WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.200 align:middle line:90% 00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:08.530 align:middle line:84% I'd like to remind you that our last reading for the year 00:00:08.530 --> 00:00:12.970 align:middle line:84% will be next Thursday, the 10th, Modern Languages Auditorium 00:00:12.970 --> 00:00:18.010 align:middle line:84% at 8:30 and our visiting poet be Philip Levine. 00:00:18.010 --> 00:00:20.500 align:middle line:84% If you cannot come to the Thursday reading, 00:00:20.500 --> 00:00:25.960 align:middle line:84% Mr Levine will also read at Pima College next Tuesday night 00:00:25.960 --> 00:00:29.965 align:middle line:84% in their cafeteria area, it's in their main building. 00:00:29.965 --> 00:00:34.080 align:middle line:90% 00:00:34.080 --> 00:00:36.210 align:middle line:84% We will follow the same pattern as last night, 00:00:36.210 --> 00:00:39.987 align:middle line:84% we will have two readers and then a brownie break, and then 00:00:39.987 --> 00:00:40.695 align:middle line:90% two more readers. 00:00:40.695 --> 00:00:44.180 align:middle line:90% 00:00:44.180 --> 00:00:47.210 align:middle line:84% I wish that all of you could have attended the two panel 00:00:47.210 --> 00:00:50.690 align:middle line:84% discussions this afternoon and yesterday afternoon to hear 00:00:50.690 --> 00:00:52.667 align:middle line:90% the men work together. 00:00:52.667 --> 00:00:54.500 align:middle line:84% And we made a recording of it if some of you 00:00:54.500 --> 00:00:57.630 align:middle line:84% are interested in coming by and listen to it, 00:00:57.630 --> 00:01:01.850 align:middle line:84% and if you're lucky we'll make a transcription. 00:01:01.850 --> 00:01:05.300 align:middle line:90% It depends on how hard it is. 00:01:05.300 --> 00:01:06.890 align:middle line:90% Steve Dunn is our first reader. 00:01:06.890 --> 00:01:09.680 align:middle line:90% He's read for us before. 00:01:09.680 --> 00:01:12.650 align:middle line:90% Great pleasure to have him back. 00:01:12.650 --> 00:01:15.740 align:middle line:84% We tried to get Steve to wear his t-shirt which 00:01:15.740 --> 00:01:18.980 align:middle line:84% calls himself a minor New Jersey poet but would not cooperate. 00:01:18.980 --> 00:01:23.180 align:middle line:90% 00:01:23.180 --> 00:01:25.550 align:middle line:84% Marvin Bell told me that each of the men 00:01:25.550 --> 00:01:29.330 align:middle line:84% had to decide if he was a major poet and a minor tennis player 00:01:29.330 --> 00:01:33.350 align:middle line:84% or a major tennis player and a minor poet 00:01:33.350 --> 00:01:36.470 align:middle line:84% but no one would ever tell me the answers 00:01:36.470 --> 00:01:39.783 align:middle line:90% that they gave themselves. 00:01:39.783 --> 00:01:41.450 align:middle line:84% I haven't seen them play tennis but I've 00:01:41.450 --> 00:01:44.750 align:middle line:84% heard them all read now and I think they're all wonderful. 00:01:44.750 --> 00:01:49.550 align:middle line:84% Steve Dunn has published three books- 5 Impersonations, 00:01:49.550 --> 00:01:52.340 align:middle line:84% Looking for Holes in the Ceiling, 00:01:52.340 --> 00:01:55.820 align:middle line:90% and Full of Lust and Good Usage. 00:01:55.820 --> 00:01:59.630 align:middle line:84% His work appears in The Anthology 2, American Poetry 00:01:59.630 --> 00:02:02.630 align:middle line:90% Anthology, and many others. 00:02:02.630 --> 00:02:06.470 align:middle line:84% Since 1974, he has been Poet in Residence 00:02:06.470 --> 00:02:10.070 align:middle line:84% at Stockton State College in New Jersey, Stephen Dunn. 00:02:10.070 --> 00:02:30.880 align:middle line:90% 00:02:30.880 --> 00:02:32.522 align:middle line:90% This poem is called What. 00:02:32.522 --> 00:02:35.468 align:middle line:90% 00:02:35.468 --> 00:02:39.980 align:middle line:84% What starts things are the accidents behind the eyes, 00:02:39.980 --> 00:02:43.970 align:middle line:84% touched off by, say the missing cheekbone of a woman 00:02:43.970 --> 00:02:46.760 align:middle line:90% who might have been beautiful. 00:02:46.760 --> 00:02:50.450 align:middle line:84% It is thinking about your transplanted lifeline going 00:02:50.450 --> 00:02:54.950 align:middle line:84% places in someone else's palm, or the suicidal games 00:02:54.950 --> 00:02:58.910 align:middle line:84% your mind plays with the edge of old wounds, 00:02:58.910 --> 00:03:02.510 align:middle line:84% or something you couldn't share with your lover. 00:03:02.510 --> 00:03:05.780 align:middle line:84% There are no endings, people die between birthdays 00:03:05.780 --> 00:03:08.030 align:middle line:90% and go on for years. 00:03:08.030 --> 00:03:10.490 align:middle line:84% What stops things for a moment are 00:03:10.490 --> 00:03:13.460 align:middle line:84% the words you found for the last bit of light 00:03:13.460 --> 00:03:14.630 align:middle line:90% you think there is. 00:03:14.630 --> 00:03:24.440 align:middle line:90% 00:03:24.440 --> 00:03:29.660 align:middle line:84% This is a, having read here before and knowing 00:03:29.660 --> 00:03:31.400 align:middle line:84% how good the audiences are, this is 00:03:31.400 --> 00:03:35.960 align:middle line:84% a poem that might be somewhat insulting to you 00:03:35.960 --> 00:03:39.260 align:middle line:84% but you could assume it's for other people and not for you. 00:03:39.260 --> 00:03:44.960 align:middle line:84% It's a poem for people who don't like poetry and attempts 00:03:44.960 --> 00:03:47.873 align:middle line:90% to be sympathetic to them. 00:03:47.873 --> 00:03:49.790 align:middle line:84% The other thing you should know about the poem 00:03:49.790 --> 00:03:52.460 align:middle line:84% is that there's a poem within a poem 00:03:52.460 --> 00:03:57.050 align:middle line:84% and when that part of the poem is on, I'll just raise my hand 00:03:57.050 --> 00:04:00.230 align:middle line:84% and then drop it when that part is over. 00:04:00.230 --> 00:04:03.630 align:middle line:90% 00:04:03.630 --> 00:04:05.670 align:middle line:84% Poem for people who are understandably too 00:04:05.670 --> 00:04:06.585 align:middle line:90% busy to read poetry. 00:04:06.585 --> 00:04:09.780 align:middle line:90% 00:04:09.780 --> 00:04:13.950 align:middle line:84% Relax, this won't last long or if it does 00:04:13.950 --> 00:04:18.450 align:middle line:84% or if the lines make you sleepy or bored, give in to sleep, 00:04:18.450 --> 00:04:21.930 align:middle line:90% turn on the TV, deal the cards. 00:04:21.930 --> 00:04:24.600 align:middle line:84% This poem is built to withstand such things. 00:04:24.600 --> 00:04:27.960 align:middle line:84% Its feelings cannot be hurt, they exist somewhere 00:04:27.960 --> 00:04:30.990 align:middle line:90% in the poet and I am far away. 00:04:30.990 --> 00:04:34.560 align:middle line:84% Pick it up any time, start it in the middle if you wish. 00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:37.290 align:middle line:84% It is as approachable as melodrama 00:04:37.290 --> 00:04:41.190 align:middle line:84% and can offer you violence if it is violence you like. 00:04:41.190 --> 00:04:45.000 align:middle line:84% Look, there's a man on a sidewalk in a red puddle. 00:04:45.000 --> 00:04:48.180 align:middle line:84% I spot my dreams beside his open head, 00:04:48.180 --> 00:04:50.950 align:middle line:90% they've never been clearer. 00:04:50.950 --> 00:04:53.970 align:middle line:84% This is your poem and I know you're busy at the office 00:04:53.970 --> 00:04:56.970 align:middle line:84% or the kids are into your last good nerve. 00:04:56.970 --> 00:05:00.060 align:middle line:84% Maybe it's sex you've always wanted, well, 00:05:00.060 --> 00:05:02.130 align:middle line:84% they lie together like the parties 00:05:02.130 --> 00:05:06.090 align:middle line:84% unbuttoned coats slumped on the bed for drunken arms 00:05:06.090 --> 00:05:07.710 align:middle line:90% to move them. 00:05:07.710 --> 00:05:10.470 align:middle line:84% There, I don't think you want me to go on. 00:05:10.470 --> 00:05:12.960 align:middle line:84% Everyone has his expectations but this is 00:05:12.960 --> 00:05:16.740 align:middle line:90% a poem for the entire family. 00:05:16.740 --> 00:05:20.100 align:middle line:84% Right now Budweiser is dripping from a waterfall, 00:05:20.100 --> 00:05:24.450 align:middle line:84% deodorants are hissing into armpits of people you resemble, 00:05:24.450 --> 00:05:29.730 align:middle line:84% and the two lovers are dressing now saying farewell. 00:05:29.730 --> 00:05:32.530 align:middle line:84% I don't know what music this poem can come up with. 00:05:32.530 --> 00:05:35.580 align:middle line:84% But clearly it is needed for its apparent 00:05:35.580 --> 00:05:37.780 align:middle line:84% they will never see each other again. 00:05:37.780 --> 00:05:40.710 align:middle line:84% And we need music for this because there was never 00:05:40.710 --> 00:05:45.510 align:middle line:84% music when he or she left you standing on that corner. 00:05:45.510 --> 00:05:49.360 align:middle line:84% You see, I want this poem to be nicer than life. 00:05:49.360 --> 00:05:53.010 align:middle line:84% I want you to look at it when anxiety zigzags your stomach 00:05:53.010 --> 00:05:55.350 align:middle line:84% and the last tranquilizer is gone 00:05:55.350 --> 00:05:57.600 align:middle line:84% and you need someone to tell you, 00:05:57.600 --> 00:06:02.700 align:middle line:84% "I'll be here when you want me like the sound inside a shell." 00:06:02.700 --> 00:06:05.280 align:middle line:84% The poem is saying that to you now 00:06:05.280 --> 00:06:09.210 align:middle line:84% but do not give up anything for this poem and expect much, 00:06:09.210 --> 00:06:13.110 align:middle line:84% it will never say more than listening can explain. 00:06:13.110 --> 00:06:16.350 align:middle line:84% Just keep it in your attache case or in your house 00:06:16.350 --> 00:06:20.190 align:middle line:84% and if you're not asleep by now or bored beyond sense, 00:06:20.190 --> 00:06:23.550 align:middle line:84% the poem wants you to laugh, laugh at yourself, 00:06:23.550 --> 00:06:27.780 align:middle line:84% laugh at this poem, at all poetry, come on. 00:06:27.780 --> 00:06:36.365 align:middle line:90% 00:06:36.365 --> 00:06:36.865 align:middle line:90% Good. 00:06:36.865 --> 00:06:40.810 align:middle line:90% 00:06:40.810 --> 00:06:43.210 align:middle line:90% Now here's what poetry can do. 00:06:43.210 --> 00:06:47.110 align:middle line:84% Imagine yourself a caterpillar, there's an awful shrug, 00:06:47.110 --> 00:06:50.470 align:middle line:84% and suddenly you're beautiful for as long as you live. 00:06:50.470 --> 00:07:05.630 align:middle line:90% 00:07:05.630 --> 00:07:09.050 align:middle line:84% This poem is a preface, a preface poem 00:07:09.050 --> 00:07:11.400 align:middle line:84% to my next collection service of needs, 00:07:11.400 --> 00:07:16.160 align:middle line:84% which will be out next year called Homage to the Divers. 00:07:16.160 --> 00:07:19.920 align:middle line:90% 00:07:19.920 --> 00:07:23.790 align:middle line:84% A love poem at the bottom of the sea in a treasure ship 00:07:23.790 --> 00:07:28.050 align:middle line:84% reachable, yes, we must believe reachable. 00:07:28.050 --> 00:07:31.110 align:middle line:84% In an airtight container somewhere in the captain's 00:07:31.110 --> 00:07:36.360 align:middle line:84% quarters somewhere off Hatteras written by 00:07:36.360 --> 00:07:39.810 align:middle line:84% and a key in a skeletons hand and the whole world 00:07:39.810 --> 00:07:44.220 align:middle line:84% up above diving for it, some with all the equipment, 00:07:44.220 --> 00:07:45.495 align:middle line:90% some holding their breath. 00:07:45.495 --> 00:08:01.010 align:middle line:90% 00:08:01.010 --> 00:08:04.760 align:middle line:90% Two rather short love poems. 00:08:04.760 --> 00:08:07.261 align:middle line:84% First, called Building in Nova Scotia. 00:08:07.261 --> 00:08:10.030 align:middle line:90% 00:08:10.030 --> 00:08:11.950 align:middle line:84% Before the grass could be planted, 00:08:11.950 --> 00:08:14.740 align:middle line:84% stones had to be picked for a week. 00:08:14.740 --> 00:08:18.100 align:middle line:84% And then my wife took her urine somewhere and in the evening 00:08:18.100 --> 00:08:19.820 align:middle line:90% she was pregnant. 00:08:19.820 --> 00:08:22.480 align:middle line:84% It was a miracle when the rocks were gone how 00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:25.630 align:middle line:90% the seed took hold, changed. 00:08:25.630 --> 00:08:27.520 align:middle line:84% If they had investigated her belly 00:08:27.520 --> 00:08:31.330 align:middle line:84% for prints I would have been guilty especially my lips 00:08:31.330 --> 00:08:34.120 align:middle line:90% on the evening the news came. 00:08:34.120 --> 00:08:36.610 align:middle line:84% The next day a turn hunting for fish 00:08:36.610 --> 00:08:39.549 align:middle line:84% stopped in mid-air before it dove. 00:08:39.549 --> 00:08:44.140 align:middle line:84% I tell you it was beautiful how the sky gave way to our house 00:08:44.140 --> 00:08:48.460 align:middle line:84% when it was finished and the small imperialist in my body 00:08:48.460 --> 00:08:49.660 align:middle line:90% gathered in the stars. 