34:17.570 align:middle line:90% 00:34:17.570 --> 00:34:20.330 align:middle line:84% I've heard more applause from singing my German translation 00:34:20.330 --> 00:34:23.830 align:middle line:90% of Home on the Range. 00:34:23.830 --> 00:34:27.440 align:middle line:90% And I get from most poetry. 00:34:27.440 --> 00:34:30.750 align:middle line:84% I read out one more post then we'll take a break. 00:34:30.750 --> 00:34:40.550 align:middle line:84% And when we return after a few minutes for 10 I'll [INAUDIBLE] 00:34:40.550 --> 00:34:44.600 align:middle line:84% This is called, "Postpone Returning Home." 00:34:44.600 --> 00:34:46.940 align:middle line:84% It was written on the occasion of I going back 00:34:46.940 --> 00:34:51.230 align:middle line:90% to Iowa, where I was born. 00:34:51.230 --> 00:34:59.850 align:middle line:84% I published and autobiographical fiction piece called, 00:34:59.850 --> 00:35:01.650 align:middle line:84% The House of Jack Built and it was 00:35:01.650 --> 00:35:05.850 align:middle line:84% published by Harry Duncan's press which was originally 00:35:05.850 --> 00:35:08.880 align:middle line:84% the Cummington Press in Vermont then moved to Iowa and then 00:35:08.880 --> 00:35:10.500 align:middle line:90% to Nebraska. 00:35:10.500 --> 00:35:13.320 align:middle line:84% So on the occasion of reading from that book, 00:35:13.320 --> 00:35:16.050 align:middle line:84% I went back to my hometown, which is 45 miles away. 00:35:16.050 --> 00:35:17.560 align:middle line:90% 00:35:17.560 --> 00:35:21.330 align:middle line:84% And this correspondence happened out of that. 00:35:21.330 --> 00:35:24.220 align:middle line:90% 00:35:24.220 --> 00:35:27.400 align:middle line:84% The Argus-eyed old greenhouse is all 00:35:27.400 --> 00:35:32.320 align:middle line:84% gone where once the black banana fronds were. 00:35:32.320 --> 00:35:38.530 align:middle line:84% Come from someplace out of town, it seemed like Mars. 00:35:38.530 --> 00:35:42.160 align:middle line:84% And the thick, several colored birds of paradise 00:35:42.160 --> 00:35:45.820 align:middle line:84% were there too, stunning us red oak kids, 00:35:45.820 --> 00:35:51.050 align:middle line:84% visiting from top old Ms. Benware's class. 00:35:51.050 --> 00:35:56.230 align:middle line:84% And gone, because I had the oil station. 00:35:56.230 --> 00:35:59.530 align:middle line:84% I pedaled there the $0.05 Saturday 00:35:59.530 --> 00:36:05.980 align:middle line:84% evening post before dawn, passing like a pale hero 00:36:05.980 --> 00:36:11.770 align:middle line:84% through the strong snowstorms with my cap pulled down 00:36:11.770 --> 00:36:17.620 align:middle line:84% around my bitten ears and the skin of my leg to grotesquely 00:36:17.620 --> 00:36:21.520 align:middle line:84% breathed on with a black wool sock 00:36:21.520 --> 00:36:25.590 align:middle line:90% separated from the knickers. 00:36:25.590 --> 00:36:31.380 align:middle line:84% The local cemetery has sprouted much more pine and spruce. 00:36:31.380 --> 00:36:38.250 align:middle line:84% It has put on population in the 50 years since I was born. 00:36:38.250 --> 00:36:42.480 align:middle line:84% Today, I stand beside my mother's grave 00:36:42.480 --> 00:36:45.210 align:middle line:90% in the heavy rain. 00:36:45.210 --> 00:36:51.320 align:middle line:84% Did you know it took me decades to find where she was dead? 00:36:51.320 --> 00:36:59.630 align:middle line:84% I had imagined there a place for me beside her changing body, 00:36:59.630 --> 00:37:04.200 align:middle line:90% but I was wrong. 00:37:04.200 --> 00:37:07.410 align:middle line:84% I figured out from the stone placed 00:37:07.410 --> 00:37:14.130 align:middle line:84% upon her head like a great foot upon my heart 00:37:14.130 --> 00:37:17.340 align:middle line:90% that she was only 28. 00:37:17.340 --> 00:37:21.900 align:middle line:84% And now you see, already, it's too 00:37:21.900 --> 00:37:29.550 align:middle line:84% late, for the plot is thick, is full. 00:37:29.550 --> 00:37:31.690 align:middle line:90% Oh, well. 00:37:31.690 --> 00:37:33.650 align:middle line:90% Oh, well. 00:37:33.650 --> 00:37:38.210 align:middle line:84% My grandfather took that last spot away from me 00:37:38.210 --> 00:37:40.800 align:middle line:90% when I was three. 00:37:40.800 --> 00:37:45.090 align:middle line:84% According to these graves, it was very hard for him 00:37:45.090 --> 00:37:51.870 align:middle line:84% for Otto, his daughter dead, my mother, and his son, 00:37:51.870 --> 00:37:59.010 align:middle line:84% my little uncle, had died before when he was only two in 1884. 00:37:59.010 --> 00:38:03.780 align:middle line:84% Wait, look, my grandfather's wife Anne 00:38:03.780 --> 00:38:07.580 align:middle line:90% died when his small son did. 00:38:07.580 --> 00:38:11.420 align:middle line:84% Well, on second look, the same year, 00:38:11.420 --> 00:38:16.520 align:middle line:84% anyway, I was thinking more of me 00:38:16.520 --> 00:38:22.130 align:middle line:84% for it was I who died and was laid in Earth the same day 00:38:22.130 --> 00:38:24.290 align:middle line:90% as his daughter. 00:38:24.290 --> 00:38:27.320 align:middle line:84% She thought rather that she had given birth 00:38:27.320 --> 00:38:35.060 align:middle line:84% in a house on a street named Joy to a living son named Jack. 00:38:35.060 --> 00:38:36.980 align:middle line:90% I want that house. 00:38:36.980 --> 00:38:42.040 align:middle line:90% I want that street back. 00:38:42.040 --> 00:38:45.890 align:middle line:84% Yet, in some sort of truth or other, 00:38:45.890 --> 00:38:50.110 align:middle line:84% it is my mother, Agnes, who has died 00:38:50.110 --> 00:38:55.540 align:middle line:84% and it is I who have saved her life. 00:38:55.540 --> 00:39:05.220 align:middle line:84% Agnes, whose name means lamb of sacrifice. 00:39:05.220 --> 00:39:07.600 align:middle line:90% I did not cry. 00:39:07.600 --> 00:39:12.200 align:middle line:90% I was quiet as three mice. 00:39:12.200 --> 00:39:16.340 align:middle line:90% I was dumb before I was wise. 00:39:16.340 --> 00:39:21.590 align:middle line:84% And I was drunk before ever I was dead. 00:39:21.590 --> 00:39:26.390 align:middle line:84% Last night, I read the handwriting on the wall 00:39:26.390 --> 00:39:29.330 align:middle line:90% in the old Westerlund cafe. 00:39:29.330 --> 00:39:31.940 align:middle line:90% That at least has stayed. 00:39:31.940 --> 00:39:36.800 align:middle line:84% It said, "clean the wool out of your zipper, you sheep fucker." 00:39:36.800 --> 00:39:45.560 align:middle line:90% 00:39:45.560 --> 00:39:50.120 align:middle line:84% I remember here my father downed some beers on Saturday 00:39:50.120 --> 00:39:57.170 align:middle line:84% afternoon and listened to the games on the radio. 00:39:57.170 --> 00:40:01.440 align:middle line:84% My friend and I had the opera on. 00:40:01.440 --> 00:40:05.510 align:middle line:84% "Christ," he would say when he came home at 5 o'clock fuming. 00:40:05.510 --> 00:40:09.230 align:middle line:84% "Is that damn thing still going?" 00:40:09.230 --> 00:40:11.705 align:middle line:90% And in Iowa, it was. 00:40:11.705 --> 00:40:14.510 align:middle line:90% 00:40:14.510 --> 00:40:20.090 align:middle line:84% Standpipe, standpipe, I see the standpipe. 00:40:20.090 --> 00:40:25.190 align:middle line:84% Whoever truly sang it first won the child's play 00:40:25.190 --> 00:40:30.230 align:middle line:84% as we came back to town from rides all over Montgomery 00:40:30.230 --> 00:40:31.970 align:middle line:90% County. 