WEBVTT

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Well, I guess I'll
read the last poem.

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The title of it is "Spit."

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The epigraph comes
from a book that

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was called the Black Book of
Poland, that was published

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during the second war
when no one believed

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that what was supposedly
happening in Europe

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was actually happening.

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And there was another
book soon after called

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the Black Book of Europe.

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And about 10 years
ago, I was working

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on a poem called "A
Day for Anne Frank,"

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and I came across
this, the sentence.

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And it got into my mind, and
I tried for about 10 years

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to write a poem about
it and never could.

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And then finally,
I started writing

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a poem about how hard it was
to write a poem about it.

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And then I wrote it,
and threw out that--

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very funny.

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The sentence from the
Black Book of Poland

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is, "then the son of
the 'superior races

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began to spit into
the rabbi's mouth,

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so the rabbi could continue
to spit on the Torah."

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"After 30 years, it's
still overpowering.

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The SS man with this hard
hair and his uniform.

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The rabbi probably
in a torn overcoat,

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probably with a stained
beard that the other would

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be clutching.

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The Torah, God's
word on the altar.

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The letters blurring
under the blended phlegm.

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The rabbi's parched mouth.

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The SS man totally
absorbed, obsessed

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with perfect humiliation.

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30 years, and what can
you say about the soldiers

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waiting impatiently
outside in the cold?

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About the one chafing his
hands thinking, kill him now.

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While back there the lips
of the rabbi and the other

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would have brushed.

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And if time had
stopped like that,

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you would have thought
they were lovers.

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So lightly kissing, the sharp
Luger hand under the dear chin,

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the eyes furled slightly.

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And then when it started again,
the eyelashes of both of them

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shyly fluttering as wonderfully
as the pulse of a baby.

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Maybe we don't have to
talk about it at all,

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it's still all the same thing.

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The war first, that happens
and stops happening,

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but is always somehow right
there twisting and hardening

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us.

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Then what we'd make of God,
words spit, degradation,

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murder, shame, every
conceivable torment.

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Then this strangely
compelling community,

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of victim and torturer.

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All these ways to live
that have something

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to do with how we
live, and that we're

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almost ashamed to use as
metaphors for what goes on

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in us, but that we do anyway.

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So that love is battle,
and we watch ourselves

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in love become maddened with
pride and incompleteness.

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And God is what it
is, when we're alone

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wrestling with
solitude and everything

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speaking in our souls, turns
against us like his fury.

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And just facing
another person, there

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are so much terror
and hatred that's

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spitting in someone's mouth.

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Making him defile all
of his own meaning,

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would signify the struggle
to survive each other

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and what we will enact
to accomplish it.

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There is another legend.

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It's about Moses.

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That when they first
brought him as a child

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before pharaoh,
the king tested him

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by putting a diamond and a
live coal in front of him.

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And Moses picked
up the red amber,

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and popped it into his mouth.

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So for the rest of his
life, he was tongue tied

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and Aaron had to speak for him.

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I wonder what his
scarred tongue must

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have felt like in his mouth.

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It must have been like always
carrying something there

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that weighed too much.

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Something leathery and dead,
that felt as though its

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greatest gravity was to
loll out like an auction's.

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And when it moved, it must have
felt like a thick embryo slowly

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coming alive, butting itself
against the inner sides

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of his teeth and cheeks.

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And when God burned in the bush,
how could he not cleave to him?

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How could he not know
that all men were on fire,

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and that every word men
said would burn forever

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in pain unquenchably
and that God knew it?

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And would say nothing himself
ever again beyond this, ever.

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And would only live in the flesh
that men use like firewood.

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In all the caves of the body,
the gut cave, the speech cave.

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He would slobber and howl
like something just barely

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a man, that beats itself again
and again against the dark,

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moist walls away from the light.

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Away from whatever would be
like for this last eternity.

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Now therefore go, he said,
and I will be with thy mouth."

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[APPLAUSE]

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[INTERPOSING VOICES]

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