00:08:49.660 --> 00:09:00.880 align:middle line:90% 00:09:00.880 --> 00:09:01.885 align:middle line:90% One side of the story. 00:09:01.885 --> 00:09:06.830 align:middle line:90% 00:09:06.830 --> 00:09:09.590 align:middle line:84% I was thinking of the candle and the candles end 00:09:09.590 --> 00:09:12.710 align:middle line:84% when you took your place at the table of what 00:09:12.710 --> 00:09:16.340 align:middle line:84% to do when the words fell as they most surely will. 00:09:16.340 --> 00:09:19.400 align:middle line:84% I was thinking so many people walk up to me and tell me 00:09:19.400 --> 00:09:23.810 align:middle line:84% they're dead though they're just describing their afternoon. 00:09:23.810 --> 00:09:27.050 align:middle line:84% You had the black dress on and through the candelabra 00:09:27.050 --> 00:09:30.380 align:middle line:84% I could see the sad turn of your mouth. 00:09:30.380 --> 00:09:34.610 align:middle line:84% I was thinking of ways to keep of keeping the light going 00:09:34.610 --> 00:09:38.040 align:middle line:90% of fires larger than the house. 00:09:38.040 --> 00:09:40.460 align:middle line:84% But when we spoke remember, we spoke 00:09:40.460 --> 00:09:43.250 align:middle line:84% about the passing of the food, how the crumbs 00:09:43.250 --> 00:09:46.070 align:middle line:90% seem to collect on my side. 00:09:46.070 --> 00:09:50.390 align:middle line:84% And nothing terrible happened that night and nothing since. 00:09:50.390 --> 00:09:52.310 align:middle line:84% The candle I was thinking about is 00:09:52.310 --> 00:09:55.610 align:middle line:84% simply gone and the drippings gone, scraped out 00:09:55.610 --> 00:09:57.140 align:middle line:90% of the holder. 00:09:57.140 --> 00:10:01.250 align:middle line:84% The lights go out when we blow them out or turn them off. 00:10:01.250 --> 00:10:04.220 align:middle line:84% It would be lovely, wouldn't it to think only 00:10:04.220 --> 00:10:07.670 align:middle line:84% what's been felt remains- that black dress 00:10:07.670 --> 00:10:11.390 align:middle line:84% on the floor, your skin, and the drift of my hands. 00:10:11.390 --> 00:10:21.440 align:middle line:90% 00:10:21.440 --> 00:10:24.620 align:middle line:84% This next poem is called Palominos. 00:10:24.620 --> 00:10:27.860 align:middle line:84% And there are several palominos in the poem, one of them 00:10:27.860 --> 00:10:32.450 align:middle line:84% is a real palomino and the rest are imaginary palominos. 00:10:32.450 --> 00:10:37.730 align:middle line:84% And in the course of writing the poem the repetition 00:10:37.730 --> 00:10:42.020 align:middle line:84% of palomino, the use of it became an equivalent 00:10:42.020 --> 00:10:43.700 align:middle line:90% to me of the imagination. 00:10:43.700 --> 00:10:47.900 align:middle line:84% I was thinking of palomino as perhaps a symbol 00:10:47.900 --> 00:10:49.520 align:middle line:90% for the imagination. 00:10:49.520 --> 00:10:51.890 align:middle line:84% And to the extent that I understand what I'm doing 00:10:51.890 --> 00:10:58.640 align:middle line:84% in the poem, the poem is at the risk of overtalking it, 00:10:58.640 --> 00:11:02.150 align:middle line:84% the ways in which the imagination can perhaps save us 00:11:02.150 --> 00:11:08.030 align:middle line:84% and even more so the many ways in which it cannot. 00:11:08.030 --> 00:11:09.400 align:middle line:90% Palominos. 00:11:09.400 --> 00:11:12.280 align:middle line:90% 00:11:12.280 --> 00:11:14.530 align:middle line:84% In Manhattan when the flies gathered 00:11:14.530 --> 00:11:17.110 align:middle line:84% around the mouth of a wino sticking 00:11:17.110 --> 00:11:20.110 align:middle line:84% in the mosquito on his chin and dying, 00:11:20.110 --> 00:11:25.000 align:middle line:84% I was feeding a palomino, I have always been feeding a palomino. 00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:27.910 align:middle line:84% When the tanks rolled in Athens, the palomino I 00:11:27.910 --> 00:11:31.720 align:middle line:84% needed for departure, finished the last of my apples. 00:11:31.720 --> 00:11:34.900 align:middle line:84% In Spain when the Guardia raised his machine gun, 00:11:34.900 --> 00:11:38.260 align:middle line:84% I was feeding a palomino though my hands appeared 00:11:38.260 --> 00:11:41.260 align:middle line:90% to be reaching into the air. 00:11:41.260 --> 00:11:43.300 align:middle line:84% I could do it in my sleep in a room 00:11:43.300 --> 00:11:46.870 align:middle line:84% 1/2 the size of a palomino if I had to. 00:11:46.870 --> 00:11:50.860 align:middle line:84% It's a luxury, the way escaping through the window of an office 00:11:50.860 --> 00:11:54.190 align:middle line:84% that never existed is a luxury, only men 00:11:54.190 --> 00:11:57.640 align:middle line:90% who feed palominos really know. 00:11:57.640 --> 00:11:59.140 align:middle line:90% Can you understand? 00:11:59.140 --> 00:12:03.700 align:middle line:84% Beneath my shirt where my heart once was a small orphaned 00:12:03.700 --> 00:12:08.140 align:middle line:84% palomino moans when women slip their hands inside. 00:12:08.140 --> 00:12:12.430 align:middle line:84% This is his only food and he hasn't been eating well lately. 00:12:12.430 --> 00:12:15.880 align:middle line:84% Once in Aruba, the dark hands of a prostitute 00:12:15.880 --> 00:12:17.740 align:middle line:90% turned him into a stallion. 00:12:17.740 --> 00:12:20.200 align:middle line:84% And in Denver one cold afternoon, 00:12:20.200 --> 00:12:22.780 align:middle line:84% I tried feeding him with my own hands 00:12:22.780 --> 00:12:24.460 align:middle line:90% but he knew the difference. 00:12:24.460 --> 00:12:29.170 align:middle line:84% My shirt, bit at my invisible palomino monogram left 00:12:29.170 --> 00:12:32.980 align:middle line:90% me naked, open to ridicule. 00:12:32.980 --> 00:12:35.710 align:middle line:84% But I would never stop feeding palominos. 00:12:35.710 --> 00:12:38.860 align:middle line:84% At dinner last night, in that peculiar silence that 00:12:38.860 --> 00:12:41.920 align:middle line:84% follows burnt vegetables, overdone beef, 00:12:41.920 --> 00:12:45.770 align:middle line:84% several palominos licked my fingers beneath the table. 00:12:45.770 --> 00:12:47.080 align:middle line:90% One of them was pregnant. 00:12:47.080 --> 00:12:49.930 align:middle line:84% She ate like a horse and I climbed on her 00:12:49.930 --> 00:12:53.350 align:middle line:84% and she took me for a ride where other palominos were, 00:12:53.350 --> 00:12:55.460 align:middle line:84% and the dinner became meaningless, 00:12:55.460 --> 00:12:58.630 align:middle line:90% and I loved my wife. 00:12:58.630 --> 00:13:02.020 align:middle line:84% That is what palominos will do for you if you feed them. 00:13:02.020 --> 00:13:05.740 align:middle line:84% It is their special dignity, their hunger for the loose hay 00:13:05.740 --> 00:13:08.530 align:middle line:90% we all have lying around. 00:13:08.530 --> 00:13:11.350 align:middle line:84% Right now there are carrots in my pocket that 00:13:11.350 --> 00:13:13.180 align:middle line:84% looked like palominos would love them 00:13:13.180 --> 00:13:15.520 align:middle line:90% if the occasion ever arises. 00:13:15.520 --> 00:13:20.200 align:middle line:84% But here on this farm outside of Syracuse, things are so quiet. 00:13:20.200 --> 00:13:23.530 align:middle line:84% The summer is practically over and there's a palomino 00:13:23.530 --> 00:13:27.340 align:middle line:84% out back who is so real, I must feed her every day, 00:13:27.340 --> 00:13:29.560 align:middle line:90% happy or not. 00:13:29.560 --> 00:13:32.470 align:middle line:84% She is very beautiful but she cannot be counted 00:13:32.470 --> 00:13:33.980 align:middle line:90% on in emergencies. 00:13:33.980 --> 00:13:36.820 align:middle line:90% 00:13:36.820 --> 00:13:44.210 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:13:44.210 --> 00:13:49.700 align:middle line:84% I'm going to try to read some new poems from my new book 00:13:49.700 --> 00:13:53.720 align:middle line:84% and I have no idea what to say about them. 00:13:53.720 --> 00:13:56.210 align:middle line:84% And I have some poems that I know what to say about 00:13:56.210 --> 00:13:58.910 align:middle line:84% and I'll just intersperse them as I go along. 00:13:58.910 --> 00:14:01.190 align:middle line:84% Here's one that I don't know what 00:14:01.190 --> 00:14:03.998 align:middle line:90% to say about called Midnight. 00:14:03.998 --> 00:14:07.990 align:middle line:90% 00:14:07.990 --> 00:14:10.630 align:middle line:90% Midnight in some midnight place. 00:14:10.630 --> 00:14:13.780 align:middle line:84% And here the welcome dark after a good day, 00:14:13.780 --> 00:14:17.740 align:middle line:84% the slight discomfort of the 6 o'clock news. 00:14:17.740 --> 00:14:20.200 align:middle line:84% In certain places, midnight accumulates 00:14:20.200 --> 00:14:22.450 align:middle line:90% at the end of a beggars wrists. 00:14:22.450 --> 00:14:26.290 align:middle line:84% Ask for the time, and that's what time it is. 00:14:26.290 --> 00:14:28.090 align:middle line:84% What can I do but laugh when I light 00:14:28.090 --> 00:14:31.360 align:middle line:84% a small lamp in the basement, daughter complains. 00:14:31.360 --> 00:14:34.660 align:middle line:84% You put the light on to dark down there. 00:14:34.660 --> 00:14:36.700 align:middle line:90% She's always asleep at midnight. 00:14:36.700 --> 00:14:41.050 align:middle line:84% She wakes in a bed surrounded by posters of kittens. 00:14:41.050 --> 00:14:43.750 align:middle line:84% Someday I'll have to tell her privilege is 00:14:43.750 --> 00:14:45.820 align:middle line:90% what gets taken away. 00:14:45.820 --> 00:14:48.160 align:middle line:84% People deep in midnight, that's all they 00:14:48.160 --> 00:14:51.050 align:middle line:90% think about, taking it away. 00:14:51.050 --> 00:14:53.500 align:middle line:90% I'll have to tell her that. 00:14:53.500 --> 00:14:56.020 align:middle line:84% On TV the other night the South Bronx 00:14:56.020 --> 00:14:58.660 align:middle line:90% had no life I could recognize. 00:14:58.660 --> 00:15:03.550 align:middle line:84% The larvae of thieves in the gutters, small apocalypse. 00:15:03.550 --> 00:15:06.730 align:middle line:84% Someday I'll have to tell my daughter about the Bronx 00:15:06.730 --> 00:15:09.520 align:middle line:84% before she walks through it though the Bronx might 00:15:09.520 --> 00:15:11.590 align:middle line:90% be everywhere by then. 00:15:11.590 --> 00:15:14.650 align:middle line:84% Here, the crocuses are coming up and there 00:15:14.650 --> 00:15:16.630 align:middle line:90% are kittens by her bed. 00:15:16.630 --> 00:15:20.170 align:middle line:84% This loveliness is hers by birth. 00:15:20.170 --> 00:15:24.820 align:middle line:84% If I bring her upright, she'll hate that fact in a few years, 00:15:24.820 --> 00:15:26.080 align:middle line:90% is that true? 00:15:26.080 --> 00:15:29.110 align:middle line:84% Well, then the people born into midnight, 00:15:29.110 --> 00:15:31.660 align:middle line:90% they'll hate it for her. 00:15:31.660 --> 00:15:35.680 align:middle line:84% Just love her matters and I want to pull the covers 00:15:35.680 --> 00:15:36.700 align:middle line:90% over my head. 00:15:36.700 --> 00:15:48.350 align:middle line:90% 00:15:48.350 --> 00:15:49.657 align:middle line:90% Here and There. 00:15:49.657 --> 00:15:53.640 align:middle line:90% 00:15:53.640 --> 00:15:57.810 align:middle line:84% Here and there nightfall without fanfare presses down, 00:15:57.810 --> 00:16:01.110 align:middle line:84% utterly expected, not an omen in sight. 00:16:01.110 --> 00:16:03.570 align:middle line:84% Here and there a husband at the usual time 00:16:03.570 --> 00:16:07.680 align:middle line:84% goes to bed with his wife and doesn't dream of other women. 00:16:07.680 --> 00:16:10.350 align:middle line:84% Occasionally, a terrible size heard 00:16:10.350 --> 00:16:13.590 align:middle line:84% the kind that is theatrical to be ignored 00:16:13.590 --> 00:16:17.700 align:middle line:84% or a car backfires and reminds us of a car backfiring, 00:16:17.700 --> 00:16:19.860 align:middle line:90% not of a gunshot. 00:16:19.860 --> 00:16:22.090 align:middle line:84% Here and there a man says what he means 00:16:22.090 --> 00:16:25.260 align:middle line:84% and people hear him and are not confused. 00:16:25.260 --> 00:16:30.660 align:middle line:84% Here and there a missing teenage girl comes home unscarred. 00:16:30.660 --> 00:16:33.390 align:middle line:84% Sometimes dawn just brings another day 00:16:33.390 --> 00:16:37.020 align:middle line:84% full of minor pleasures and small gifts. 00:16:37.020 --> 00:16:39.870 align:middle line:84% And when the newspaper arrives with the world, 00:16:39.870 --> 00:16:43.590 align:middle line:84% people make kindling of it and sit together while it burns. 00:16:43.590 --> 00:16:58.590 align:middle line:90% 00:16:58.590 --> 00:17:02.160 align:middle line:84% This poem is written in the persona of someone who 00:17:02.160 --> 00:17:07.319 align:middle line:84% has learned all he knows about sex from reading sex manuals 00:17:07.319 --> 00:17:14.490 align:middle line:84% and it's called Let's See if I Have it Right, 00:17:14.490 --> 00:17:18.960 align:middle line:84% title runs into the pond, Let's See if I Have it Right. 