00:40:31.970 --> 00:40:38.570 align:middle line:84% Now that high monument is gone, as is the circular pavilion 00:40:38.570 --> 00:40:43.370 align:middle line:84% near where it was with the magical name Chautauqua. 00:40:43.370 --> 00:40:46.280 align:middle line:90% 00:40:46.280 --> 00:40:55.310 align:middle line:84% Red Oaks great cock is now lost to an orange tank on stilts. 00:40:55.310 --> 00:40:59.150 align:middle line:84% And the brick house where once I went to school 00:40:59.150 --> 00:41:02.600 align:middle line:84% is gone, where Floyd Hicks always 00:41:02.600 --> 00:41:07.130 align:middle line:84% won the barefoot race at recess and that snot-nosed Selma 00:41:07.130 --> 00:41:08.615 align:middle line:90% ate the library paint. 00:41:08.615 --> 00:41:12.110 align:middle line:90% 00:41:12.110 --> 00:41:15.410 align:middle line:90% My home room is gone. 00:41:15.410 --> 00:41:18.900 align:middle line:90% 00:41:18.900 --> 00:41:23.610 align:middle line:84% Now it's a storage bin for grain. 00:41:23.610 --> 00:41:27.600 align:middle line:84% One, the swimming pool where first I 00:41:27.600 --> 00:41:33.990 align:middle line:84% saw Junior Odell's new red hair and Marilyn Hugh's breasts 00:41:33.990 --> 00:41:39.100 align:middle line:84% suddenly bulged beneath her suit. 00:41:39.100 --> 00:41:45.850 align:middle line:84% I watched my young semen float in cloud palaces of white 00:41:45.850 --> 00:41:48.955 align:middle line:84% in an isolated part of the water. 00:41:48.955 --> 00:41:51.960 align:middle line:90% 00:41:51.960 --> 00:41:56.480 align:middle line:84% And so you see when I came back to town, 00:41:56.480 --> 00:42:00.620 align:middle line:84% I found all my boyhood things and boyhood places 00:42:00.620 --> 00:42:05.420 align:middle line:90% gone, even my grave was robbed. 00:42:05.420 --> 00:42:08.450 align:middle line:90% 00:42:08.450 --> 00:42:14.870 align:middle line:84% That is why I saw in the loose, driving rain 00:42:14.870 --> 00:42:17.480 align:middle line:90% underneath the spruce and pine. 00:42:17.480 --> 00:42:23.714 align:middle line:90% 00:42:23.714 --> 00:42:25.662 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:42:25.662 --> 00:42:26.636 align:middle line:90% 00:42:26.636 --> 00:42:29.560 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:42:29.560 --> 00:42:30.952 align:middle line:90% Thank you very much. 00:42:30.952 --> 00:42:36.140 align:middle line:90% 00:42:36.140 --> 00:42:36.740 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:42:36.740 --> 00:42:39.320 align:middle line:90% Let's take a little break here. 00:42:39.320 --> 00:42:44.310 align:middle line:84% Poem in progress, I was asked about the title of yesterday. 00:42:44.310 --> 00:42:47.090 align:middle line:84% I think I forgot to mention that, though, it started out 00:42:47.090 --> 00:42:51.260 align:middle line:84% as a poem in progress with hyphens, 00:42:51.260 --> 00:42:53.480 align:middle line:84% when I had finished it, I decided that if I took 00:42:53.480 --> 00:42:56.420 align:middle line:84% the hyphens out and there was some notion of progress 00:42:56.420 --> 00:42:59.880 align:middle line:84% in the poem, that was exactly what I wanted. 00:42:59.880 --> 00:43:05.450 align:middle line:84% So I kept the title Poem In Progress. 00:43:05.450 --> 00:43:10.760 align:middle line:84% My publisher is sort of anxious to sell copies of this book. 00:43:10.760 --> 00:43:16.010 align:middle line:84% And he asked me to mention that, at readings, I could pass out 00:43:16.010 --> 00:43:20.060 align:middle line:84% little cards which entitle you to a dollar 00:43:20.060 --> 00:43:22.775 align:middle line:90% off if you send in for the book. 00:43:22.775 --> 00:43:27.620 align:middle line:90% 00:43:27.620 --> 00:43:29.540 align:middle line:84% It has illustrations by Gary Brown 00:43:29.540 --> 00:43:33.170 align:middle line:84% from the University of California Santa Barbara 00:43:33.170 --> 00:43:36.680 align:middle line:90% and it's nicely done. 00:43:36.680 --> 00:43:37.955 align:middle line:90% The poem is in eight parts. 00:43:37.955 --> 00:43:41.070 align:middle line:90% 00:43:41.070 --> 00:43:44.360 align:middle line:84% The first part is called First Prelude: 00:43:44.360 --> 00:43:47.554 align:middle line:90% Dream In Ohio, The Father. 00:43:47.554 --> 00:43:51.730 align:middle line:90% 00:43:51.730 --> 00:43:57.030 align:middle line:84% "My ship passes over slowly through the foreign lands 00:43:57.030 --> 00:44:00.480 align:middle line:90% her lovers all are from. 00:44:00.480 --> 00:44:04.320 align:middle line:90% There is not much time. 00:44:04.320 --> 00:44:07.920 align:middle line:84% The boat brushes fields, the banks 00:44:07.920 --> 00:44:10.890 align:middle line:90% of these beautiful canals. 00:44:10.890 --> 00:44:16.500 align:middle line:84% But there is no one you will see in the unusual houses 00:44:16.500 --> 00:44:20.910 align:middle line:84% with a strange shaped, attractive red and white suites 00:44:20.910 --> 00:44:27.300 align:middle line:84% of dining or brownish, burnished bedroom furniture. 00:44:27.300 --> 00:44:32.160 align:middle line:84% Their decorators are inventive and avante garde, 00:44:32.160 --> 00:44:36.450 align:middle line:90% though, slightly color blind. 00:44:36.450 --> 00:44:39.930 align:middle line:84% Even if they are empty, nothing's 00:44:39.930 --> 00:44:42.420 align:middle line:84% ripped up from the floors and we can 00:44:42.420 --> 00:44:46.500 align:middle line:90% see that there is no thievery. 00:44:46.500 --> 00:44:52.110 align:middle line:84% Toward the back of the ship with its frothing, threatening wake, 00:44:52.110 --> 00:44:58.500 align:middle line:84% I walk underneath elaborate glass pendant chandeliers, 00:44:58.500 --> 00:45:00.030 align:middle line:90% their candle lit. 00:45:00.030 --> 00:45:04.950 align:middle line:84% Cheers turned golden with the muting dust 00:45:04.950 --> 00:45:11.666 align:middle line:84% of the last years above this old and red San Francisco bouquet. 00:45:11.666 --> 00:45:14.200 align:middle line:90% 00:45:14.200 --> 00:45:19.450 align:middle line:84% I stand at the ship's stern chain. 00:45:19.450 --> 00:45:25.780 align:middle line:84% Sure, it's dangerous to be here, drifting all this weird weekend 00:45:25.780 --> 00:45:29.950 align:middle line:84% through the landlocked Midwestern town. 00:45:29.950 --> 00:45:36.310 align:middle line:84% I think of that possible slip out of the ship's brass 00:45:36.310 --> 00:45:41.680 align:middle line:84% fastenings into the long sleep of the wake. 00:45:41.680 --> 00:45:45.490 align:middle line:90% But I wave, though. 00:45:45.490 --> 00:45:52.360 align:middle line:84% I try to greet as the boat moves on quietly through the avenues. 00:45:52.360 --> 00:45:58.330 align:middle line:84% Some aging men on corners in this alien place, 00:45:58.330 --> 00:46:02.830 align:middle line:84% but they only talk among themselves. 00:46:02.830 --> 00:46:08.530 align:middle line:84% How can they miss this ship in the streets, these old men? 00:46:08.530 --> 00:46:14.220 align:middle line:90% Miss me trying to salute them? 00:46:14.220 --> 00:46:17.495 align:middle line:84% Father, I suppose it's you again. 