00:17:18.960 --> 00:17:22.950 align:middle line:84% I kiss these before I kiss that then I 00:17:22.950 --> 00:17:27.089 align:middle line:84% wait to see if you're the kind who kiss this. 00:17:27.089 --> 00:17:30.570 align:middle line:84% If you're not, I go on kissing these and that careful always 00:17:30.570 --> 00:17:33.960 align:middle line:84% to place my hands where my lips are not. 00:17:33.960 --> 00:17:36.120 align:middle line:84% However, if you do kiss this I can 00:17:36.120 --> 00:17:39.990 align:middle line:84% choose to lie back or watch range myself in such a way 00:17:39.990 --> 00:17:44.520 align:middle line:84% so I can kiss that while you're kissing this so that kissing 00:17:44.520 --> 00:17:47.520 align:middle line:90% is no longer the exact word. 00:17:47.520 --> 00:17:50.760 align:middle line:84% Around this time as I recall, every part of speech 00:17:50.760 --> 00:17:54.000 align:middle line:84% is ready for every other part whether it speaks or not. 00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:56.190 align:middle line:84% And that and sometimes the other thing 00:17:56.190 --> 00:17:59.370 align:middle line:84% is entered by this with its single accurate eye 00:17:59.370 --> 00:18:02.970 align:middle line:84% and still there are various options and contingencies 00:18:02.970 --> 00:18:07.350 align:middle line:84% which it is said I will remember before the time comes 00:18:07.350 --> 00:18:11.740 align:middle line:84% for this to come or that kingdom of yours to come. 00:18:11.740 --> 00:18:16.590 align:middle line:84% And I think I'm allowed to touch these if I can reach them which 00:18:16.590 --> 00:18:19.115 align:middle line:90% all this is supposed to depend. 00:18:19.115 --> 00:18:32.820 align:middle line:90% 00:18:32.820 --> 00:18:36.610 align:middle line:84% I have this theory about TV weathermen 00:18:36.610 --> 00:18:42.910 align:middle line:84% that the ones who live in the areas where there is terrible 00:18:42.910 --> 00:18:44.620 align:middle line:90% are the happiest. 00:18:44.620 --> 00:18:47.570 align:middle line:84% And I've learned this from living in various places 00:18:47.570 --> 00:18:53.020 align:middle line:84% but now I live in New Jersey and I get the Philadelphia weather 00:18:53.020 --> 00:18:53.603 align:middle line:90% forecast. 00:18:53.603 --> 00:18:55.270 align:middle line:84% And the weatherman there is very unhappy 00:18:55.270 --> 00:18:58.390 align:middle line:84% because he traces those patterns across the country, 00:18:58.390 --> 00:19:02.020 align:middle line:84% all week long and they're always coming and they're terrible, 00:19:02.020 --> 00:19:03.730 align:middle line:84% and they never arrive where we are. 00:19:03.730 --> 00:19:06.672 align:middle line:84% They always turn away and go someplace else. 00:19:06.672 --> 00:19:08.380 align:middle line:84% And he always has to apologize, he always 00:19:08.380 --> 00:19:11.200 align:middle line:84% has to find a way to explain it to us. 00:19:11.200 --> 00:19:15.010 align:middle line:90% 00:19:15.010 --> 00:19:16.510 align:middle line:90% Think of him speaking this poem. 00:19:16.510 --> 00:19:20.860 align:middle line:84% This is the Philadelphia weatherman speaking this poem 00:19:20.860 --> 00:19:23.890 align:middle line:90% called The Weatherman. 00:19:23.890 --> 00:19:26.860 align:middle line:84% Tonight I've decided to tell you friends how 00:19:26.860 --> 00:19:30.380 align:middle line:90% much bad weather excites me. 00:19:30.380 --> 00:19:32.560 align:middle line:84% I love the way it moves state to state. 00:19:32.560 --> 00:19:35.830 align:middle line:84% And though I seem to rejoice when it blows out to sea, 00:19:35.830 --> 00:19:37.600 align:middle line:90% that's just ShowBiz. 00:19:37.600 --> 00:19:40.060 align:middle line:84% I'd like it to perch off the Carolinas 00:19:40.060 --> 00:19:42.470 align:middle line:84% and double back across the nation. 00:19:42.470 --> 00:19:46.000 align:middle line:84% And I know some of you feel the same. 00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:48.490 align:middle line:84% Something in me responds to a low 00:19:48.490 --> 00:19:52.630 align:middle line:84% and I'm sorry I can watch the footage from tornado damage 00:19:52.630 --> 00:19:54.730 align:middle line:90% all evening. 00:19:54.730 --> 00:19:58.930 align:middle line:84% I know you too like to see cars off the road, families 00:19:58.930 --> 00:20:00.220 align:middle line:90% disconnected. 00:20:00.220 --> 00:20:03.490 align:middle line:84% I know when you sigh and say, "How sad." 00:20:03.490 --> 00:20:07.870 align:middle line:84% Your heart is thumping to a tune you hardly understand. 00:20:07.870 --> 00:20:11.980 align:middle line:84% Friends this is a communication tonight not a broadcast. 00:20:11.980 --> 00:20:13.810 align:middle line:84% Here in the East where no weather 00:20:13.810 --> 00:20:17.380 align:middle line:84% originates, where everything moves toward us and so little 00:20:17.380 --> 00:20:21.430 align:middle line:84% arrives, here where we're forced to watch things break up 00:20:21.430 --> 00:20:24.070 align:middle line:84% or swerve toward eerie, what is it 00:20:24.070 --> 00:20:28.210 align:middle line:84% that has turned in us, that has turned in me? 00:20:28.210 --> 00:20:31.690 align:middle line:84% All I know is that I can't deny the secret happiness when 00:20:31.690 --> 00:20:34.600 align:middle line:84% a system moves across Nebraska as I thought it 00:20:34.600 --> 00:20:37.270 align:middle line:90% would paralyzing North Platte. 00:20:37.270 --> 00:20:41.260 align:middle line:84% The National Guard called out, wind chill, just the words 00:20:41.260 --> 00:20:45.520 align:middle line:84% wind chill plunging into my imagination. 00:20:45.520 --> 00:20:48.730 align:middle line:84% And you who live out there, there is a fact of life, 00:20:48.730 --> 00:20:51.850 align:middle line:84% don't you secretly love it and look forward to it? 00:20:51.850 --> 00:20:56.110 align:middle line:84% Don't you love to survive it and I mean love? 00:20:56.110 --> 00:20:59.530 align:middle line:84% When I lived in Minnesota, half my life was the weather. 00:20:59.530 --> 00:21:01.870 align:middle line:84% A blizzard was me and the blizzard, 00:21:01.870 --> 00:21:05.650 align:middle line:84% a tornado meant the Southwest corner of my basement 00:21:05.650 --> 00:21:07.960 align:middle line:90% huddled with loved ones. 00:21:07.960 --> 00:21:10.660 align:middle line:90% Never have I been so happy. 00:21:10.660 --> 00:21:14.290 align:middle line:84% It is we in the East I worry about only in August 00:21:14.290 --> 00:21:18.550 align:middle line:84% when the hurricanes wind up from the Bahamas or our bodies truly 00:21:18.550 --> 00:21:20.680 align:middle line:90% connected to our minds. 00:21:20.680 --> 00:21:25.150 align:middle line:84% Only then can devastation make our lives less academic. 00:21:25.150 --> 00:21:27.820 align:middle line:84% Only then can we trace a path that 00:21:27.820 --> 00:21:30.910 align:middle line:90% leads directly to ourselves. 00:21:30.910 --> 00:21:33.400 align:middle line:84% So tonight I wanted to confess to you, 00:21:33.400 --> 00:21:36.220 align:middle line:84% voyeurs and participants alike, I 00:21:36.220 --> 00:21:40.060 align:middle line:84% wanted to let you know I know the deep thrill of a five day 00:21:40.060 --> 00:21:43.510 align:middle line:84% forecast, of a science so inexact 00:21:43.510 --> 00:21:47.440 align:middle line:84% we learn to trust accident after accidents. 00:21:47.440 --> 00:21:51.430 align:middle line:84% Believe me the scattered highways across the country 00:21:51.430 --> 00:21:54.520 align:middle line:84% will not arrive any time close to schedule 00:21:54.520 --> 00:21:57.820 align:middle line:84% and they will not give you any lasting pleasure. 00:21:57.820 --> 00:22:01.780 align:middle line:84% Frankly, I'll be bored if a system, say, out of Manitoba 00:22:01.780 --> 00:22:05.230 align:middle line:84% doesn't push in and complicate everything. 00:22:05.230 --> 00:22:07.930 align:middle line:84% Right now there's a disturbance around the panhandle 00:22:07.930 --> 00:22:09.760 align:middle line:90% that could be a big one. 00:22:09.760 --> 00:22:12.460 align:middle line:84% In the days ahead I'll follow it for you. 00:22:12.460 --> 00:22:15.730 align:middle line:84% I'll watch it the way a Christian scientist watches 00:22:15.730 --> 00:22:18.050 align:middle line:90% virulence in a leg wound. 00:22:18.050 --> 00:22:21.190 align:middle line:84% And if things turn bad or something perverse gets 00:22:21.190 --> 00:22:24.130 align:middle line:84% into me, I'm sure you'll understand, 00:22:24.130 --> 00:22:26.830 align:middle line:90% that's how things are and I am. 00:22:26.830 --> 00:22:28.885 align:middle line:84% That's the weather some of the time. 00:22:28.885 --> 00:22:40.640 align:middle line:90% 00:22:40.640 --> 00:22:44.870 align:middle line:84% I grew up in New York and a few years ago 00:22:44.870 --> 00:22:47.930 align:middle line:84% found myself living in a small town in Minnesota 00:22:47.930 --> 00:22:51.410 align:middle line:84% of 700 people, and having to adjust 00:22:51.410 --> 00:22:54.500 align:middle line:90% to that kind of cultural shock. 00:22:54.500 --> 00:23:00.170 align:middle line:84% And finding myself liking it a great deal 00:23:00.170 --> 00:23:04.640 align:middle line:84% and also being somewhat envious of the people who very clearly 00:23:04.640 --> 00:23:05.150 align:middle line:90% had roots. 00:23:05.150 --> 00:23:07.880 align:middle line:84% I don't know anybody who came from New York who 00:23:07.880 --> 00:23:12.518 align:middle line:84% considers that they have roots there, which I don't have. 00:23:12.518 --> 00:23:14.060 align:middle line:84% But the people there were very rooted 00:23:14.060 --> 00:23:18.590 align:middle line:84% and had a clear sense of place, and I envied that. 00:23:18.590 --> 00:23:21.590 align:middle line:84% So there's considerable tension between me 00:23:21.590 --> 00:23:25.790 align:middle line:84% and the landscape in which I live. 00:23:25.790 --> 00:23:28.850 align:middle line:84% I'll read you a few poems from section Full of Lust 00:23:28.850 --> 00:23:32.360 align:middle line:84% and Good Usage which perhaps deal with that. 00:23:32.360 --> 00:23:35.720 align:middle line:90% 00:23:35.720 --> 00:23:37.340 align:middle line:84% It's called Truck Stop Minnesota. 00:23:37.340 --> 00:23:39.530 align:middle line:84% And the speaker of the poem is someone 00:23:39.530 --> 00:23:45.020 align:middle line:84% who is having stopped to have a cup of coffee in a truck stop 00:23:45.020 --> 00:23:48.320 align:middle line:84% and is a little disappointed that the waitress pays 00:23:48.320 --> 00:23:50.420 align:middle line:84% a great deal more attention to him 00:23:50.420 --> 00:23:52.790 align:middle line:84% to the other people, the truckers 00:23:52.790 --> 00:23:56.480 align:middle line:84% especially rather than to himself, and he is unease. 00:23:56.480 --> 00:24:00.740 align:middle line:84% And in the larger sense I guess the poem 00:24:00.740 --> 00:24:03.200 align:middle line:84% is trying to deal with that unease 00:24:03.200 --> 00:24:07.700 align:middle line:84% with certain aspects of America, which the person is never 00:24:07.700 --> 00:24:10.310 align:middle line:90% quite at home with. 00:24:10.310 --> 00:24:13.340 align:middle line:90% Truck Stop Minnesota. 00:24:13.340 --> 00:24:17.690 align:middle line:84% The waitress looks at my face as if it were a small tip. 00:24:17.690 --> 00:24:21.830 align:middle line:84% I'm tempted to come back at her with java but I say, "Coffee." 00:24:21.830 --> 00:24:25.070 align:middle line:84% Politely and tell her how I want it. 00:24:25.070 --> 00:24:28.400 align:middle line:84% Her body has the alert sleepiness of a cat's, her 00:24:28.400 --> 00:24:31.340 align:middle line:84% face the indecency of a billboard. 00:24:31.340 --> 00:24:34.730 align:middle line:84% She is the America, I would like to love. 00:24:34.730 --> 00:24:39.260 align:middle line:84% Sweetheart, the truckers call her, honey, doll. 00:24:39.260 --> 00:24:42.110 align:middle line:90% For each of them she smiles. 00:24:42.110 --> 00:24:47.300 align:middle line:84% I envy them, I'm full of lust and good usage lost here. 00:24:47.300 --> 00:24:49.370 align:middle line:84% I imagine every man she's left with 00:24:49.370 --> 00:24:52.310 align:middle line:84% has smelled of familiar food, has peppered her 00:24:52.310 --> 00:24:56.420 align:middle line:84% with wild slang until she was damp and loose. 00:24:56.420 --> 00:25:00.290 align:middle line:84% I do nothing but ask for it and drift out into the night air, 00:25:00.290 --> 00:25:03.980 align:middle line:84% let my dreams lift her tired feet off the ground 00:25:03.980 --> 00:25:09.110 align:middle line:84% into the sweet inarticulate democracy beyond my ears 00:25:09.110 --> 00:25:12.560 align:middle line:84% and keep moving until I'm home in the middle of my country. 00:25:12.560 --> 00:25:24.180 align:middle line:90% 00:25:24.180 --> 00:25:25.602 align:middle line:90% Transitions. 00:25:25.602 --> 00:25:28.200 align:middle line:90% 00:25:28.200 --> 00:25:30.570 align:middle line:84% Having left the city, having broken 00:25:30.570 --> 00:25:34.350 align:middle line:84% the habit of the breast, the long familiar succ of friends, 00:25:34.350 --> 00:25:36.960 align:middle line:90% family, comfortable jobs. 00:25:36.960 --> 00:25:39.720 align:middle line:84% I moved from city to town from town 00:25:39.720 --> 00:25:44.670 align:middle line:84% to the temporary sanity of woods back and back again. 00:25:44.670 --> 00:25:48.000 align:middle line:84% I can't stop and the loss is piled up with the gains 00:25:48.000 --> 00:25:49.890 align:middle line:84% as if I were a would tick who left 00:25:49.890 --> 00:25:55.870 align:middle line:84% his legs in a dozen armpits that seemed for a while like home. 00:25:55.870 --> 00:26:00.750 align:middle line:84% There is no one place I've found particles of night in my eyes 00:26:00.750 --> 00:26:02.250 align:middle line:90% ever I awoke. 00:26:02.250 --> 00:26:04.500 align:middle line:84% The hunger of the brain for itself 00:26:04.500 --> 00:26:08.760 align:middle line:84% is the same in the mountains as it is in the slums. 00:26:08.760 --> 00:26:12.390 align:middle line:84% Still I dream of a place that is no transition. 00:26:12.390 --> 00:26:16.080 align:middle line:84% Some place between birth and death where the ground is soft 00:26:16.080 --> 00:26:19.800 align:middle line:84% and I could sink in with my entire weight. 00:26:19.800 --> 00:26:25.290 align:middle line:84% So now I pack again and now as always the reason is good. 00:26:25.290 --> 00:26:28.890 align:middle line:84% The trailer is hooked to the car, the map is circled, 00:26:28.890 --> 00:26:31.170 align:middle line:84% and I break into the pleasure of simply 00:26:31.170 --> 00:26:37.035 align:middle line:84% moving, no deaths, no lease on my life, no rest till there is. 00:26:37.035 --> 00:26:45.950 align:middle line:90% 00:26:45.950 --> 00:26:48.470 align:middle line:84% Well this is not a poem in this sequence 00:26:48.470 --> 00:26:51.620 align:middle line:84% but I was asked to read it, so this is perhaps a good time 00:26:51.620 --> 00:26:52.190 align:middle line:90% to do that. 00:26:52.190 --> 00:26:57.460 align:middle line:90% 00:26:57.460 --> 00:26:59.880 align:middle line:84% The only poem I've written about New Jersey 00:26:59.880 --> 00:27:01.680 align:middle line:84% or having something to do with New Jersey 00:27:01.680 --> 00:27:03.300 align:middle line:90% since I've lived there. 00:27:03.300 --> 00:27:07.440 align:middle line:84% And tries to recreate a very strange evening. 00:27:07.440 --> 00:27:09.540 align:middle line:84% There's a parkway in New Jersey that 00:27:09.540 --> 00:27:13.140 align:middle line:84% runs from New York down through the state 00:27:13.140 --> 00:27:14.730 align:middle line:90% called Garden State Parkway. 00:27:14.730 --> 00:27:18.570 align:middle line:84% And it's a very straight parkway, 00:27:18.570 --> 00:27:20.500 align:middle line:84% and you just do it almost blindfold, 00:27:20.500 --> 00:27:23.130 align:middle line:84% and you just get there you arrive. 00:27:23.130 --> 00:27:27.480 align:middle line:84% When I was coming home from New York City alone, 00:27:27.480 --> 00:27:31.830 align:middle line:84% and it was one of those nights when everybody tollbooth 00:27:31.830 --> 00:27:35.430 align:middle line:84% men and women people in Howard Johnsons were talking to me. 00:27:35.430 --> 00:27:39.030 align:middle line:84% And you don't know if you're giving off something special 00:27:39.030 --> 00:27:41.760 align:middle line:84% on those nights or whether something in the air or what, 00:27:41.760 --> 00:27:42.750 align:middle line:90% but it's very nice. 00:27:42.750 --> 00:27:46.170 align:middle line:84% It was the kind of communion that you don't often 00:27:46.170 --> 00:27:47.610 align:middle line:90% have in the East. 00:27:47.610 --> 00:27:49.170 align:middle line:84% They weren't just saying, "Hello." 00:27:49.170 --> 00:27:51.750 align:middle line:84% They were actually wishing to make a conversation, 00:27:51.750 --> 00:27:54.060 align:middle line:90% it was very late at night. 00:27:54.060 --> 00:27:57.540 align:middle line:84% And what I knew was that it had a built in ending, 00:27:57.540 --> 00:27:59.790 align:middle line:84% that it was going to end sometime 00:27:59.790 --> 00:28:03.070 align:middle line:84% but I liked it a whole lot while it was happening. 00:28:03.070 --> 00:28:09.690 align:middle line:84% I think the poem does the rest, Coming Home Gate Parkway. 00:28:09.690 --> 00:28:13.230 align:middle line:84% Tonight the tollbooth men are congratulating the weather, 00:28:13.230 --> 00:28:15.270 align:middle line:90% wishing me well. 00:28:15.270 --> 00:28:17.670 align:middle line:84% I'm all thank you's and confusion. 00:28:17.670 --> 00:28:21.240 align:middle line:84% I don't know what kind of conspiracy this is. 00:28:21.240 --> 00:28:23.910 align:middle line:84% Then at Howard Johnson's, the pretty cashier 00:28:23.910 --> 00:28:26.910 align:middle line:84% apologizes for the price of coffee. 00:28:26.910 --> 00:28:30.060 align:middle line:84% She wants me to drive carefully, to think of her 00:28:30.060 --> 00:28:32.520 align:middle line:90% on the dark straight road. 00:28:32.520 --> 00:28:35.490 align:middle line:84% Does she say these things to everyone? 00:28:35.490 --> 00:28:37.920 align:middle line:84% I've done nothing different, in the mirror 00:28:37.920 --> 00:28:39.840 align:middle line:84% there's the same old face not even 00:28:39.840 --> 00:28:41.580 align:middle line:90% lovers have called handsome. 00:28:41.580 --> 00:28:45.840 align:middle line:84% The same mouth that belies absolute conviction. 00:28:45.840 --> 00:28:49.440 align:middle line:84% I'm alone and maybe there's an underworld of those alone 00:28:49.440 --> 00:28:51.690 align:middle line:84% and maybe tonight I've entered it, 00:28:51.690 --> 00:28:56.676 align:middle line:84% the instant safe intimacy guaranteed to move on. 00:28:56.676 --> 00:29:00.270 align:middle line:84% On the car radio comes the noisy current song 00:29:00.270 --> 00:29:04.080 align:middle line:84% and then an old melodic lie about love. 00:29:04.080 --> 00:29:07.170 align:middle line:84% Afterwards, the disk jockey speaks to all of us 00:29:07.170 --> 00:29:08.730 align:middle line:90% on the road. 00:29:08.730 --> 00:29:12.720 align:middle line:84% He wants it to stand the danger of the other man, "Watch out." 00:29:12.720 --> 00:29:15.690 align:middle line:90% He says for the blind side. 00:29:15.690 --> 00:29:17.160 align:middle line:90% I'm going 70. 00:29:17.160 --> 00:29:19.710 align:middle line:84% The winter outside is without snow. 00:29:19.710 --> 00:29:23.370 align:middle line:84% It's hard any more to be sure about anything. 00:29:23.370 --> 00:29:27.930 align:middle line:84% Next total station, I feel for a quarter the exact change 00:29:27.930 --> 00:29:33.270 align:middle line:84% but I swear as I knew I would to the woman holding out her hand. 00:29:33.270 --> 00:29:35.700 align:middle line:90% She neither smiles nor speaks. 00:29:35.700 --> 00:29:39.150 align:middle line:90% I try to believe she's shy. 00:29:39.150 --> 00:29:42.030 align:middle line:84% I'd like to put my hand in her hand 00:29:42.030 --> 00:29:47.280 align:middle line:84% to keep alive this strange human streak I'm on but there's only 00:29:47.280 --> 00:29:50.700 align:middle line:84% money between us, silver and flesh 00:29:50.700 --> 00:29:53.025 align:middle line:90% meeting in a familiar goodbye. 00:29:53.025 --> 00:29:57.190 align:middle line:90% 00:29:57.190 --> 00:29:57.815 align:middle line:90% Two more pumps. 00:29:57.815 --> 00:30:06.349 align:middle line:90% 00:30:06.349 --> 00:30:11.079 align:middle line:84% It's pumped my brother called Invitation to a Lost Brother. 00:30:11.079 --> 00:30:16.350 align:middle line:90% 00:30:16.350 --> 00:30:18.720 align:middle line:84% In the absence of mountains I offer 00:30:18.720 --> 00:30:23.610 align:middle line:84% you a cable car whose ascendance is a cleansing the body reaches 00:30:23.610 --> 00:30:30.120 align:middle line:84% for, your body perhaps here at sea level, the blood's repose. 00:30:30.120 --> 00:30:33.330 align:middle line:84% It rises because the horizon is a disappointment 00:30:33.330 --> 00:30:35.490 align:middle line:84% and on the breath of disappointment 00:30:35.490 --> 00:30:41.070 align:middle line:84% guided by moonbeams broken from the moon off on their own. 00:30:41.070 --> 00:30:43.140 align:middle line:84% I have made this car out of the best 00:30:43.140 --> 00:30:46.920 align:middle line:84% that's been dreamed by those abused by their parents. 00:30:46.920 --> 00:30:49.530 align:middle line:84% The interior is the texture of breasts 00:30:49.530 --> 00:30:53.400 align:middle line:84% felt for the first time an hour after a curfew. 00:30:53.400 --> 00:30:56.130 align:middle line:84% The music inside the gentle rocking 00:30:56.130 --> 00:31:00.840 align:middle line:84% outside suggests skin that's been broken kissing itself 00:31:00.840 --> 00:31:03.660 align:middle line:90% into a scar. 00:31:03.660 --> 00:31:07.350 align:middle line:84% Get in, don't expect heaven if you want to be happy. 00:31:07.350 --> 00:31:10.020 align:middle line:84% In the absence of mountains, think only 00:31:10.020 --> 00:31:13.350 align:middle line:84% of mountains and the vehicle that will take you out 00:31:13.350 --> 00:31:15.660 align:middle line:90% of the low hanging fog. 00:31:15.660 --> 00:31:19.020 align:middle line:84% I hold the door for you now as if they were hinges 00:31:19.020 --> 00:31:21.450 align:middle line:90% on the left side of my chest. 00:31:21.450 --> 00:31:24.240 align:middle line:84% The newspapers will say this was the cable 00:31:24.240 --> 00:31:27.060 align:middle line:84% car that never came back, crashed 00:31:27.060 --> 00:31:29.490 align:middle line:90% and buried in an avalanche. 00:31:29.490 --> 00:31:32.250 align:middle line:84% And we will be reading those newspapers 00:31:32.250 --> 00:31:36.300 align:middle line:84% sane in an imagined place not far from home. 00:31:36.300 --> 00:31:44.160 align:middle line:90% 00:31:44.160 --> 00:31:46.886 align:middle line:84% Last poem, Those of Us Who Think We Know. 00:31:46.886 --> 00:31:50.460 align:middle line:90% 00:31:50.460 --> 00:31:53.700 align:middle line:84% Those of us who think we know the same secrets 00:31:53.700 --> 00:31:56.310 align:middle line:84% are silent together most of the time. 00:31:56.310 --> 00:32:00.570 align:middle line:84% For us, there's eloquence and desire and for a while 00:32:00.570 --> 00:32:05.400 align:middle line:84% when in love and exhausted it's enough to nod like shy horses 00:32:05.400 --> 00:32:12.270 align:middle line:84% and come together in a quiet ceremony of tongues. 00:32:12.270 --> 00:32:14.520 align:middle line:84% It's in disappointment we look for words 00:32:14.520 --> 00:32:17.820 align:middle line:84% to convince us the spaces between stars 00:32:17.820 --> 00:32:19.680 align:middle line:90% are to worry about. 00:32:19.680 --> 00:32:22.530 align:middle line:84% It's when those secrets burst in that emptiness 00:32:22.530 --> 00:32:26.340 align:middle line:84% between our hearts and the lumps in our throats. 00:32:26.340 --> 00:32:31.650 align:middle line:84% And the words we find are always insufficient like love 00:32:31.650 --> 00:32:35.321 align:middle line:84% though they're often lovely and all we have. 00:32:35.321 --> 00:32:36.303 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:32:36.303 --> 00:32:59.390 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:32:59.390 --> 00:33:02.510 align:middle line:84% I'll always think of you when I burn my green beans 00:33:02.510 --> 00:33:04.860 align:middle line:84% because there's not silence at our house 00:33:04.860 --> 00:33:06.200 align:middle line:90% when we burn the green beans. 00:33:06.200 --> 00:33:24.500 align:middle line:90% 00:33:24.500 --> 00:33:28.220 align:middle line:90% Dave Smith is our next reader. 00:33:28.220 --> 00:33:35.270 align:middle line:84% He has published three chat books- Drunks, Bull Island, 00:33:35.270 --> 00:33:40.430 align:middle line:84% and Dark Sudden with Light and three collections- 00:33:40.430 --> 00:33:45.620 align:middle line:84% Mean Rufus Throw Down, The Fisherman's Whore, and most 00:33:45.620 --> 00:33:49.040 align:middle line:90% recently Cumberland Station. 00:33:49.040 --> 00:33:52.610 align:middle line:84% Some of the anthologies his work appears in 00:33:52.610 --> 00:33:55.910 align:middle line:84% are New Voices in American Poetry 00:33:55.910 --> 00:33:58.940 align:middle line:84% and Traveling America with Today's Poets. 00:33:58.940 --> 00:34:01.160 align:middle line:84% He's currently the Director of the Writing Program 00:34:01.160 --> 00:34:05.024 align:middle line:84% at the University of Utah in Salt Lake, Dave Smith. 00:34:05.024 --> 00:34:23.260 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:34:23.260 --> 00:34:26.380 align:middle line:84% I've been thinking how much of a pleasure 00:34:26.380 --> 00:34:30.969 align:middle line:84% it has been for me to be part of this traveling group, reading 00:34:30.969 --> 00:34:32.989 align:middle line:90% and playing tennis. 00:34:32.989 --> 00:34:34.989 align:middle line:84% Before I read anything I'd like to say thank you 00:34:34.989 --> 00:34:40.570 align:middle line:84% to everybody involved for the pleasure that has been 00:34:40.570 --> 00:34:44.889 align:middle line:84% and to say that I'd like to read this first poem primarily 00:34:44.889 --> 00:34:47.500 align:middle line:84% for my colleagues that I've been traveling with. 00:34:47.500 --> 00:34:50.739 align:middle line:84% I'm a great fan of Lowell, perhaps I'm in the minority. 