00:46:17.495 --> 00:46:21.700 align:middle line:90% 00:46:21.700 --> 00:46:26.770 align:middle line:84% Why did you stop hunting for the vivid peasants in the fields 00:46:26.770 --> 00:46:30.790 align:middle line:84% or having a beer with your friends in the old Westerlund 00:46:30.790 --> 00:46:35.880 align:middle line:84% cafe when I was young in Red Oak, Iowa? 00:46:35.880 --> 00:46:43.630 align:middle line:84% Oh, I once thought we might have talked, might try to have 00:46:43.630 --> 00:46:46.770 align:middle line:90% something to say. 00:46:46.770 --> 00:46:53.090 align:middle line:84% Instead, I ran my buddy's car 90 miles an hour down Highway 48 00:46:53.090 --> 00:46:57.690 align:middle line:84% outside of town and jacked off when I got home. 00:46:57.690 --> 00:47:05.520 align:middle line:84% Father, you fucker, I love you still. 00:47:05.520 --> 00:47:11.810 align:middle line:90% I still yearn for your lie. 00:47:11.810 --> 00:47:17.980 align:middle line:84% Shall I turn back toward the tip of the ship? 00:47:17.980 --> 00:47:23.370 align:middle line:84% There is someone alive close by upstairs 00:47:23.370 --> 00:47:27.130 align:middle line:90% in this many tiered boat. 00:47:27.130 --> 00:47:33.250 align:middle line:84% I can hear them as the ageless orange moon rises 00:47:33.250 --> 00:47:37.450 align:middle line:90% over the small hill or houses. 00:47:37.450 --> 00:47:43.600 align:middle line:84% Well, I will go up there to the sailors, perhaps, 00:47:43.600 --> 00:47:47.830 align:middle line:84% or the families, or the whores, whoever 00:47:47.830 --> 00:47:53.590 align:middle line:84% lives on this ghosted ship that float through streets where 00:47:53.590 --> 00:47:58.225 align:middle line:84% absolutely anything goes and there are no shores. 00:47:58.225 --> 00:48:35.520 align:middle line:90% 00:48:35.520 --> 00:48:38.580 align:middle line:90% All hill or houses. 00:48:38.580 --> 00:48:44.310 align:middle line:84% Well, I will go up there to the sailors, perhaps, 00:48:44.310 --> 00:48:48.240 align:middle line:84% or the families, or the whores, whoever 00:48:48.240 --> 00:48:53.310 align:middle line:84% lives on this ghosted ship that floats through streets 00:48:53.310 --> 00:48:58.020 align:middle line:84% where absolutely anything goes and there are no shores." 00:48:58.020 --> 00:49:03.070 align:middle line:90% 00:49:03.070 --> 00:49:11.023 align:middle line:84% Part two: Second period, Reality in Albuquerque, The Sun. 00:49:11.023 --> 00:49:14.887 align:middle line:90% 00:49:14.887 --> 00:49:18.640 align:middle line:84% "Passing through Albuquerque where I'd read poetry, 00:49:18.640 --> 00:49:21.850 align:middle line:84% I find myself beside a quite young drinking 00:49:21.850 --> 00:49:26.780 align:middle line:84% buddy, black-haired and bright-eyed Chicano kid. 00:49:26.780 --> 00:49:30.950 align:middle line:84% He wants a Coke with three cherries in it. 00:49:30.950 --> 00:49:35.030 align:middle line:84% He gets that and then asks me, as folks 00:49:35.030 --> 00:49:38.330 align:middle line:84% next to each other in bars are apt to talk, 00:49:38.330 --> 00:49:42.080 align:middle line:84% why there are no cherries in my glass. 00:49:42.080 --> 00:49:46.190 align:middle line:84% Because, I said, knowing I sounded absolutely absurd, 00:49:46.190 --> 00:49:51.020 align:middle line:84% screwdrivers just never have cherries with them. 00:49:51.020 --> 00:49:52.820 align:middle line:90% Surreal, I thought. 00:49:52.820 --> 00:49:55.670 align:middle line:90% 00:49:55.670 --> 00:49:59.000 align:middle line:84% What's this kid doing in here at 10:00 o'clock AM anyway? 00:49:59.000 --> 00:50:02.220 align:middle line:90% 00:50:02.220 --> 00:50:05.640 align:middle line:90% No school today, he says. 00:50:05.640 --> 00:50:08.380 align:middle line:90% Teachers convention. 00:50:08.380 --> 00:50:13.610 align:middle line:84% He is only seven and his father is tending the bar. 00:50:13.610 --> 00:50:16.770 align:middle line:84% He asked me where all my kids are. 00:50:16.770 --> 00:50:20.910 align:middle line:84% In New York, where I live, I lied. 00:50:20.910 --> 00:50:25.700 align:middle line:84% Then told the truth that I was flying back there tonight. 00:50:25.700 --> 00:50:27.670 align:middle line:90% And your wife? 00:50:27.670 --> 00:50:30.601 align:middle line:90% Third degree, I thought. 00:50:30.601 --> 00:50:33.630 align:middle line:90% Well, part of bar talk. 00:50:33.630 --> 00:50:38.310 align:middle line:84% Well, in New York too, I lied again. 00:50:38.310 --> 00:50:42.240 align:middle line:84% How the hell can I tell this kid I hardly ever see my sons, 00:50:42.240 --> 00:50:48.010 align:middle line:84% because they are 3,000 miles away from me and then some? 00:50:48.010 --> 00:50:52.490 align:middle line:84% Perhaps, you understand what I mean. 00:50:52.490 --> 00:50:57.580 align:middle line:84% But him, most of us in the bar at 10:00 AM? 00:50:57.580 --> 00:51:02.680 align:middle line:84% He walks to the jukebox with a quarter given by his father, 00:51:02.680 --> 00:51:09.120 align:middle line:84% then looks back, admits he cannot read well. 00:51:09.120 --> 00:51:14.640 align:middle line:84% So we select together and agree on two pieces 00:51:14.640 --> 00:51:21.555 align:middle line:84% playing first that morning song, Bridge Over Troubled Water." 00:51:21.555 --> 00:51:25.740 align:middle line:90% 00:51:25.740 --> 00:51:30.800 align:middle line:84% Part three, Plato in Florida: The Friend. 00:51:30.800 --> 00:51:33.680 align:middle line:90% 00:51:33.680 --> 00:51:39.750 align:middle line:84% "Our car strays only for today through the Florida highways. 00:51:39.750 --> 00:51:43.470 align:middle line:84% Sun bronzed student named Mike, you 00:51:43.470 --> 00:51:48.930 align:middle line:84% are my guide in this incredible place where Cape Kennedy veers 00:51:48.930 --> 00:51:52.050 align:middle line:90% to Disney's world. 00:51:52.050 --> 00:51:55.750 align:middle line:84% And I feel sure you are a friend. 00:51:55.750 --> 00:52:01.780 align:middle line:84% Intense bushy-haired, your hands scaling from hard work, 00:52:01.780 --> 00:52:06.250 align:middle line:84% you've taken on the archaic look of an animal born out 00:52:06.250 --> 00:52:08.560 align:middle line:90% of the Orlando swamp. 00:52:08.560 --> 00:52:12.880 align:middle line:84% And so you are both old and young. 00:52:12.880 --> 00:52:18.730 align:middle line:84% Millions of years and 21, balancing 00:52:18.730 --> 00:52:22.210 align:middle line:84% between the ancient, ugly, splendid figure 00:52:22.210 --> 00:52:26.950 align:middle line:84% of the almost extinct sphenodon, with its median eye 00:52:26.950 --> 00:52:32.680 align:middle line:84% quite clear, but dull, like the opalescent jewel pendant 00:52:32.680 --> 00:52:35.270 align:middle line:90% on a woman's forehead. 00:52:35.270 --> 00:52:39.140 align:middle line:84% And the more than human, quite beautiful, 00:52:39.140 --> 00:52:44.390 align:middle line:84% young man who glows with intelligence from a point 00:52:44.390 --> 00:52:50.000 align:middle line:84% somewhere behind the middle of his brow. 00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:52.910 align:middle line:84% You guessed, because I grow older 00:52:52.910 --> 00:52:55.430 align:middle line:84% and you have learned from my work 00:52:55.430 --> 00:52:58.820 align:middle line:90% that I may possess some wisdom. 00:52:58.820 --> 00:53:02.990 align:middle line:84% Well, right or wrong, still, you ask 00:53:02.990 --> 00:53:08.530 align:middle line:90% me to say what I know of Plato. 00:53:08.530 --> 00:53:15.360 align:middle line:84% Just wait a while, though, before I say, love. 00:53:15.360 --> 00:53:21.480 align:middle line:84% Love, Socrates said, is a lack, a sign 00:53:21.480 --> 00:53:25.850 align:middle line:90% in the symposium of our poverty. 00:53:25.850 --> 00:53:34.380 align:middle line:84% You with your own love, should I say, your own need of music, 00:53:34.380 --> 00:53:38.540 align:middle line:84% whether it's the heart or folk rock of your own time, 00:53:38.540 --> 00:53:44.870 align:middle line:84% some of it androgynous, as David Bowie or Lou Reed, transformer 00:53:44.870 --> 00:53:51.100 align:middle line:84% album, that electric angelic name, or the classical pieces 00:53:51.100 --> 00:53:57.700 align:middle line:84% of mine would take to heart Bernstein's early serenade 00:53:57.700 --> 00:54:04.640 align:middle line:84% he based on Plato with his myth of that interior split. 00:54:04.640 --> 00:54:12.680 align:middle line:84% A scholar says male and female created he it, not them, 00:54:12.680 --> 00:54:15.290 align:middle line:90% in Genesis. 00:54:15.290 --> 00:54:19.310 align:middle line:84% Then this fable that Plato put to us 00:54:19.310 --> 00:54:24.710 align:middle line:84% and Bernstein set of Aristophanes, whose name I 00:54:24.710 --> 00:54:29.360 align:middle line:84% think means the shining vision of the best, 00:54:29.360 --> 00:54:33.750 align:middle line:90% but my Greek is no longer sure. 00:54:33.750 --> 00:54:38.730 align:middle line:84% Bernstein's program notes, like poets attempt to explain, 00:54:38.730 --> 00:54:44.070 align:middle line:84% do not articulate well the sweep of his own sound where 00:54:44.070 --> 00:54:48.300 align:middle line:84% he in that human or God given miracle 00:54:48.300 --> 00:54:52.620 align:middle line:84% plays out for us, again, also the lyrical love 00:54:52.620 --> 00:54:55.920 align:middle line:90% song of Agathon for woman. 00:54:55.920 --> 00:55:01.020 align:middle line:84% Then sings cacophonously Alcibiades's tipsy, 00:55:01.020 --> 00:55:07.210 align:middle line:84% horny entry, anxious as he was to put the make on Socrates 00:55:07.210 --> 00:55:11.860 align:middle line:90% his old general from the wars. 00:55:11.860 --> 00:55:17.740 align:middle line:84% Well, the man went home from him at the first bell of dawn, 00:55:17.740 --> 00:55:22.720 align:middle line:84% having drunk them all under the table and afraid, 00:55:22.720 --> 00:55:27.070 align:middle line:84% still, that he would be unable to teach him and us 00:55:27.070 --> 00:55:30.670 align:middle line:90% if he touched Alcibiades. 00:55:30.670 --> 00:55:37.270 align:middle line:84% Thus, he left him unfulfilled as the sky moved from black 00:55:37.270 --> 00:55:39.560 align:middle line:90% into light. 00:55:39.560 --> 00:55:43.780 align:middle line:90% The love that is a lack. 00:55:43.780 --> 00:55:52.450 align:middle line:84% Not that Socrates did not love Alcibiades, but that he did. 00:55:52.450 --> 00:55:55.570 align:middle line:84% The other love in Plato's Phaedrus 00:55:55.570 --> 00:55:59.290 align:middle line:84% is not thus the need of a man for a woman, 00:55:59.290 --> 00:56:03.160 align:middle line:84% or of man for a man, woman for a woman. 00:56:03.160 --> 00:56:05.650 align:middle line:84% Instead, it is the love that will 00:56:05.650 --> 00:56:13.390 align:middle line:84% be felt as fulfillment, the erotic burgeoning of wings 00:56:13.390 --> 00:56:20.110 align:middle line:84% whose dry buds become as damp again as the new born. 00:56:20.110 --> 00:56:22.630 align:middle line:84% The wholeness of the trio underneath 00:56:22.630 --> 00:56:28.030 align:middle line:84% the charioteers minding whip, the courageous white horse, 00:56:28.030 --> 00:56:30.070 align:middle line:90% and the desiring black." 00:56:30.070 --> 00:56:34.210 align:middle line:90% 00:56:34.210 --> 00:56:39.584 align:middle line:84% Part four, Rescue in Florida: The Friend. 00:56:39.584 --> 00:56:44.688 align:middle line:90% 00:56:44.688 --> 00:56:52.610 align:middle line:84% "It was poverty I felt that my reading when we met. 00:56:52.610 --> 00:56:56.330 align:middle line:84% I wrapped my legs together, my arms 00:56:56.330 --> 00:57:02.510 align:middle line:84% surrounding myself, fetal, vulnerable, and afraid, 00:57:02.510 --> 00:57:07.130 align:middle line:84% before I had to begin to perform. 00:57:07.130 --> 00:57:14.180 align:middle line:84% I felt beside me in the next chair you with your brown eyes 00:57:14.180 --> 00:57:17.700 align:middle line:90% and that lively brush of hair. 00:57:17.700 --> 00:57:23.450 align:middle line:84% Felt just a glimmer of your interest and was warmed, 00:57:23.450 --> 00:57:27.710 align:middle line:84% though, I had never seen you before, except someplace 00:57:27.710 --> 00:57:31.000 align:middle line:90% else inside myself. 00:57:31.000 --> 00:57:34.960 align:middle line:90% And so I read to you. 00:57:34.960 --> 00:57:38.320 align:middle line:84% Your eyes help the life inside me 00:57:38.320 --> 00:57:42.670 align:middle line:84% to unfurl again, like the slow moist 00:57:42.670 --> 00:57:46.680 align:middle line:90% tendrils of a primeval fern. 00:57:46.680 --> 00:57:49.860 align:middle line:84% And later driving with you, I was 00:57:49.860 --> 00:57:56.280 align:middle line:84% able to watch with ease before more dead I could not. 00:57:56.280 --> 00:58:00.450 align:middle line:84% The unbelievable shapely peacocks shimmering 00:58:00.450 --> 00:58:04.350 align:middle line:84% in the park and road, their graceful crested 00:58:04.350 --> 00:58:08.280 align:middle line:90% heads moving in a kind of dance. 00:58:08.280 --> 00:58:13.230 align:middle line:84% The albino one isolated as an exile, he is. 00:58:13.230 --> 00:58:19.380 align:middle line:84% His white tail dropped, but still gorgeously, formerly 00:58:19.380 --> 00:58:24.330 align:middle line:84% curled around like a unicorn's beard. 00:58:24.330 --> 00:58:29.250 align:middle line:84% Slow, as a ship does, a car moves 00:58:29.250 --> 00:58:35.670 align:middle line:84% through the hens and cocks, blue, brown, red, purple, 00:58:35.670 --> 00:58:38.130 align:middle line:84% and with a flashing metallic sculpture 00:58:38.130 --> 00:58:42.870 align:middle line:84% sheen among the unguent eucalyptus trees. 00:58:42.870 --> 00:58:45.870 align:middle line:84% And there, too many feathered eyes, 00:58:45.870 --> 00:58:49.290 align:middle line:84% it seems, reflecting in the Florida 00:58:49.290 --> 00:58:54.660 align:middle line:84% water, their elegant Baroque fans bursting occasionally 00:58:54.660 --> 00:58:59.940 align:middle line:84% in an orgasm which fixes their weaving in air 00:58:59.940 --> 00:59:04.370 align:middle line:90% a frieze of rockets. 00:59:04.370 --> 00:59:08.300 align:middle line:84% Perhaps, we can guess peacocks solve 00:59:08.300 --> 00:59:13.910 align:middle line:84% the problem of balancing their sex against their heads 00:59:13.910 --> 00:59:18.125 align:middle line:84% or, say, their burden against their gift." 00:59:18.125 --> 00:59:21.950 align:middle line:90% 00:59:21.950 --> 00:59:29.231 align:middle line:84% Part Five, Interlude: The Colombian Statue Archetype. 00:59:29.231 --> 00:59:32.458 align:middle line:90% 00:59:32.458 --> 00:59:37.430 align:middle line:84% "At the picnic you drove me to in the overfull car, 00:59:37.430 --> 00:59:41.410 align:middle line:90% I wanted to speak to you. 00:59:41.410 --> 00:59:46.630 align:middle line:84% But you ran off with Bob, your buddy, along the stream. 