00:34:50.739 --> 00:34:52.989 align:middle line:84% And this is a poem that was written just 00:34:52.989 --> 00:34:56.500 align:middle line:90% before Lowell's recent death. 00:34:56.500 --> 00:34:59.530 align:middle line:84% And it simply imagines for me how 00:34:59.530 --> 00:35:02.530 align:middle line:84% poetry can help people get through some hard times 00:35:02.530 --> 00:35:04.030 align:middle line:84% in their life and the situation here 00:35:04.030 --> 00:35:08.960 align:middle line:84% is some lovers in a room who reload to each other. 00:35:08.960 --> 00:35:12.790 align:middle line:84% There's only one thing you really need to know, 00:35:12.790 --> 00:35:15.040 align:middle line:84% Lowell wrote the line must terminate. 00:35:15.040 --> 00:35:18.100 align:middle line:84% I believe that's the first line of the first page 00:35:18.100 --> 00:35:19.300 align:middle line:90% of the dolphin. 00:35:19.300 --> 00:35:23.770 align:middle line:84% The poem is called Early September. 00:35:23.770 --> 00:35:29.050 align:middle line:84% An easy autumn day, the chill deceit now full 00:35:29.050 --> 00:35:33.160 align:middle line:84% that will in the deep dark rake the bones. 00:35:33.160 --> 00:35:37.120 align:middle line:84% For what have we heave to raise the window to hear the lead 00:35:37.120 --> 00:35:40.480 align:middle line:84% feet clank again inside the casement placed 00:35:40.480 --> 00:35:43.750 align:middle line:90% by memories oldest hands. 00:35:43.750 --> 00:35:47.890 align:middle line:84% For cool air to sav love's chafed flesh, 00:35:47.890 --> 00:35:50.140 align:middle line:90% it doesn't matter now. 00:35:50.140 --> 00:35:52.600 align:middle line:84% The incident light leaped in our narrow space 00:35:52.600 --> 00:35:58.330 align:middle line:84% we fell far back to adolescence, archetypal in our dreams. 00:35:58.330 --> 00:36:01.630 align:middle line:84% Pure and perfect under the tissued sheet, 00:36:01.630 --> 00:36:08.080 align:middle line:84% we were what we first saw in each joy touched to discovery 00:36:08.080 --> 00:36:10.750 align:middle line:90% and all hope uncaged. 00:36:10.750 --> 00:36:14.530 align:middle line:84% Death is not so hard to deal with we crooned. 00:36:14.530 --> 00:36:18.760 align:middle line:84% That choice at least beyond the hours handling. 00:36:18.760 --> 00:36:23.500 align:middle line:84% We lay on the bed in that room of the easy rub soon to sleep, 00:36:23.500 --> 00:36:28.870 align:middle line:84% wake, love, play out the week's who's in for scene. 00:36:28.870 --> 00:36:33.520 align:middle line:84% We'd suck like an icicle broken from the roof years ago. 00:36:33.520 --> 00:36:36.160 align:middle line:84% In the cat dark corner yawning and licking 00:36:36.160 --> 00:36:39.010 align:middle line:84% and indolent delight, we bore the time 00:36:39.010 --> 00:36:43.210 align:middle line:84% by reading Lowell a lover late and mad. 00:36:43.210 --> 00:36:47.290 align:middle line:84% He wrote the line must terminate. 00:36:47.290 --> 00:36:50.380 align:middle line:84% Before lunch we did it again, acute as glass 00:36:50.380 --> 00:36:52.330 align:middle line:90% interrupted by a stone. 00:36:52.330 --> 00:36:57.160 align:middle line:84% Then dressing back to Lowell who was off with his tears 00:36:57.160 --> 00:36:59.080 align:middle line:90% gilding the world. 00:36:59.080 --> 00:37:01.990 align:middle line:84% In the taxi we wondered where now. 00:37:01.990 --> 00:37:10.918 align:middle line:90% 00:37:10.918 --> 00:37:12.460 align:middle line:84% George Keith who is traveling with us 00:37:12.460 --> 00:37:16.120 align:middle line:84% I am told going to read a poem about Antietam, that Civil War 00:37:16.120 --> 00:37:19.180 align:middle line:84% battlefield battle which we lost. 00:37:19.180 --> 00:37:21.740 align:middle line:90% 00:37:21.740 --> 00:37:26.380 align:middle line:84% And so I thought I'd get in my stroke first for a battle which 00:37:26.380 --> 00:37:28.450 align:middle line:90% we won. 00:37:28.450 --> 00:37:31.360 align:middle line:84% And this is about the Battle of Fredericksburg, 00:37:31.360 --> 00:37:35.260 align:middle line:84% a terrible battle in which, for the first time in the war, 00:37:35.260 --> 00:37:39.220 align:middle line:84% Lee had equal troop strength and the Yankees 00:37:39.220 --> 00:37:42.430 align:middle line:84% had a dumb general named McClellan 00:37:42.430 --> 00:37:46.150 align:middle line:84% who marched all of his men out into an open field 00:37:46.150 --> 00:37:48.610 align:middle line:84% below a beautiful defensive position known 00:37:48.610 --> 00:37:50.950 align:middle line:84% as Mary's heights which had a sunken road 00:37:50.950 --> 00:37:55.600 align:middle line:84% and Leland his men up for deep the shooting muskets of course 00:37:55.600 --> 00:37:58.390 align:middle line:84% but they could almost achieve rapid fire 00:37:58.390 --> 00:38:00.280 align:middle line:90% and that kind of thing. 00:38:00.280 --> 00:38:04.540 align:middle line:84% And the poem imagines taking a child to Fredericksburg. 00:38:04.540 --> 00:38:07.690 align:middle line:84% I'm from Virginia and just sort of looking 00:38:07.690 --> 00:38:09.790 align:middle line:84% over that historical ground and trying 00:38:09.790 --> 00:38:13.150 align:middle line:84% to say something of some sense to a child who 00:38:13.150 --> 00:38:15.700 align:middle line:84% is not aware of these things from a field 00:38:15.700 --> 00:38:19.030 align:middle line:90% trip at Fredericksburg. 00:38:19.030 --> 00:38:24.790 align:middle line:84% The big steel tour shield says maybe 15,000 got it here. 00:38:24.790 --> 00:38:27.850 align:middle line:84% No word of either Whitman or one uncle 00:38:27.850 --> 00:38:31.150 align:middle line:84% I barely remember in the smoke that filled his tiny mountain 00:38:31.150 --> 00:38:32.950 align:middle line:90% house. 00:38:32.950 --> 00:38:36.460 align:middle line:84% If each finger were 1,000 of them I could clap my hands 00:38:36.460 --> 00:38:39.460 align:middle line:90% and be dead up to my wrists. 00:38:39.460 --> 00:38:42.640 align:middle line:84% It was quick though not so fast as we can do it 00:38:42.640 --> 00:38:49.150 align:middle line:84% now, one bomb, atomic or worse, one silly pod slung on wingtip 00:38:49.150 --> 00:38:52.840 align:middle line:84% high up, an egg cradled by a rapacious 00:38:52.840 --> 00:38:58.840 align:middle line:84% mockingbird Hiroshima can nine times their number in a flash. 00:38:58.840 --> 00:39:03.880 align:middle line:84% If you had the time to mourn or feel the feeling ooze 00:39:03.880 --> 00:39:07.150 align:middle line:90% back in the groin. 00:39:07.150 --> 00:39:10.450 align:middle line:84% In a ditch, I stand above Mary's heights, 00:39:10.450 --> 00:39:14.590 align:middle line:84% the backbone faces of Brady's 15-year-old drummers 00:39:14.590 --> 00:39:18.100 align:middle line:84% before battle rigid as August Denton's 00:39:18.100 --> 00:39:22.990 align:middle line:84% all the way to the Potomac rolling in my skull. 00:39:22.990 --> 00:39:27.940 align:middle line:84% If Autobahn came here, the names of birds would gush. 00:39:27.940 --> 00:39:32.830 align:middle line:84% The marvel single feathers make evoke a cloud, a nation, 00:39:32.830 --> 00:39:37.240 align:middle line:84% a gray blur preserved on the Blue Verizon 00:39:37.240 --> 00:39:41.890 align:middle line:84% but there is only a wandering child, one dark stork snapped 00:39:41.890 --> 00:39:45.850 align:middle line:90% off in her hand held out to me. 00:39:45.850 --> 00:39:50.860 align:middle line:84% Taking it, I try to help her hold its obscure syllables one 00:39:50.860 --> 00:39:53.890 align:middle line:84% instant in her mouth like a drift of wind 00:39:53.890 --> 00:39:59.350 align:middle line:84% at the forehead, the front door, the black, numb fingernails. 00:39:59.350 --> 00:40:04.310 align:middle line:90% 00:40:04.310 --> 00:40:07.850 align:middle line:84% I was raised Baptist as might be obvious 00:40:07.850 --> 00:40:10.698 align:middle line:84% and I stumbled on a friend years ago 00:40:10.698 --> 00:40:12.740 align:middle line:84% when we were drinking one night and he said to me 00:40:12.740 --> 00:40:15.830 align:middle line:90% that he was a funeral singer. 00:40:15.830 --> 00:40:18.742 align:middle line:84% His name was Michael McEwen so I assumed it had something 00:40:18.742 --> 00:40:19.700 align:middle line:90% to do with Catholicism. 00:40:19.700 --> 00:40:22.550 align:middle line:84% I didn't know much about Catholicism, it's exotic to me. 00:40:22.550 --> 00:40:25.130 align:middle line:84% And I got very excited about that, what could it 00:40:25.130 --> 00:40:28.020 align:middle line:90% mean to be a funeral singer? 00:40:28.020 --> 00:40:31.480 align:middle line:84% And so I pumped him for information about this 00:40:31.480 --> 00:40:33.980 align:middle line:84% and I tried to conceive what it would look like to look down 00:40:33.980 --> 00:40:36.080 align:middle line:84% into that box where the body was, 00:40:36.080 --> 00:40:38.030 align:middle line:84% somehow I had the notion of a small child 00:40:38.030 --> 00:40:42.590 align:middle line:84% standing above the deceased as it were 00:40:42.590 --> 00:40:45.980 align:middle line:84% and singing but refusing to look into that for the heart. 00:40:45.980 --> 00:40:47.630 align:middle line:84% And other things got involved too 00:40:47.630 --> 00:40:50.340 align:middle line:84% because I conceived that as he grew older, 00:40:50.340 --> 00:40:54.980 align:middle line:84% he saw the faces of his basketball teammates 00:40:54.980 --> 00:40:59.222 align:middle line:84% and also the teammates of maybe opposing teams. 00:40:59.222 --> 00:41:00.680 align:middle line:84% And some bad things happen when you 00:41:00.680 --> 00:41:02.990 align:middle line:84% play basketball and something happened here. 00:41:02.990 --> 00:41:06.290 align:middle line:84% And I ascribed them to a team called St Ignatius. 00:41:06.290 --> 00:41:09.357 align:middle line:84% That was only because I didn't know anybody. 00:41:09.357 --> 00:41:11.690 align:middle line:84% And when the editor published this he asked me why I was 00:41:11.690 --> 00:41:14.060 align:middle line:84% taking a swipe at the Jesuits and I wasn't. 00:41:14.060 --> 00:41:16.982 align:middle line:84% So I hope I'm not offending anybody when this comes up. 00:41:16.982 --> 00:41:19.190 align:middle line:84% And the only other thing in the poem you need to know 00:41:19.190 --> 00:41:21.955 align:middle line:84% is I assume somehow, I had once heard 00:41:21.955 --> 00:41:24.080 align:middle line:84% a boy who was a friend of mine like I say something 00:41:24.080 --> 00:41:26.480 align:middle line:84% about the nuns that told him if you touched girls 00:41:26.480 --> 00:41:29.722 align:middle line:84% in the wrong places you would die. 00:41:29.722 --> 00:41:31.430 align:middle line:84% And that seemed kind of interesting to me 00:41:31.430 --> 00:41:34.040 align:middle line:90% too, so I threw that in. 00:41:34.040 --> 00:41:35.870 align:middle line:84% So the poem is a kind of elegy and it's 00:41:35.870 --> 00:41:37.571 align:middle line:90% called The Funeral Singer. 00:41:37.571 --> 00:41:40.220 align:middle line:90% 00:41:40.220 --> 00:41:45.110 align:middle line:84% Somewhere on a side porch in a vinyl haze of light 00:41:45.110 --> 00:41:49.340 align:middle line:84% you and I sift through pieces of a giant puzzle 00:41:49.340 --> 00:41:51.320 align:middle line:84% to put together for once what must 00:41:51.320 --> 00:41:56.240 align:middle line:84% be the Atlantic, a harbor unlikely in the purest blue, 00:41:56.240 --> 00:41:59.030 align:middle line:90% a boat with a missing piece. 00:41:59.030 --> 00:42:02.090 align:middle line:84% From a box of dark hand rubbed hickory, 00:42:02.090 --> 00:42:08.060 align:middle line:84% music spools over our scratchy silence, the needle sticks. 00:42:08.060 --> 00:42:11.300 align:middle line:84% And when you flop back on the cool floor, 00:42:11.300 --> 00:42:14.060 align:middle line:84% I'm gone into my white linen robe 00:42:14.060 --> 00:42:17.900 align:middle line:84% with stitches of gold my mother made constantly 00:42:17.900 --> 00:42:20.270 align:middle line:90% crossing herself. 00:42:20.270 --> 00:42:23.060 align:middle line:84% The Angela's Kant's in my mouth sometimes 00:42:23.060 --> 00:42:25.520 align:middle line:90% like a tasteless wafer. 00:42:25.520 --> 00:42:29.390 align:middle line:84% Often I singing what new puzzle my cash will buy 00:42:29.390 --> 00:42:32.720 align:middle line:84% and later missing notes because my voice cracks 00:42:32.720 --> 00:42:35.960 align:middle line:84% over the open box I would never look into. 00:42:35.960 --> 00:42:39.710 align:middle line:84% I break up in front of the puzzled faces of shifty guards 00:42:39.710 --> 00:42:42.950 align:middle line:84% from St Ignatius high, the same bastards 00:42:42.950 --> 00:42:45.740 align:middle line:84% that took the old city title after spitting 00:42:45.740 --> 00:42:48.140 align:middle line:90% on our cheerleaders. 