00:59:46.630 --> 00:59:48.970 align:middle line:84% Then there was a lovely interlude with two 00:59:48.970 --> 00:59:52.600 align:middle line:84% of your friends, Jay and Kathy, who 00:59:52.600 --> 00:59:57.250 align:middle line:84% walked through the green, white, and blue Florida pasture 00:59:57.250 --> 01:00:00.760 align:middle line:84% more as a brother and sister than as 01:00:00.760 --> 01:00:04.170 align:middle line:90% the lovers they now are. 01:00:04.170 --> 01:00:09.990 align:middle line:84% A great fig tree fixed the wandering clouds, the colors, 01:00:09.990 --> 01:00:14.300 align:middle line:90% and us there in time. 01:00:14.300 --> 01:00:18.020 align:middle line:84% They showed me their childhood river, 01:00:18.020 --> 01:00:21.590 align:middle line:84% live water spilling into the multi-colored bed 01:00:21.590 --> 01:00:25.820 align:middle line:84% of bright rock from three huge tunnels 01:00:25.820 --> 01:00:29.240 align:middle line:84% where, when they were kids, they had stripped 01:00:29.240 --> 01:00:33.890 align:middle line:84% and slid through one as a furious water moccasin 01:00:33.890 --> 01:00:37.460 align:middle line:84% slithered past and the two played 01:00:37.460 --> 01:00:41.580 align:middle line:90% that they were already dead. 01:00:41.580 --> 01:00:47.550 align:middle line:84% If death or, dare we say, the water moccasin have stepped 01:00:47.550 --> 01:00:54.270 align:middle line:84% on their young flesh, light sparkling along it, and slipped 01:00:54.270 --> 01:00:59.290 align:middle line:84% through Kathy's very white legs, she said, 01:00:59.290 --> 01:01:06.130 align:middle line:84% I thought of Artemis deflecting the sperm of Zeus 01:01:06.130 --> 01:01:10.990 align:middle line:90% along her thigh, still virgin. 01:01:10.990 --> 01:01:18.350 align:middle line:84% Kathy had no tan then, for it was still the spring. 01:01:18.350 --> 01:01:23.210 align:middle line:84% By that lightstream they knew, Jay and Kathy 01:01:23.210 --> 01:01:28.400 align:middle line:84% gave me the wood statue of a man from Colombia, 01:01:28.400 --> 01:01:31.850 align:middle line:84% a piece both of them loved and she 01:01:31.850 --> 01:01:37.130 align:middle line:84% had hoarded together with a few treasures of the young. 01:01:37.130 --> 01:01:43.170 align:middle line:84% Because of what they said, my poems gave first to them. 01:01:43.170 --> 01:01:46.230 align:middle line:84% I remember that once the story Neruda 01:01:46.230 --> 01:01:50.880 align:middle line:84% tells of the source in his early life for his sense of what 01:01:50.880 --> 01:01:57.100 align:middle line:84% poetry is, an exchange between strangers. 01:01:57.100 --> 01:02:02.230 align:middle line:84% The boy he had never seen beyond the garden wall, who had left 01:02:02.230 --> 01:02:04.930 align:middle line:90% a toy white lamb in a niche. 01:02:04.930 --> 01:02:11.320 align:middle line:84% And the child, Neruda took it, leaving his prized pine cone 01:02:11.320 --> 01:02:13.000 align:middle line:90% instead. 01:02:13.000 --> 01:02:19.180 align:middle line:84% And the anonymous boy clutched it quick for himself. 01:02:19.180 --> 01:02:26.740 align:middle line:84% The Colombian fellow is bearded, benevolent, hatted, a sack, 01:02:26.740 --> 01:02:30.070 align:middle line:84% like some kind of load at his back, 01:02:30.070 --> 01:02:36.700 align:middle line:84% and the jutting folds of his cloak like two low wings. 01:02:36.700 --> 01:02:42.070 align:middle line:84% He carries a big bag of gold or a fish in his, 01:02:42.070 --> 01:02:46.030 align:middle line:90% say, 50-year-old hands. 01:02:46.030 --> 01:02:49.690 align:middle line:84% Or he's pregnant with it, with the gift 01:02:49.690 --> 01:02:55.400 align:middle line:84% which balances perfectly the weight on his back. 01:02:55.400 --> 01:03:01.100 align:middle line:84% The bags tied up in some cloth that looks knotted in front. 01:03:01.100 --> 01:03:05.810 align:middle line:84% His beard parts above the pursed mouth of the sack. 01:03:05.810 --> 01:03:11.840 align:middle line:84% The breath he has breathed into it or it has blown inside him 01:03:11.840 --> 01:03:15.510 align:middle line:90% is given back, again. 01:03:15.510 --> 01:03:21.480 align:middle line:84% In him, old Colombian, the love of fulfillment 01:03:21.480 --> 01:03:28.830 align:middle line:84% he offers us matches exactly at his back the love of lack." 01:03:28.830 --> 01:03:35.140 align:middle line:90% 01:03:35.140 --> 01:03:36.070 align:middle line:90% Was it part six? 01:03:36.070 --> 01:03:40.850 align:middle line:90% 01:03:40.850 --> 01:03:46.434 align:middle line:84% Union: Father Son, Friend Archetype. 01:03:46.434 --> 01:03:49.892 align:middle line:90% 01:03:49.892 --> 01:03:53.690 align:middle line:84% "After the picnic, we all bought books 01:03:53.690 --> 01:03:59.660 align:middle line:84% at the flea market, Dostoevsky, Sarge, Camus, The 01:03:59.660 --> 01:04:05.390 align:middle line:84% Myth of Sisyphus, that patient man who's burdened boulder 01:04:05.390 --> 01:04:08.060 align:middle line:90% rolled up again and again. 01:04:08.060 --> 01:04:14.000 align:middle line:84% He learned to let become a piece of the given, his shoulder 01:04:14.000 --> 01:04:18.180 align:middle line:90% or his gaunt rock cheek. 01:04:18.180 --> 01:04:23.730 align:middle line:84% Then, away from the others, we headed for the beach. 01:04:23.730 --> 01:04:29.550 align:middle line:84% We were scared away from Daytona, a mere sea of cars, 01:04:29.550 --> 01:04:35.710 align:middle line:84% by the seasonal race, the one that's all too human. 01:04:35.710 --> 01:04:39.430 align:middle line:84% And next, New Smyrna Beach, whose name 01:04:39.430 --> 01:04:44.470 align:middle line:84% suggests wars of heroes brought down to us 01:04:44.470 --> 01:04:49.580 align:middle line:84% by Herodotus and the lucid histories of Thucydides. 01:04:49.580 --> 01:04:52.180 align:middle line:90% 01:04:52.180 --> 01:04:57.610 align:middle line:84% In Smyrna, there burns a small, warm aura 01:04:57.610 --> 01:05:03.190 align:middle line:90% of figs and of Tiresias. 01:05:03.190 --> 01:05:10.120 align:middle line:84% That dark, absolutely rich open place is Plato's full love 01:05:10.120 --> 01:05:15.730 align:middle line:84% of landscape, unlike the lack at Daytona . 01:05:15.730 --> 01:05:20.560 align:middle line:84% Here the waves moved onshore between hills, 01:05:20.560 --> 01:05:27.310 align:middle line:84% gray on black on gray on white, like layers of feeling, 01:05:27.310 --> 01:05:34.660 align:middle line:84% of touch, of thought, of insight that we carry around with us. 01:05:34.660 --> 01:05:39.010 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, gentle, sometimes, violent 01:05:39.010 --> 01:05:42.370 align:middle line:84% as the violet pink and red levels 01:05:42.370 --> 01:05:46.960 align:middle line:84% in that vast vagina, which holds the ancient sea 01:05:46.960 --> 01:05:50.440 align:middle line:90% between its earthen walls. 01:05:50.440 --> 01:05:56.650 align:middle line:84% Strata of many shaded sand brought to life inside some 01:05:56.650 --> 01:05:58.890 align:middle line:90% goddesses our glass. 01:05:58.890 --> 01:06:02.640 align:middle line:90% 01:06:02.640 --> 01:06:09.500 align:middle line:84% It was beautiful, but cold in New Smyrna Beach. 01:06:09.500 --> 01:06:14.540 align:middle line:84% This, somehow, brought us together, huddled, 01:06:14.540 --> 01:06:18.650 align:middle line:84% holding on to each other against the black hill. 01:06:18.650 --> 01:06:22.880 align:middle line:90% My hair gray and yours brown. 01:06:22.880 --> 01:06:30.330 align:middle line:84% Blue together mixed with wind almost invisible in the dark. 01:06:30.330 --> 01:06:35.610 align:middle line:84% I felt all the elements with us at all times. 01:06:35.610 --> 01:06:40.810 align:middle line:84% The waves rushed in again, still. 01:06:40.810 --> 01:06:43.810 align:middle line:84% You'd made love with your girl, you said. 01:06:43.810 --> 01:06:49.990 align:middle line:84% Here, this very place, in the warmer new year. 01:06:49.990 --> 01:06:53.410 align:middle line:84% One of the deeper, bright planes of the waves 01:06:53.410 --> 01:06:59.160 align:middle line:84% was that one, that generative giving. 01:06:59.160 --> 01:07:06.340 align:middle line:84% Friends, father and son, brothers, we clung together, 01:07:06.340 --> 01:07:12.250 align:middle line:84% digging our feet deep into the black soil of the sea's hill 01:07:12.250 --> 01:07:16.780 align:middle line:84% burrowing back in the cave, our bodies molded, 01:07:16.780 --> 01:07:21.580 align:middle line:84% as if to feel in touch with the Earth that binds us 01:07:21.580 --> 01:07:26.470 align:middle line:84% all together and keeps us from blowing away 01:07:26.470 --> 01:07:30.820 align:middle line:84% in those powerful winds that will fill and shake 01:07:30.820 --> 01:07:36.880 align:middle line:84% at us always at the old man hill with its veins of time 01:07:36.880 --> 01:07:41.550 align:middle line:90% like frozen waves upon waves. 01:07:41.550 --> 01:07:47.340 align:middle line:84% It was as if we were his own poised burden and gift. 01:07:47.340 --> 01:07:51.930 align:middle line:84% The young man born out of the older or the old 01:07:51.930 --> 01:07:56.310 align:middle line:84% from the young, the two of us planted there together 01:07:56.310 --> 01:08:01.320 align:middle line:84% beside the loud sea at a hunched hill filmed 01:08:01.320 --> 01:08:07.680 align:middle line:84% with the fog like that dark Colombian man's brown aged, 01:08:07.680 --> 01:08:09.420 align:middle line:90% sculpted legs." 01:08:09.420 --> 01:08:15.610 align:middle line:90% 01:08:15.610 --> 01:08:24.500 align:middle line:84% Part seven, First Reunion in New Orleans: 01:08:24.500 --> 01:08:30.210 align:middle line:90% The Father as King of Rebels. 01:08:30.210 --> 01:08:34.300 align:middle line:84% "In New Orleans, we parked with cars. 01:08:34.300 --> 01:08:39.880 align:middle line:84% We walk the blocks to Mardi Gras and put on another mask 01:08:39.880 --> 01:08:45.609 align:middle line:84% to catch the bright luminescent beads and gold doubloons flung 01:08:45.609 --> 01:08:48.850 align:middle line:84% from floats cruising the full streets 01:08:48.850 --> 01:08:54.310 align:middle line:84% in endless fabulous parades toward the goal. 01:08:54.310 --> 01:08:59.290 align:middle line:84% The tractors lugging floats for the crew of great souls 01:08:59.290 --> 01:09:02.590 align:middle line:84% wish their way toward the engines of ships, 01:09:02.590 --> 01:09:06.670 align:middle line:84% because these floats move quite like ships 01:09:06.670 --> 01:09:08.560 align:middle line:90% passing in the night. 01:09:08.560 --> 01:09:12.520 align:middle line:84% Clown shapes piss behind parades, 01:09:12.520 --> 01:09:16.330 align:middle line:84% for thousands are drinking beer in the streets 01:09:16.330 --> 01:09:19.750 align:middle line:84% from great white paper cups or they 01:09:19.750 --> 01:09:24.279 align:middle line:84% arc the red and light wine out of goat skins 01:09:24.279 --> 01:09:26.380 align:middle line:90% into their mouths. 01:09:26.380 --> 01:09:33.550 align:middle line:84% Parades are plays before our own audience. 01:09:33.550 --> 01:09:37.180 align:middle line:84% We watch the progress of King Proteus 01:09:37.180 --> 01:09:42.279 align:middle line:84% who changes configurations in the dark like us. 01:09:42.279 --> 01:09:48.609 align:middle line:84% There were floats for Zeus, Aphrodite, and for Diane. 01:09:48.609 --> 01:09:53.890 align:middle line:84% I think, well, Michael, here we go again, 01:09:53.890 --> 01:10:00.670 align:middle line:84% costumed with painted faces like our thousand anonymous friends, 01:10:00.670 --> 01:10:04.000 align:middle line:84% levels of beads about our necks, wrists, 01:10:04.000 --> 01:10:07.090 align:middle line:90% and the belt loops of our pants. 01:10:07.090 --> 01:10:12.130 align:middle line:84% Why, we have so many beads, we heave them back again 01:10:12.130 --> 01:10:15.490 align:middle line:90% in an amiable exchange. 01:10:15.490 --> 01:10:18.070 align:middle line:90% We shove and shout. 01:10:18.070 --> 01:10:23.140 align:middle line:84% We touch and dance in the live New Orleans streets. 01:10:23.140 --> 01:10:28.900 align:middle line:84% And the men and women, both old and young, notice us as we 01:10:28.900 --> 01:10:30.070 align:middle line:90% them. 01:10:30.070 --> 01:10:36.440 align:middle line:84% We are each other's dream within a dream. 01:10:36.440 --> 01:10:39.740 align:middle line:84% After the parades and the Great Cathedral 01:10:39.740 --> 01:10:43.220 align:middle line:84% of Saint Louis King of France, oldest 01:10:43.220 --> 01:10:48.020 align:middle line:84% in the land on the same site where its small predecessor was 01:10:48.020 --> 01:10:55.820 align:middle line:84% blown apart 250 years ago by the greater King Tornado, 01:10:55.820 --> 01:11:00.110 align:middle line:84% after The Cabildo, where our ancient fathers signed in lieu 01:11:00.110 --> 01:11:03.500 align:middle line:84% of us for the Louisiana Purchase, 01:11:03.500 --> 01:11:06.980 align:middle line:90% we go for New Orleans jazz. 01:11:06.980 --> 01:11:12.830 align:middle line:84% And here, sweet Emma, singing and still playing a mean piano 01:11:12.830 --> 01:11:17.990 align:middle line:84% at age 89, garter bells on one leg, red 01:11:17.990 --> 01:11:23.870 align:middle line:84% capped just as she had when jazz was born in Preservation Hall. 01:11:23.870 --> 01:11:27.500 align:middle line:84% Well named just off Bourbon Street 01:11:27.500 --> 01:11:30.440 align:middle line:84% with its black lace of delicate worked 01:11:30.440 --> 01:11:33.920 align:middle line:84% iron balconies and the old absinthe house 01:11:33.920 --> 01:11:36.500 align:middle line:84% where King Faulkner met and sipped 01:11:36.500 --> 01:11:41.300 align:middle line:84% double shots of Jack Daniels with his friend, elder King 01:11:41.300 --> 01:11:44.530 align:middle line:90% Sherwood Anderson. 01:11:44.530 --> 01:11:50.080 align:middle line:84% On fat Tuesday night, as the rebels moved to their height, 01:11:50.080 --> 01:11:54.280 align:middle line:84% we leave and drive in the truck of a guy 01:11:54.280 --> 01:11:59.770 align:middle line:84% we had met through the strange moonlighted Louisiana 01:11:59.770 --> 01:12:07.270 align:middle line:84% landscape I had never seen by day toward his sculptures kiln 01:12:07.270 --> 01:12:10.270 align:middle line:90% 12 miles out. 01:12:10.270 --> 01:12:16.120 align:middle line:84% Trees dropped their gentle debris of moss on us 01:12:16.120 --> 01:12:21.850 align:middle line:84% we stopped only once to pick and give each other the newly 01:12:21.850 --> 01:12:25.270 align:middle line:84% blooming reaching azalea flowers, which 01:12:25.270 --> 01:12:30.790 align:middle line:84% seem to glow under the moon all in the same color. 