00:42:48.140 --> 00:42:51.500 align:middle line:84% I take my cue from the other actor, his silence 00:42:51.500 --> 00:42:55.220 align:middle line:84% after a long speech I don't think anyone truly hears. 00:42:55.220 --> 00:42:59.660 align:middle line:84% What did he mean render unto Caesar and the rest. 00:42:59.660 --> 00:43:03.710 align:middle line:84% I who and the angel of songs stand again in my whaling suit 00:43:03.710 --> 00:43:06.380 align:middle line:84% threadbare from years at the office, 00:43:06.380 --> 00:43:08.960 align:middle line:84% cigarette burns, perhaps a little semen 00:43:08.960 --> 00:43:13.410 align:middle line:84% stain to make what one gaudy cheeked woman said was the road 00:43:13.410 --> 00:43:16.880 align:middle line:84% so many people needed to find their way. 00:43:16.880 --> 00:43:21.530 align:middle line:84% In her foul breath she hummed at my arm croaking her thanks. 00:43:21.530 --> 00:43:23.600 align:middle line:84% I didn't know any of those four sons 00:43:23.600 --> 00:43:29.300 align:middle line:84% of bitches who made me walk home thinking of a road out of town. 00:43:29.300 --> 00:43:34.130 align:middle line:84% How once I broke down sobbing harder than the great pipes, 00:43:34.130 --> 00:43:37.920 align:middle line:84% they paid me double to double their pain. 00:43:37.920 --> 00:43:40.040 align:middle line:84% I only thought a girl was pregnant whom 00:43:40.040 --> 00:43:43.700 align:middle line:84% I touched wrongly and would die for as the crow footed 00:43:43.700 --> 00:43:46.700 align:middle line:90% nuns flapped in their habits. 00:43:46.700 --> 00:43:49.880 align:middle line:84% My voice was never half so good or pure as yours probably you 00:43:49.880 --> 00:43:53.300 align:middle line:84% could if asked disinter each face recount 00:43:53.300 --> 00:43:56.600 align:middle line:84% how many points scored where we lost the piece 00:43:56.600 --> 00:43:59.180 align:middle line:90% with the head of the fisherman. 00:43:59.180 --> 00:44:00.770 align:middle line:84% I've spent my whole life thinking 00:44:00.770 --> 00:44:04.310 align:middle line:84% we got screwed by a maker of defective toys, 00:44:04.310 --> 00:44:06.560 align:middle line:84% learning how not to hear my heart's lonely 00:44:06.560 --> 00:44:08.960 align:middle line:90% knocked up wheezing. 00:44:08.960 --> 00:44:13.040 align:middle line:84% My God, how long does a man have to sing to hear it be right 00:44:13.040 --> 00:44:14.660 align:middle line:90% just once. 00:44:14.660 --> 00:44:18.350 align:middle line:84% To ease out some hope for the freckled kid whose best give 00:44:18.350 --> 00:44:20.960 align:middle line:84% and go didn't make a damn though it beat me back 00:44:20.960 --> 00:44:26.180 align:middle line:84% to tears long ago defeated as I croon at his wake. 00:44:26.180 --> 00:44:28.280 align:middle line:84% Brother of the girl who needed no help from us 00:44:28.280 --> 00:44:31.010 align:middle line:90% to conceive her own pains. 00:44:31.010 --> 00:44:33.980 align:middle line:84% My friend today may be my last music 00:44:33.980 --> 00:44:38.090 align:middle line:84% and brought a puzzle of the entire charted world. 00:44:38.090 --> 00:44:40.460 align:middle line:84% I promise even if I live to die to get 00:44:40.460 --> 00:44:43.850 align:middle line:84% our colors in the right places, I won't leave you 00:44:43.850 --> 00:44:47.810 align:middle line:84% alone under the vines until it's done, 00:44:47.810 --> 00:44:50.270 align:middle line:84% until I sing like the most acute needle 00:44:50.270 --> 00:44:54.425 align:middle line:84% on Earth, every note we dug from those pressed grooves. 00:44:54.425 --> 00:44:59.450 align:middle line:90% 00:44:59.450 --> 00:45:05.810 align:middle line:84% A small poem for my wife which is called Picking Cherries. 00:45:05.810 --> 00:45:08.030 align:middle line:84% The latter quakes and sways under me, 00:45:08.030 --> 00:45:10.820 align:middle line:84% old wood I put too much faith in. 00:45:10.820 --> 00:45:14.690 align:middle line:84% Like ancestors strained, you circle me, 00:45:14.690 --> 00:45:18.410 align:middle line:84% cradling the baby, sun guttering in your face parading 00:45:18.410 --> 00:45:21.290 align:middle line:90% through the leaves, glad. 00:45:21.290 --> 00:45:24.710 align:middle line:84% If I look down I would see your calm fear, 00:45:24.710 --> 00:45:30.200 align:middle line:84% see in your narrowed eyes my bones chipped useless. 00:45:30.200 --> 00:45:34.520 align:middle line:84% The bucket hangs from my belt pulling obscenely at my pants 00:45:34.520 --> 00:45:37.940 align:middle line:84% but the chair up in and grow one by one. 00:45:37.940 --> 00:45:40.610 align:middle line:84% I keep reaching higher than I need 00:45:40.610 --> 00:45:44.300 align:middle line:84% because I want the one that tickles your tongue. 00:45:44.300 --> 00:45:49.290 align:middle line:84% When I come down, we will both be older, slower, 00:45:49.290 --> 00:45:53.270 align:middle line:84% but what of that, haven't we loved this climbing. 00:45:53.270 --> 00:45:57.620 align:middle line:84% If the latter gives way I still believe I can catch one branch, 00:45:57.620 --> 00:45:59.840 align:middle line:90% drop the bucket, and ease down. 00:45:59.840 --> 00:46:11.540 align:middle line:90% 00:46:11.540 --> 00:46:14.730 align:middle line:84% A longish poem, and I'll just tell you a few things about it. 00:46:14.730 --> 00:46:17.700 align:middle line:84% Five years ago, at the Associated Writers Program 00:46:17.700 --> 00:46:19.230 align:middle line:84% meeting in Washington, a friend came 00:46:19.230 --> 00:46:21.030 align:middle line:84% to see me very early in the morning, he was not a friend 00:46:21.030 --> 00:46:22.800 align:middle line:84% then we wanted to meet each other. 00:46:22.800 --> 00:46:24.660 align:middle line:84% And we were in one of those stained glass 00:46:24.660 --> 00:46:27.570 align:middle line:84% cubicles in a hotel where you can't really 00:46:27.570 --> 00:46:30.295 align:middle line:84% see here or tell much of what's going on outside. 00:46:30.295 --> 00:46:31.920 align:middle line:84% They were building something next door. 00:46:31.920 --> 00:46:36.780 align:middle line:84% And as we sat there all day drinking and getting maudlin, 00:46:36.780 --> 00:46:38.520 align:middle line:84% three bums kept trash fire that was 00:46:38.520 --> 00:46:41.318 align:middle line:84% in a barrel, the kind of construction barrels they have. 00:46:41.318 --> 00:46:43.110 align:middle line:84% And the first one came and he was very big, 00:46:43.110 --> 00:46:44.460 align:middle line:84% and we were fascinated with this man. 00:46:44.460 --> 00:46:46.210 align:middle line:84% He had a big great coat as if he just come 00:46:46.210 --> 00:46:48.420 align:middle line:90% from some army or something. 00:46:48.420 --> 00:46:50.160 align:middle line:84% And he sort of controlled that thing 00:46:50.160 --> 00:46:52.620 align:middle line:84% and he didn't let the workers seem to notice this. 00:46:52.620 --> 00:46:55.350 align:middle line:84% They didn't show him away and instead of actually coming 00:46:55.350 --> 00:46:57.540 align:middle line:84% up and throwing their pieces of wood in, 00:46:57.540 --> 00:46:59.430 align:middle line:84% they would almost throw them to his feet 00:46:59.430 --> 00:47:01.290 align:middle line:90% and just leave them there. 00:47:01.290 --> 00:47:03.900 align:middle line:90% And later, two more came. 00:47:03.900 --> 00:47:06.210 align:middle line:84% And after a while they reached in their coats 00:47:06.210 --> 00:47:08.970 align:middle line:84% and passed a little bottle around. 00:47:08.970 --> 00:47:11.400 align:middle line:84% And for years my friend and I somehow 00:47:11.400 --> 00:47:13.230 align:middle line:84% wanted to make something out of this, 00:47:13.230 --> 00:47:15.420 align:middle line:90% it seems such a magical thing. 00:47:15.420 --> 00:47:18.960 align:middle line:84% And neither of us could, well, I'm not sure that I have 00:47:18.960 --> 00:47:22.200 align:middle line:84% but this is a poem about that and it's 00:47:22.200 --> 00:47:27.280 align:middle line:84% called Trouble a Meditation Without Conclusion. 00:47:27.280 --> 00:47:30.180 align:middle line:84% We were not in trouble, we were only stuck 00:47:30.180 --> 00:47:32.220 align:middle line:84% in that hotel in Washington with nothing 00:47:32.220 --> 00:47:35.430 align:middle line:90% to do in God's plenty of time. 00:47:35.430 --> 00:47:40.170 align:middle line:84% Below us an alley iced instigated our lying despair, 00:47:40.170 --> 00:47:42.820 align:middle line:84% the faint tracks of a streetcar forgotten. 00:47:42.820 --> 00:47:46.320 align:middle line:84% We're not mourning any loneliness in that gray place, 00:47:46.320 --> 00:47:49.890 align:middle line:84% they were just the way someone once went home 00:47:49.890 --> 00:47:52.440 align:middle line:90% or where he might be loved. 00:47:52.440 --> 00:47:56.730 align:middle line:84% A man came then between the tracks weaving to a fire barrel 00:47:56.730 --> 00:48:00.510 align:middle line:84% where carpenters nosed up to tossing their trimmings. 00:48:00.510 --> 00:48:04.860 align:middle line:84% He watched them and knew they had seen he was troubled, 00:48:04.860 --> 00:48:07.560 align:middle line:84% the way nobody said a word to send him packing 00:48:07.560 --> 00:48:10.230 align:middle line:90% or tried to reclaim the fire. 00:48:10.230 --> 00:48:12.330 align:middle line:84% A wind nibbled the him of his great coat 00:48:12.330 --> 00:48:14.550 align:middle line:84% and we mimicked him saying, "You boys ain't had 00:48:14.550 --> 00:48:17.220 align:middle line:90% no trouble till you had me." 00:48:17.220 --> 00:48:20.910 align:middle line:84% Composed, he stood there letting the fire spit 00:48:20.910 --> 00:48:23.040 align:middle line:84% until we thought it was not trouble 00:48:23.040 --> 00:48:26.430 align:middle line:84% but something beyond trouble that had brought him here. 00:48:26.430 --> 00:48:28.980 align:middle line:84% Maybe he had begun a new life and we 00:48:28.980 --> 00:48:31.080 align:middle line:90% were the first to see him. 00:48:31.080 --> 00:48:32.910 align:middle line:84% We invented all the reasons we could 00:48:32.910 --> 00:48:35.250 align:middle line:84% to explain what that tattered coat must have gone 00:48:35.250 --> 00:48:37.590 align:middle line:84% through in all the seamy holes of the Earth 00:48:37.590 --> 00:48:41.880 align:middle line:84% to get him now here leaning into a trash fire 00:48:41.880 --> 00:48:44.670 align:middle line:84% as if that were desire not simple good luck. 00:48:44.670 --> 00:48:47.740 align:middle line:84% Whatever trouble he was, we could not look away 00:48:47.740 --> 00:48:50.790 align:middle line:84% and were drawn to that scene he commanded. 00:48:50.790 --> 00:48:54.990 align:middle line:84% A prickly awareness of something about to happen not just danger 00:48:54.990 --> 00:48:56.910 align:middle line:84% but the iron cold sense of something 00:48:56.910 --> 00:49:01.350 align:middle line:84% finally made us giggle as we watched the laborers work him. 00:49:01.350 --> 00:49:03.660 align:middle line:84% They threw splinters and fractures near him 00:49:03.660 --> 00:49:06.390 align:middle line:84% but did not now pass beyond the door 00:49:06.390 --> 00:49:09.120 align:middle line:84% where their faces blinked in and out. 00:49:09.120 --> 00:49:13.230 align:middle line:84% He chose what he would burn and he waited. 00:49:13.230 --> 00:49:16.320 align:middle line:84% And we waited, for we had nothing but time 00:49:16.320 --> 00:49:18.150 align:middle line:84% and we saw nothing beyond this scene 00:49:18.150 --> 00:49:20.520 align:middle line:90% beyond what we had become. 00:49:20.520 --> 00:49:22.890 align:middle line:84% Already it is hard to believe and only the dream 00:49:22.890 --> 00:49:25.440 align:middle line:84% explains how together we saw come 00:49:25.440 --> 00:49:29.400 align:middle line:84% from opposite directions, two more wretched than the first. 00:49:29.400 --> 00:49:31.860 align:middle line:84% We could not hear what he growled over the fire 00:49:31.860 --> 00:49:34.770 align:middle line:84% but saw his hand in a fist peel out of his pocket 00:49:34.770 --> 00:49:37.260 align:middle line:84% and we looked for the quick killing flesh. 00:49:37.260 --> 00:49:41.430 align:middle line:84% Looked, yet saw that hand as if it called the others close 00:49:41.430 --> 00:49:44.160 align:middle line:84% move to his breath like a lover's mouth 00:49:44.160 --> 00:49:49.590 align:middle line:84% slowly saying, "I have this place at last, I am back." 00:49:49.590 --> 00:49:53.730 align:middle line:84% From somewhere then, he produced the red bottle of wine 00:49:53.730 --> 00:49:57.900 align:middle line:84% and they took it drinking long sleeve dragging their lips 00:49:57.900 --> 00:49:59.850 align:middle line:84% and after a while we saw their eyes 00:49:59.850 --> 00:50:03.420 align:middle line:84% welling up as if from smoke or from some crackling 00:50:03.420 --> 00:50:05.040 align:middle line:90% out of the fire. 00:50:05.040 --> 00:50:06.870 align:middle line:84% When they looked up, we saw them see 00:50:06.870 --> 00:50:10.290 align:middle line:84% us watching the tears bright in the folds of skin 00:50:10.290 --> 00:50:14.190 align:middle line:84% and saw them almost on cue begin circling less men, 00:50:14.190 --> 00:50:16.560 align:middle line:84% more figures in a dream dance where 00:50:16.560 --> 00:50:19.800 align:middle line:90% love is troubles definition. 00:50:19.800 --> 00:50:24.090 align:middle line:84% Even the light now seemed troubled flickering like a bulb 00:50:24.090 --> 00:50:26.100 align:middle line:90% that any second will go out. 00:50:26.100 --> 00:50:29.280 align:middle line:84% And once we saw them tilt their faces up leaning back 00:50:29.280 --> 00:50:31.440 align:middle line:84% halting like children breathless after crack 00:50:31.440 --> 00:50:34.770 align:middle line:84% the whip and someone's weight already missed, 00:50:34.770 --> 00:50:37.830 align:middle line:84% their faces and ours held the same light until we 00:50:37.830 --> 00:50:40.170 align:middle line:84% saw it begin to spill away on those abandoned 00:50:40.170 --> 00:50:44.070 align:middle line:84% trucks full of grit and the ooze of rust that is like a man's 00:50:44.070 --> 00:50:48.180 align:middle line:84% history, the dead pittings and stains, 00:50:48.180 --> 00:50:51.240 align:middle line:84% something in that spillage for the light 00:50:51.240 --> 00:50:54.930 align:middle line:84% began to glow out of the dead steel and scab ice. 00:50:54.930 --> 00:50:58.110 align:middle line:84% We saw this, we did not understand, 00:50:58.110 --> 00:51:02.100 align:middle line:84% and in that freakish moment saw the three faces stop and stare 00:51:02.100 --> 00:51:06.570 align:middle line:84% at us in perfect clarity, and out of love's terrible depths 00:51:06.570 --> 00:51:11.050 align:middle line:84% which is all the trouble the man needs amongst strangers. 00:51:11.050 --> 00:51:15.730 align:middle line:84% Long after and quietly, we had watched those turn away from us 00:51:15.730 --> 00:51:17.800 align:middle line:90% knowing how we had lied. 00:51:17.800 --> 00:51:20.410 align:middle line:84% We wished for nothing but plenty of that cheap wine 00:51:20.410 --> 00:51:23.140 align:middle line:84% to drink in that light and the promise of those trucks. 00:51:23.140 --> 00:51:26.320 align:middle line:84% It was near dark, and even through glass we 00:51:26.320 --> 00:51:28.000 align:middle line:84% heard the shriek of a quitting whistle 00:51:28.000 --> 00:51:31.060 align:middle line:84% then we saw the one long haired laborer cum stripped 00:51:31.060 --> 00:51:34.330 align:middle line:84% to the waist leaving them a lunch bag and bolting. 00:51:34.330 --> 00:51:36.070 align:middle line:84% The big man in the great coat could 00:51:36.070 --> 00:51:39.490 align:middle line:84% have taken it, no trouble, saying this is what we wanted 00:51:39.490 --> 00:51:45.190 align:middle line:84% or you got the message son but hunger is also a trouble. 00:51:45.190 --> 00:51:47.860 align:middle line:84% And he had his own abundance of both, 00:51:47.860 --> 00:51:50.320 align:middle line:84% and the fire had now entered his eye. 00:51:50.320 --> 00:51:52.510 align:middle line:84% We saw how his aunt once like a tree 00:51:52.510 --> 00:51:54.670 align:middle line:84% in great wind and the bottle sailed 00:51:54.670 --> 00:51:57.820 align:middle line:84% after the boy shadow that somehow had become our own. 00:51:57.820 --> 00:52:01.390 align:middle line:84% It struck head high on the just built building shattering 00:52:01.390 --> 00:52:04.930 align:middle line:84% like stars the Ricochet slicing the boy's shoulder 00:52:04.930 --> 00:52:09.070 align:middle line:84% for he stumbled and bled in the dying light. 00:52:09.070 --> 00:52:10.880 align:middle line:90% Why should we watch any longer? 00:52:10.880 --> 00:52:12.100 align:middle line:90% We asked. 00:52:12.100 --> 00:52:16.090 align:middle line:84% If this trouble was the truth and not the world moments ago 00:52:16.090 --> 00:52:20.080 align:middle line:84% we burned for yet we watched because we 00:52:20.080 --> 00:52:21.970 align:middle line:90% were stuck in that hotel. 00:52:21.970 --> 00:52:25.210 align:middle line:84% We wanted to live long enough to get through our own trouble 00:52:25.210 --> 00:52:28.120 align:middle line:84% and there was nothing else to do but try understanding 00:52:28.120 --> 00:52:31.180 align:middle line:84% what could not be reduced to lie or reason. 00:52:31.180 --> 00:52:33.580 align:middle line:84% It would be dark soon and there would 00:52:33.580 --> 00:52:37.690 align:middle line:84% be nothing to see except the black nights and the bleeding 00:52:37.690 --> 00:52:41.680 align:middle line:84% madness of squad cars whose sirens already licked out 00:52:41.680 --> 00:52:46.195 align:middle line:84% on the tracks that ended under feet still hunting for trouble. 00:52:46.195 --> 00:52:53.800 align:middle line:90% 00:52:53.800 --> 00:52:56.040 align:middle line:84% Can I have somebody wave at me when 00:52:56.040 --> 00:52:59.100 align:middle line:84% my time is up, I've lost track of I don't know. 00:52:59.100 --> 00:53:02.490 align:middle line:84% Steve, if you'll do that I'd be very appreciative. 00:53:02.490 --> 00:53:06.160 align:middle line:84% Last year when I moved to Utah I drove through Wyoming, 00:53:06.160 --> 00:53:08.190 align:middle line:90% which is a kind of moonscape. 00:53:08.190 --> 00:53:11.010 align:middle line:84% And I was astonished to see standing beside the road 00:53:11.010 --> 00:53:12.330 align:middle line:90% a lot of antelope. 00:53:12.330 --> 00:53:14.250 align:middle line:90% I'd never seen them. 00:53:14.250 --> 00:53:16.740 align:middle line:84% And they just stand there, hundreds of them, 00:53:16.740 --> 00:53:18.520 align:middle line:90% perhaps you know that. 00:53:18.520 --> 00:53:21.060 align:middle line:84% But I was so astonished I pulled the car over and watched 00:53:21.060 --> 00:53:23.880 align:middle line:84% a few hawks circling and watch the antelope standing there. 00:53:23.880 --> 00:53:26.550 align:middle line:84% Someone has told me since, though this undercuts 00:53:26.550 --> 00:53:28.950 align:middle line:84% my entire imagination in the poem, 00:53:28.950 --> 00:53:31.175 align:middle line:84% that the antelopes stand there in front of fences 00:53:31.175 --> 00:53:33.300 align:middle line:84% because they don't know what to do about the fence. 00:53:33.300 --> 00:53:35.680 align:middle line:84% It isn't that they couldn't jump over it, 00:53:35.680 --> 00:53:38.010 align:middle line:84% but they just stand there and look at it. 00:53:38.010 --> 00:53:42.450 align:middle line:84% I presume someday they move away, I don't know. 00:53:42.450 --> 00:53:44.400 align:middle line:84% But my notion was what might it be 00:53:44.400 --> 00:53:48.390 align:middle line:84% like if you were a small hawk and you 00:53:48.390 --> 00:53:51.390 align:middle line:84% saw an antelope standing for a long time. 00:53:51.390 --> 00:53:52.860 align:middle line:84% If I were that small hawk, I would 00:53:52.860 --> 00:53:55.320 align:middle line:84% want to see if I couldn't catch that antelope, come 00:53:55.320 --> 00:53:57.590 align:middle line:90% down right on top of him. 00:53:57.590 --> 00:54:00.090 align:middle line:84% And if I were that antelope I would wonder what in the world 00:54:00.090 --> 00:54:03.450 align:middle line:84% had hit me because clearly a small hawk could not carry away 00:54:03.450 --> 00:54:06.450 align:middle line:90% an antelope. 00:54:06.450 --> 00:54:09.840 align:middle line:84% So that's the basic thing that's going on here 00:54:09.840 --> 00:54:14.400 align:middle line:84% and I think other things are going on as well if I'm lucky. 00:54:14.400 --> 00:54:18.150 align:middle line:84% The poem is called Goshawk Antelope. 00:54:18.150 --> 00:54:21.750 align:middle line:84% Against creamed snow peaks, that country of blue sage 00:54:21.750 --> 00:54:24.930 align:middle line:84% and shimmer of distance rising into his tiny skull 00:54:24.930 --> 00:54:29.580 align:middle line:84% full of desire he fell across my windshield at dot at 60 00:54:29.580 --> 00:54:33.630 align:middle line:84% and I half looking for a place I had never seen, 00:54:33.630 --> 00:54:36.630 align:middle line:84% half dreaming rooms where blind miles of light 00:54:36.630 --> 00:54:42.780 align:middle line:84% lie on framed family faces saw him before he was anything. 00:54:42.780 --> 00:54:45.690 align:middle line:84% A spot above the glassy road and in my eye 00:54:45.690 --> 00:54:49.230 align:middle line:84% acetyl and burned by brightness and hours of passage, 00:54:49.230 --> 00:54:50.880 align:middle line:90% I saw a memory. 00:54:50.880 --> 00:54:54.930 align:middle line:84% He came out of the strange clouded horizon 00:54:54.930 --> 00:54:57.150 align:middle line:84% like the dark of whipped phone wires 00:54:57.150 --> 00:54:59.640 align:middle line:84% and the quiet of first feathering shingles 00:54:59.640 --> 00:55:03.810 align:middle line:84% in sun or in the hour of burial and dropped into absence 00:55:03.810 --> 00:55:08.070 align:middle line:84% where the antelope stood alive at the fence of barbed wire, 00:55:08.070 --> 00:55:11.580 align:middle line:84% horns lifted slightly hovering on hooves edge 00:55:11.580 --> 00:55:17.160 align:middle line:84% as if bored with the prospect of leaps, long standing and still. 00:55:17.160 --> 00:55:20.100 align:middle line:84% The wind darted dust gave no image beyond itself 00:55:20.100 --> 00:55:23.940 align:middle line:84% puff balls that turned clockwise and counterclockwise as he 00:55:23.940 --> 00:55:27.300 align:middle line:84% stood changeless beneath that sudden whistle of gray. 00:55:27.300 --> 00:55:30.390 align:middle line:84% I felt my heart within those lovely shoulders flame 00:55:30.390 --> 00:55:34.260 align:middle line:84% and try to buck off whatever the air had sent down as shapeless 00:55:34.260 --> 00:55:38.220 align:middle line:84% as obsession and stopped my car knowing already 00:55:38.220 --> 00:55:41.190 align:middle line:84% how easily the talons dispossessed all 00:55:41.190 --> 00:55:44.190 align:middle line:90% who without illusions lived. 00:55:44.190 --> 00:55:47.580 align:middle line:84% Dark and light bucked clung shredded in my brain 00:55:47.580 --> 00:55:51.420 align:middle line:84% until I became a gain of boy on a fence hunch near the dream 00:55:51.420 --> 00:55:53.610 align:middle line:90% contending world. 00:55:53.610 --> 00:55:57.270 align:middle line:84% But someone far off was calling and I could not 00:55:57.270 --> 00:56:00.000 align:middle line:90% undream what held me. 00:56:00.000 --> 00:56:03.000 align:middle line:84% Though I stood at last, it was late, too late. 00:56:03.000 --> 00:56:06.360 align:middle line:84% Someone called and the legs I had always trusted 00:56:06.360 --> 00:56:10.200 align:middle line:84% broke but not in time and I fell from all chance 00:56:10.200 --> 00:56:16.530 align:middle line:84% to change what was done or undone in Wyoming, in June. 00:56:16.530 --> 00:56:19.980 align:middle line:84% It was already stark cold though the mild blue of dusk 00:56:19.980 --> 00:56:21.900 align:middle line:84% beat back my mother's pain when I 00:56:21.900 --> 00:56:27.960 align:middle line:84% saw him small as a wind shriek for the cliffs, his dream gone. 00:56:27.960 --> 00:56:30.720 align:middle line:84% The aching wingless shoulders of the antelope risen 00:56:30.720 --> 00:56:34.710 align:middle line:84% from a low mound of rocks running from what was unseen 00:56:34.710 --> 00:56:40.050 align:middle line:84% and there forever like the red print of a hand about to fall 00:56:40.050 --> 00:56:43.230 align:middle line:84% or I was late and wishing to God for a tree 00:56:43.230 --> 00:56:47.760 align:middle line:84% to hide under and see for once what had died out of my life 00:56:47.760 --> 00:56:49.890 align:middle line:84% but would never leave or come back 00:56:49.890 --> 00:56:53.880 align:middle line:84% as it had been like the slow growth of an antelope legs 00:56:53.880 --> 00:56:58.740 align:middle line:84% into freedom and away from desires black dream. 00:56:58.740 --> 00:57:00.360 align:middle line:90% It was late. 00:57:00.360 --> 00:57:02.670 align:middle line:84% There had been no sign, no reason 00:57:02.670 --> 00:57:05.700 align:middle line:84% to move except the call that might have been only dreamed. 00:57:05.700 --> 00:57:07.830 align:middle line:84% But once I stood under the keening moon 00:57:07.830 --> 00:57:12.240 align:middle line:84% that in Wyoming owns all that is and I begged the stars not 00:57:12.240 --> 00:57:15.240 align:middle line:84% to come gouging my bitter and motherless sleep where 00:57:15.240 --> 00:57:18.240 align:middle line:84% I lay long and longed as I do now 00:57:18.240 --> 00:57:21.240 align:middle line:84% over barbed wire for the peace of the night 00:57:21.240 --> 00:57:25.410 align:middle line:84% gleaming peaks and the flare of absence that came 00:57:25.410 --> 00:57:29.970 align:middle line:84% had fallen into the accusing goshawk face of my father 00:57:29.970 --> 00:57:34.770 align:middle line:84% in that dark room where I walked too late, where the glowing fur 00:57:34.770 --> 00:57:41.910 align:middle line:84% Tufts of candle shadows drift on her face and what was held 00:57:41.910 --> 00:57:45.615 align:middle line:84% has become suddenly lost like breath. 