01:12:30.790 --> 01:12:35.320 align:middle line:84% Although, we know each fresh pale cluster, 01:12:35.320 --> 01:12:38.710 align:middle line:84% like a feather plucked from a peacock's tail, 01:12:38.710 --> 01:12:43.000 align:middle line:90% is radiantly different. 01:12:43.000 --> 01:12:49.180 align:middle line:84% This seems an oracle of what we find just ahead, 01:12:49.180 --> 01:12:56.350 align:middle line:84% a huge monolithic concrete kiln glowing quiet as the moon 01:12:56.350 --> 01:13:02.140 align:middle line:84% itself, all filled up with white hot lustrous ghosts 01:13:02.140 --> 01:13:06.230 align:middle line:90% of Earth our friend had made. 01:13:06.230 --> 01:13:09.620 align:middle line:84% We are not amazed to find they've 01:13:09.620 --> 01:13:16.250 align:middle line:84% reached their peak of heat alone in the middle of a blue field 01:13:16.250 --> 01:13:19.730 align:middle line:90% as Mardi Gras hits frenzy. 01:13:19.730 --> 01:13:25.580 align:middle line:84% And consumed, burned up, everything falls away from us 01:13:25.580 --> 01:13:31.130 align:middle line:84% under the weight moon like revelers' masks and costumes, 01:13:31.130 --> 01:13:37.505 align:middle line:84% leaving us stark and naked there as for making love or art." 01:13:37.505 --> 01:13:43.540 align:middle line:90% 01:13:43.540 --> 01:13:58.350 align:middle line:84% And, finally, part eight, Second Reunion in San Francisco: 01:13:58.350 --> 01:13:59.840 align:middle line:90% The Lost Son. 01:13:59.840 --> 01:14:06.015 align:middle line:90% 01:14:06.015 --> 01:14:11.560 align:middle line:84% "When you visit San Francisco, it's my turn to drive. 01:14:11.560 --> 01:14:16.300 align:middle line:84% White old Corvair, not your new car. 01:14:16.300 --> 01:14:21.760 align:middle line:84% Mine, like a galley, even has gills, outlets for oars 01:14:21.760 --> 01:14:28.260 align:middle line:84% manned by machine slaves through these chiaroscuro streets. 01:14:28.260 --> 01:14:35.160 align:middle line:84% My pistons poke, and halt, and fart, show us both their need 01:14:35.160 --> 01:14:38.140 align:middle line:90% for a rest. 01:14:38.140 --> 01:14:42.970 align:middle line:84% I remember the last time I saw you in your car. 01:14:42.970 --> 01:14:47.590 align:middle line:84% I read Contemporary Sculpture in Florida. 01:14:47.590 --> 01:14:51.130 align:middle line:84% You living, laughing in the front 01:14:51.130 --> 01:14:54.520 align:middle line:84% as if to balance its trunk lid open, 01:14:54.520 --> 01:14:57.640 align:middle line:90% extending a makeshift coffin. 01:14:57.640 --> 01:15:00.700 align:middle line:84% Your own hollow coffee table, which 01:15:00.700 --> 01:15:06.460 align:middle line:84% you plan to climb in and out of again in an experimental movie 01:15:06.460 --> 01:15:08.740 align:middle line:84% your friend would make at school. 01:15:08.740 --> 01:15:12.140 align:middle line:90% 01:15:12.140 --> 01:15:16.220 align:middle line:84% We drive now for your welcoming drink 01:15:16.220 --> 01:15:22.670 align:middle line:84% at the Cliff House, which is so absurdly painted a false water 01:15:22.670 --> 01:15:28.010 align:middle line:84% blue sailboat white with comic book clouds 01:15:28.010 --> 01:15:32.870 align:middle line:84% to make us guess, gliding down streets that will soon 01:15:32.870 --> 01:15:36.740 align:middle line:84% hit the sea, as we would, since it's right there where 01:15:36.740 --> 01:15:37.865 align:middle line:90% it has always been. 01:15:37.865 --> 01:15:44.470 align:middle line:90% 01:15:44.470 --> 01:15:49.290 align:middle line:84% When I was just married a generation ago, 01:15:49.290 --> 01:15:53.220 align:middle line:84% well, a whole life hence, my wife and I 01:15:53.220 --> 01:15:57.750 align:middle line:90% had salmon steak in this place. 01:15:57.750 --> 01:16:03.060 align:middle line:84% Now the saws whine to make it new again. 01:16:03.060 --> 01:16:06.420 align:middle line:84% This house has burnt, and been built, and burnt, 01:16:06.420 --> 01:16:10.220 align:middle line:90% and built three times. 01:16:10.220 --> 01:16:15.140 align:middle line:84% We gaze out of the corner window just over the sea, 01:16:15.140 --> 01:16:18.500 align:middle line:84% there where the sun simply all of a sudden 01:16:18.500 --> 01:16:25.250 align:middle line:84% descends and it's golden red apollonian last moments, as 01:16:25.250 --> 01:16:30.590 align:middle line:84% in its first, illuminating the foam from which Aphrodite 01:16:30.590 --> 01:16:32.920 align:middle line:90% sprang. 01:16:32.920 --> 01:16:36.940 align:middle line:90% This ocean turns, sweeps. 01:16:36.940 --> 01:16:41.650 align:middle line:84% Now it is on the beach at New Smyrna where it was dark 01:16:41.650 --> 01:16:49.510 align:middle line:84% or as unseeing Homer knew of the old world Smyrna quite black. 01:16:49.510 --> 01:16:54.190 align:middle line:84% He sat by the Mythic River, which runs through the MIlos 01:16:54.190 --> 01:16:57.580 align:middle line:90% Valley near Diana's baths. 01:16:57.580 --> 01:17:03.580 align:middle line:84% Diana, the virgin helper, has difficult births, 01:17:03.580 --> 01:17:07.990 align:middle line:90% patroness of crossways. 01:17:07.990 --> 01:17:13.570 align:middle line:84% Over us in Sutro Park, her statue waits, 01:17:13.570 --> 01:17:22.040 align:middle line:84% its bow arm broke like a flood crescent of her ancient moon. 01:17:22.040 --> 01:17:26.300 align:middle line:84% And below us at the Cliff House, the spread mud 01:17:26.300 --> 01:17:30.590 align:middle line:84% landscape of ruins of the elaborate glass pavilion, 01:17:30.590 --> 01:17:37.550 align:middle line:84% the Sutro baths given to San Francisco by a man wealthy, 01:17:37.550 --> 01:17:41.420 align:middle line:84% but guilty for the deaths of coolies 01:17:41.420 --> 01:17:48.330 align:middle line:84% who built his railroad shafts through the California rock. 01:17:48.330 --> 01:17:52.560 align:middle line:84% Super May Day Festival at Sutro baths, 01:17:52.560 --> 01:17:58.530 align:middle line:84% April 30th, 1898, commencing at 10:00 in the morning, 01:17:58.530 --> 01:18:00.390 align:middle line:90% lasting all day. 01:18:00.390 --> 01:18:03.240 align:middle line:84% Lots of fun for the little folks. 01:18:03.240 --> 01:18:06.810 align:middle line:84% Beautiful queen and triple maples. 01:18:06.810 --> 01:18:09.330 align:middle line:90% Gorgeous butterfly ballet. 01:18:09.330 --> 01:18:13.950 align:middle line:84% 1,000 kids in Grand March and fancy dances. 01:18:13.950 --> 01:18:17.850 align:middle line:84% Catch true color and detail in giant camera. 01:18:17.850 --> 01:18:21.220 align:middle line:90% 01:18:21.220 --> 01:18:27.280 align:middle line:84% We've seen in souvenir shops the flat, old sepia photographs 01:18:27.280 --> 01:18:31.300 align:middle line:90% of those now burned baths. 01:18:31.300 --> 01:18:35.590 align:middle line:84% All men, it seems, as though they were not. 01:18:35.590 --> 01:18:39.130 align:middle line:84% Bathing suits clean up to their shoulders 01:18:39.130 --> 01:18:42.040 align:middle line:90% and no mothers around. 01:18:42.040 --> 01:18:47.470 align:middle line:84% Brothers of Athene, who was born from the bones and labyrinths 01:18:47.470 --> 01:18:50.650 align:middle line:90% of her father's brain. 