00:57:45.615 --> 00:57:57.620 align:middle line:90% 00:57:57.620 --> 00:58:01.388 align:middle line:84% A little poem about the floods in West Virginia, 00:58:01.388 --> 00:58:03.680 align:middle line:84% which is called A Memory at the Edge of Swollen Rivers. 00:58:03.680 --> 00:58:05.390 align:middle line:84% And I remember seeing a man on television 00:58:05.390 --> 00:58:07.730 align:middle line:84% who was telling in complete shock 00:58:07.730 --> 00:58:10.970 align:middle line:84% the camera that he had seen the flood come 00:58:10.970 --> 00:58:14.090 align:middle line:84% and had watched his wife who was standing beside him 00:58:14.090 --> 00:58:16.790 align:middle line:84% reach for him as the water carried her away. 00:58:16.790 --> 00:58:18.800 align:middle line:84% And then he had gone out to find her 00:58:18.800 --> 00:58:22.250 align:middle line:84% and had in fact dug her out of a sandbag. 00:58:22.250 --> 00:58:23.930 align:middle line:84% And that seemed terribly painful to me 00:58:23.930 --> 00:58:28.340 align:middle line:84% so I constructed a little story around that. 00:58:28.340 --> 00:58:32.450 align:middle line:84% It's called A Memory at the Edge of Swollen Rivers. 00:58:32.450 --> 00:58:38.060 align:middle line:84% Her, a quick and brittle music as of harpsichord or bare feet 00:58:38.060 --> 00:58:41.510 align:middle line:84% treading the cold, deep of Holly leaves. 00:58:41.510 --> 00:58:46.280 align:middle line:84% The bones fell out of the bag that was her skin. 00:58:46.280 --> 00:58:50.210 align:middle line:84% They must make a sound like a sweet in a deaf composer's ear 00:58:50.210 --> 00:58:53.810 align:middle line:84% that tumbling and smear after the rush of sleep 00:58:53.810 --> 00:58:57.110 align:middle line:84% shattered who stands by the river 00:58:57.110 --> 00:59:00.690 align:middle line:84% as we stood afraid of our bodies. 00:59:00.690 --> 00:59:05.360 align:middle line:84% You already aching for what we had said before the dust. 00:59:05.360 --> 00:59:07.010 align:middle line:84% The river lapped and seemed to love 00:59:07.010 --> 00:59:09.890 align:middle line:90% all the things we could be. 00:59:09.890 --> 00:59:14.930 align:middle line:84% Years ago then the stick I gouged something green and she 00:59:14.930 --> 00:59:17.780 align:middle line:90% crying, "Let it go, it stinks." 00:59:17.780 --> 00:59:20.690 align:middle line:90% I teased her, whom I loved. 00:59:20.690 --> 00:59:24.980 align:middle line:84% I swore she would eat whatever the river allowed us and saw 00:59:24.980 --> 00:59:30.230 align:middle line:84% her eyes grow black and dart in the shallows like small fish. 00:59:30.230 --> 00:59:33.260 align:middle line:90% She got the river in. 00:59:33.260 --> 00:59:35.960 align:middle line:84% It blew up her breasts that were white with the first milk 00:59:35.960 --> 00:59:37.790 align:middle line:90% of her making. 00:59:37.790 --> 00:59:40.490 align:middle line:90% The flood delivered her. 00:59:40.490 --> 00:59:46.850 align:middle line:84% Below zero now, the sun dazzling snow welds each eye to a slit. 00:59:46.850 --> 00:59:49.700 align:middle line:84% But whose boy is this, whose somebody's heart 00:59:49.700 --> 00:59:54.020 align:middle line:84% rattling pain goes with his stick to the waters. 00:59:54.020 --> 00:59:56.960 align:middle line:84% I follow him and do not speak for I would not 00:59:56.960 --> 00:59:59.390 align:middle line:84% want to have to take that face in my hands, 00:59:59.390 --> 01:00:02.360 align:middle line:90% wet with a green confusion. 01:00:02.360 --> 01:00:05.570 align:middle line:84% "We are all hungry," my mouth said. 01:00:05.570 --> 01:00:09.230 align:middle line:90% Shyly she sees my wrists. 01:00:09.230 --> 01:00:12.500 align:middle line:84% Her mouth open to sing in the hard air. 01:00:12.500 --> 01:00:13.850 align:middle line:90% Then was gone. 01:00:13.850 --> 01:00:16.970 align:middle line:84% All of us with sticks trying to find her. 01:00:16.970 --> 01:00:21.880 align:middle line:90% 01:00:21.880 --> 01:00:24.082 align:middle line:90% One more, OK. 01:00:24.082 --> 01:00:24.790 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Steve. 01:00:24.790 --> 01:00:27.370 align:middle line:90% 01:00:27.370 --> 01:00:31.180 align:middle line:84% Since most of us seem to be engaged in same poems, that 01:00:31.180 --> 01:00:35.350 align:middle line:84% is poems for our sons and daughters, 01:00:35.350 --> 01:00:39.190 align:middle line:84% I'd like to read this one and then I'll be finished. 01:00:39.190 --> 01:00:40.707 align:middle line:90% I'll read it. 01:00:40.707 --> 01:00:42.040 align:middle line:90% I had it here just a minute ago. 01:00:42.040 --> 01:00:47.440 align:middle line:90% 01:00:47.440 --> 01:00:50.730 align:middle line:84% This is a poem called Hospital Memory During a Storm. 01:00:50.730 --> 01:00:55.770 align:middle line:84% My son was fairly badly bitten by a dog but he did not die, 01:00:55.770 --> 01:00:58.260 align:middle line:90% and you'll need to know that. 01:00:58.260 --> 01:00:59.910 align:middle line:84% In the poem however all things change. 01:00:59.910 --> 01:01:03.240 align:middle line:90% 01:01:03.240 --> 01:01:05.160 align:middle line:84% What the poem is, well, that's enough 01:01:05.160 --> 01:01:07.080 align:middle line:84% and it imagines the hospital scenes. 01:01:07.080 --> 01:01:09.390 align:middle line:84% So Hospital Memory During a Storm. 01:01:09.390 --> 01:01:12.510 align:middle line:84% Time ticks everywhere and the stone water 01:01:12.510 --> 01:01:18.150 align:middle line:84% warn takes your testimony of pain like a smiling mungo. 01:01:18.150 --> 01:01:20.610 align:middle line:84% Waking in the mid-summer violence of lightning 01:01:20.610 --> 01:01:23.730 align:middle line:84% light blue green and blood red liquid broken 01:01:23.730 --> 01:01:26.820 align:middle line:84% clots in the bed sheets jammed down 01:01:26.820 --> 01:01:31.860 align:middle line:84% and you find yourself naked, and in need of the woman who softly 01:01:31.860 --> 01:01:36.060 align:middle line:84% is there where you had only an instant before been 01:01:36.060 --> 01:01:41.670 align:middle line:84% certain witness of a terrible death, passion. 01:01:41.670 --> 01:01:44.520 align:middle line:84% And later, more than half and dreaming you cry out 01:01:44.520 --> 01:01:46.590 align:middle line:84% in fury to God damn the gnawing hours 01:01:46.590 --> 01:01:49.200 align:middle line:84% that tear your heart whole harmony and peace. 01:01:49.200 --> 01:01:52.320 align:middle line:84% The doctor came antiseptic but he could not 01:01:52.320 --> 01:01:56.580 align:middle line:84% do what was required, what is required. 01:01:56.580 --> 01:01:58.800 align:middle line:84% Have you after all these years come 01:01:58.800 --> 01:02:02.850 align:middle line:84% to know that in any moment, time all day 01:02:02.850 --> 01:02:05.010 align:middle line:84% tick like the sprinkler in my garden 01:02:05.010 --> 01:02:08.790 align:middle line:84% with its incessant brown sizzle but whatever it says sinks 01:02:08.790 --> 01:02:13.530 align:middle line:84% and I do not expect too much of a dry promise that rattles. 01:02:13.530 --> 01:02:16.680 align:middle line:84% Under tubing that hangs and shines like gravity's spillage 01:02:16.680 --> 01:02:18.990 align:middle line:84% my son opens his mouth to scream off 01:02:18.990 --> 01:02:23.550 align:middle line:84% the dolly looming at him five floors up a raw hole oozing 01:02:23.550 --> 01:02:25.290 align:middle line:90% under his eye. 01:02:25.290 --> 01:02:29.670 align:middle line:84% There is glass and you turn to it aware of the low bellied 01:02:29.670 --> 01:02:32.820 align:middle line:84% cumulus bruises black the running hills 01:02:32.820 --> 01:02:35.380 align:middle line:84% in the hospital faint bells toll a time, 01:02:35.380 --> 01:02:39.510 align:middle line:84% which is not time for the ordinary child's skin by a fall 01:02:39.510 --> 01:02:44.010 align:middle line:84% as he hurries late and sure of your anger toward home. 01:02:44.010 --> 01:02:47.820 align:middle line:84% Do you see him there in the shadows surge 01:02:47.820 --> 01:02:52.080 align:middle line:84% and what are you calling as you run. 01:02:52.080 --> 01:02:55.230 align:middle line:84% His mouth sucks as if it truly loves the world 01:02:55.230 --> 01:02:57.930 align:middle line:84% and you translate that silent shape of terror 01:02:57.930 --> 01:03:03.060 align:middle line:84% and say it as love as if love had not come too late. 01:03:03.060 --> 01:03:06.630 align:middle line:84% Where are the right words who hears what you have been trying 01:03:06.630 --> 01:03:11.250 align:middle line:84% to say, ticks time does in bubbling liquid 01:03:11.250 --> 01:03:14.940 align:middle line:84% and you are murderous when you see in his collapsed face 01:03:14.940 --> 01:03:19.590 align:middle line:84% the human image meaty and seeping. 01:03:19.590 --> 01:03:23.610 align:middle line:84% So when you think of this later for who for the dog dismembered 01:03:23.610 --> 01:03:27.240 align:middle line:84% child, it seems the instant of no time, 01:03:27.240 --> 01:03:32.670 align:middle line:84% a dead stopped freeze that is all of it everything. 01:03:32.670 --> 01:03:34.320 align:middle line:84% At the edge of a hot night something 01:03:34.320 --> 01:03:37.770 align:middle line:84% is always waiting unfulfilled, dangerously innocent 01:03:37.770 --> 01:03:40.740 align:middle line:84% and probably it has been a long time since you dawdled 01:03:40.740 --> 01:03:44.070 align:middle line:84% into the luring good dark probably such an occasion 01:03:44.070 --> 01:03:47.340 align:middle line:84% returns when you will pick up the pebbly Gideon 01:03:47.340 --> 01:03:49.530 align:middle line:84% like your father's, finger reading 01:03:49.530 --> 01:03:53.010 align:middle line:84% the words for though you are helpless maybe 01:03:53.010 --> 01:03:57.120 align:middle line:84% it will help you, hope the world is not deadly. 01:03:57.120 --> 01:04:02.430 align:middle line:84% Think this, for maybe it will help you though the child 01:04:02.430 --> 01:04:06.840 align:middle line:90% wordless is screaming. 01:04:06.840 --> 01:04:09.780 align:middle line:84% I must tell you there is no way for a clinician or artist 01:04:09.780 --> 01:04:13.230 align:middle line:84% to draw from that room the awful pulse of death. 01:04:13.230 --> 01:04:16.170 align:middle line:84% If she dropping into her dream beside you 01:04:16.170 --> 01:04:19.860 align:middle line:84% has conceived or should yet in the big thick and festering 01:04:19.860 --> 01:04:24.090 align:middle line:84% darkness do so, nothing will change. 01:04:24.090 --> 01:04:28.890 align:middle line:84% Headlines in the paper or early set in gaunt sterile caps, 01:04:28.890 --> 01:04:30.760 align:middle line:90% above snapshots. 01:04:30.760 --> 01:04:33.240 align:middle line:90% This is simple evidence. 01:04:33.240 --> 01:04:35.280 align:middle line:84% If you have not thought out these things, 01:04:35.280 --> 01:04:38.610 align:middle line:84% it is time to recall how you first encountered hope 01:04:38.610 --> 01:04:41.640 align:middle line:84% and what risk you took for a plunge in desire 01:04:41.640 --> 01:04:46.260 align:middle line:84% and the fathers stare straight up into the naked moon. 01:04:46.260 --> 01:04:51.030 align:middle line:84% The world gives no guarantee but of loss and life. 01:04:51.030 --> 01:04:55.710 align:middle line:84% Love her now, wake her, and do this 01:04:55.710 --> 01:04:57.660 align:middle line:84% though she and passion may be as lost 01:04:57.660 --> 01:05:02.250 align:middle line:84% to you as the redolent flowers in the vase. 01:05:02.250 --> 01:05:05.400 align:middle line:84% The Hunchback of hope sings to you from her sleeping grief, 01:05:05.400 --> 01:05:09.270 align:middle line:84% and if you pay attention you may recall your heart's faith 01:05:09.270 --> 01:05:13.890 align:middle line:84% before memory and the wreckage of promise. 01:05:13.890 --> 01:05:17.730 align:middle line:84% Do you think it is virtue to go on grieving, to wish back 01:05:17.730 --> 01:05:21.990 align:middle line:84% forever that breath fluttered in the cage of small bones. 01:05:21.990 --> 01:05:26.490 align:middle line:84% You too must hurry to get home, and under the black chance 01:05:26.490 --> 01:05:28.080 align:middle line:90% of falling night. 01:05:28.080 --> 01:05:33.360 align:middle line:84% Passion, if you want to believe in it is a way of hope. 01:05:33.360 --> 01:05:38.010 align:middle line:84% Between her teeth, a weak current of air whistles. 01:05:38.010 --> 01:05:40.440 align:middle line:84% Though her lips are dry, clearly she 01:05:40.440 --> 01:05:42.840 align:middle line:84% is lovely and just done no wrong thing 01:05:42.840 --> 01:05:44.340 align:middle line:90% to bring down the lightning. 01:05:44.340 --> 01:05:46.820 align:middle line:84% I urge you to turn to her while there 01:05:46.820 --> 01:05:53.510 align:middle line:84% is time before the predawn chill for there is no child to stand 01:05:53.510 --> 01:05:56.660 align:middle line:90% stone faced in your door. 01:05:56.660 --> 01:05:57.770 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 01:05:57.770 --> 01:05:59.620 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 01:05:59.620 --> 01:06:23.000 align:middle line:90%