01:18:50.650 --> 01:18:53.680 align:middle line:84% With their arms crossed, they pose 01:18:53.680 --> 01:18:58.090 align:middle line:84% arrogant as hunters or lynchers, whose pictures I 01:18:58.090 --> 01:19:00.920 align:middle line:90% remember as a kid. 01:19:00.920 --> 01:19:05.540 align:middle line:84% Diana turned hunstmen into stags and let 01:19:05.540 --> 01:19:13.800 align:middle line:84% them be torn apart by their own hounds if they smiled at her. 01:19:13.800 --> 01:19:17.880 align:middle line:84% Smyrnar columnists, the encyclopedia says, 01:19:17.880 --> 01:19:21.960 align:middle line:90% were from Lesbos, we remember. 01:19:21.960 --> 01:19:28.090 align:middle line:84% But Lesbos just fuck all this and have our drink. 01:19:28.090 --> 01:19:32.220 align:middle line:84% Look out at the kids pulling on that rock, 01:19:32.220 --> 01:19:36.030 align:middle line:84% famous for years, though, the young fishers surely 01:19:36.030 --> 01:19:43.110 align:middle line:84% don't care, joined by a peer of sorts to shore. 01:19:43.110 --> 01:19:46.830 align:middle line:84% With the waves so white, furious, 01:19:46.830 --> 01:19:53.520 align:middle line:84% this dangerous day, we know it's cold for them. 01:19:53.520 --> 01:19:58.680 align:middle line:84% We shiver, sipping our champagne, which 01:19:58.680 --> 01:20:03.630 align:middle line:84% froths like the foam outside, as we watch 01:20:03.630 --> 01:20:09.930 align:middle line:84% the play or talk wonders, easy, happy, even 01:20:09.930 --> 01:20:14.280 align:middle line:90% if we are a bit chilly. 01:20:14.280 --> 01:20:19.830 align:middle line:84% Christ, a kid slips quickly off the rough rock 01:20:19.830 --> 01:20:23.360 align:middle line:90% in front of our very eyes. 01:20:23.360 --> 01:20:26.300 align:middle line:90% We gulp another drink. 01:20:26.300 --> 01:20:32.300 align:middle line:84% We blink, listening to seals above the rock increase 01:20:32.300 --> 01:20:37.340 align:middle line:84% their bark over shocked silence inside us. 01:20:37.340 --> 01:20:40.220 align:middle line:84% And catching out of the corners of our eyes 01:20:40.220 --> 01:20:48.010 align:middle line:84% the gulfs rising up, wings flash white on gray. 01:20:48.010 --> 01:20:54.610 align:middle line:84% Suddenly, I realize you and I, as we sip cocktails, 01:20:54.610 --> 01:20:59.650 align:middle line:84% do not watch the topless and predictable entertainment 01:20:59.650 --> 01:21:06.350 align:middle line:84% of the big town, but we are seeing a boy drown. 01:21:06.350 --> 01:21:10.220 align:middle line:84% I put my civilized drink down and run 01:21:10.220 --> 01:21:14.390 align:middle line:84% through the tourist-crammed bar to the telephone. 01:21:14.390 --> 01:21:19.280 align:middle line:84% A friend of the boys is running up along the shore. 01:21:19.280 --> 01:21:23.870 align:middle line:90% Soon, wails of police cars. 01:21:23.870 --> 01:21:29.240 align:middle line:84% Firemen stand around in their weird black pants, 01:21:29.240 --> 01:21:33.590 align:middle line:84% not well suited for finding the drowned, 01:21:33.590 --> 01:21:40.370 align:middle line:84% but hustling still for death or for the human hopeful, 01:21:40.370 --> 01:21:46.560 align:middle line:84% giving of breath, waiting to be shown to the site. 01:21:46.560 --> 01:21:53.070 align:middle line:84% Some watchers swing coin binoculars out to the points. 01:21:53.070 --> 01:22:00.040 align:middle line:84% Old signs in the sand say, fun for everybody here. 01:22:00.040 --> 01:22:05.850 align:middle line:90% Pay dimes to see somebody drown. 01:22:05.850 --> 01:22:10.030 align:middle line:84% Some people still able to manage their martinis. 01:22:10.030 --> 01:22:13.130 align:middle line:90% 01:22:13.130 --> 01:22:20.440 align:middle line:84% We stare at the stark old rock from the wood rail outside. 01:22:20.440 --> 01:22:27.780 align:middle line:84% There are no Florida peacocks here, odd as they are. 01:22:27.780 --> 01:22:32.280 align:middle line:90% No iridescent Iowa pheasants. 01:22:32.280 --> 01:22:38.400 align:middle line:84% Giddy seagulls jabber around and the sandpipers pick their way. 01:22:38.400 --> 01:22:41.500 align:middle line:90% 01:22:41.500 --> 01:22:49.450 align:middle line:84% Well, we are all voyeurs, vultures around the boy who 01:22:49.450 --> 01:22:52.340 align:middle line:90% cannot be found. 01:22:52.340 --> 01:22:56.900 align:middle line:84% Death rising cold in his groin from the thrust 01:22:56.900 --> 01:23:02.890 align:middle line:84% of the sea that once gave all of us our birth. 01:23:02.890 --> 01:23:07.030 align:middle line:84% This kid gives up his life in breath, 01:23:07.030 --> 01:23:13.720 align:middle line:84% which surfaces white someplace by that rock a little while, 01:23:13.720 --> 01:23:18.550 align:middle line:84% long enough for me to feel your turmoil churning in myself. 01:23:18.550 --> 01:23:21.460 align:middle line:90% 01:23:21.460 --> 01:23:26.980 align:middle line:84% The coast guard's sharp chopper struggles overhead, 01:23:26.980 --> 01:23:29.950 align:middle line:84% hovering above this sunset-lit stage 01:23:29.950 --> 01:23:32.980 align:middle line:90% before our strange audience. 01:23:32.980 --> 01:23:38.530 align:middle line:84% A fake boat out of the dream rivers of Ohio, 01:23:38.530 --> 01:23:41.980 align:middle line:84% a ship from the beaches near Orlando, 01:23:41.980 --> 01:23:47.800 align:middle line:84% and with a lurid hued hint of your own red car. 01:23:47.800 --> 01:23:53.200 align:middle line:84% It whirs impotently, spider-like parody 01:23:53.200 --> 01:23:59.280 align:middle line:84% of God, which has split the shot with color webs of air 01:23:59.280 --> 01:24:01.320 align:middle line:90% and of human breath. 01:24:01.320 --> 01:24:08.190 align:middle line:84% Jealous Minerva, useless deus ex machina. 01:24:08.190 --> 01:24:12.390 align:middle line:84% But the drama we are all of us caught up in 01:24:12.390 --> 01:24:17.250 align:middle line:84% has let you stay alive here beside me 01:24:17.250 --> 01:24:21.060 align:middle line:90% in a blue coat, Michael. 01:24:21.060 --> 01:24:25.770 align:middle line:84% For you have not slept with a six or a seven-year-old kid 01:24:25.770 --> 01:24:29.460 align:middle line:84% off the treacherous fiscal cliff as we 01:24:29.460 --> 01:24:33.300 align:middle line:84% did our best to have a happy reunion drink, 01:24:33.300 --> 01:24:41.400 align:middle line:84% not funereal sips out of that mixed chalice all of us know. 01:24:41.400 --> 01:24:45.970 align:middle line:84% Perhaps, it is your life or yours, 01:24:45.970 --> 01:24:52.510 align:middle line:84% or yours, or yours that I felt upstairs 01:24:52.510 --> 01:24:59.470 align:middle line:84% in those luminous and dark hidden levels of my own still 01:24:59.470 --> 01:25:01.640 align:middle line:90% quite navigable ship." 01:25:01.640 --> 01:25:06.390 align:middle line:90% 01:25:06.390 --> 01:25:10.240 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 01:25:10.240 --> 01:25:13.340 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 01:25:13.340 --> 01:25:13.840 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 01:25:13.840 --> 01:25:18.097 align:middle line:90% 01:25:18.097 --> 01:25:18.930 align:middle line:90% Thank you very much. 01:25:18.930 --> 01:25:22.750 align:middle line:90% 01:25:22.750 --> 01:25:24.510 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 01:25:24.510 --> 01:25:31.000 align:middle line:90%