WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.060 align:middle line:84% These others are quite different in tone. 00:00:03.060 --> 00:00:06.150 align:middle line:84% I want to begin with a poem called, Living Among the Dead. 00:00:06.150 --> 00:00:10.380 align:middle line:84% It has an epigraph from the French poet, Paul Eluard, 00:00:10.380 --> 00:00:14.760 align:middle line:84% which goes, "There is another world, but it is in this " 00:00:14.760 --> 00:00:19.770 align:middle line:84% The dead, I mean in the poem, are not only the great dead, 00:00:19.770 --> 00:00:22.350 align:middle line:84% gathered and remembered by history, 00:00:22.350 --> 00:00:28.410 align:middle line:84% or those personal dead people we remembered in our own lives, 00:00:28.410 --> 00:00:30.780 align:middle line:84% but a third group, which shares with them, 00:00:30.780 --> 00:00:33.570 align:middle line:84% the fact of being frozen forever in memory they don't change 00:00:33.570 --> 00:00:34.740 align:middle line:90% after they die. 00:00:34.740 --> 00:00:36.780 align:middle line:90% We remember them out of time. 00:00:36.780 --> 00:00:37.830 align:middle line:90% Time stops for them. 00:00:37.830 --> 00:00:39.990 align:middle line:84% I'm thinking of those characters in literature, 00:00:39.990 --> 00:00:43.980 align:middle line:84% fairy tales, stories, and so forth, who are likewise frozen. 00:00:43.980 --> 00:00:45.600 align:middle line:90% Trapped in their texts. 00:00:45.600 --> 00:00:46.373 align:middle line:90% Changeless. 00:00:46.373 --> 00:00:47.790 align:middle line:84% But who were never literally born, 00:00:47.790 --> 00:00:51.900 align:middle line:84% but who for the purposes of this poem, join the dead. 00:00:51.900 --> 00:00:54.780 align:middle line:90% Living Among the Dead. 00:00:54.780 --> 00:00:58.680 align:middle line:84% First, there were those who died before I was born. 00:00:58.680 --> 00:01:01.230 align:middle line:90% It was as if they had just left. 00:01:01.230 --> 00:01:04.080 align:middle line:84% Their shadows would slip out after them. 00:01:04.080 --> 00:01:07.500 align:middle line:84% Under the door, so recently closed, the air and its path 00:01:07.500 --> 00:01:10.710 align:middle line:90% was still swirling to rest. 00:01:10.710 --> 00:01:13.890 align:middle line:84% Some of the furniture came from them, I was told. 00:01:13.890 --> 00:01:17.460 align:middle line:84% And one day, I opened two chests of drawers 00:01:17.460 --> 00:01:20.460 align:middle line:90% to learn what the dead kept. 00:01:20.460 --> 00:01:23.790 align:middle line:84% But it was when I learned to read that I began always 00:01:23.790 --> 00:01:26.070 align:middle line:90% to live among the dead. 00:01:26.070 --> 00:01:28.350 align:middle line:90% I remember Rapunzel. 00:01:28.350 --> 00:01:31.980 align:middle line:84% The improved animals in the just so stories. 00:01:31.980 --> 00:01:35.880 align:middle line:84% And a flock of birds that saved themselves from a hunter 00:01:35.880 --> 00:01:39.180 align:middle line:84% by flying in place in the shape of a tree. 00:01:39.180 --> 00:01:44.730 align:middle line:84% Their wings imitating the whisk of wind in the leaves. 00:01:44.730 --> 00:01:49.680 align:middle line:84% My sons and I are like some wine the dead have already bottled. 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:53.820 align:middle line:84% They wish us well, but there is nothing they can do for us. 00:01:53.820 --> 00:01:56.640 align:middle line:90% Sebastian cries in his sleep. 00:01:56.640 --> 00:01:58.470 align:middle line:90% I bring him into my bed. 00:01:58.470 --> 00:01:59.850 align:middle line:90% Talk to him. 00:01:59.850 --> 00:02:01.530 align:middle line:90% Rub his back. 00:02:01.530 --> 00:02:03.810 align:middle line:84% To help his sons live easily among the dead 00:02:03.810 --> 00:02:06.330 align:middle line:90% is a father's great work. 00:02:06.330 --> 00:02:08.370 align:middle line:90% Now Sebastian drifts. 00:02:08.370 --> 00:02:10.169 align:middle line:90% Soon he'll sleep. 00:02:10.169 --> 00:02:13.050 align:middle line:84% We can almost hear the dead breathing. 00:02:13.050 --> 00:02:17.160 align:middle line:84% They sound like water under a ship at sea. 00:02:17.160 --> 00:02:20.220 align:middle line:90% To love the dead is easy. 00:02:20.220 --> 00:02:21.690 align:middle line:90% They are final. 00:02:21.690 --> 00:02:22.980 align:middle line:90% Perfect. 00:02:22.980 --> 00:02:25.980 align:middle line:84% But to love a child is sometimes to fail at love, 00:02:25.980 --> 00:02:29.880 align:middle line:84% while the dead look on with their abstract sorrow. 00:02:29.880 --> 00:02:33.690 align:middle line:84% To love a child is to turn away from the patient dead. 00:02:33.690 --> 00:02:35.640 align:middle line:90% It is to sleep carefully. 00:02:35.640 --> 00:02:37.980 align:middle line:90% In case he cries. 00:02:37.980 --> 00:02:42.480 align:middle line:84% Later, when my sons are grown, among their own dead, 00:02:42.480 --> 00:02:46.170 align:middle line:84% I can dive easily into sleep and lull 00:02:46.170 --> 00:02:48.540 align:middle line:90% among the coral of my dreams. 00:02:48.540 --> 00:02:53.100 align:middle line:84% Growing on themselves until, at the end, 00:02:53.100 --> 00:02:56.220 align:middle line:90% I almost never dream of anyone. 00:02:56.220 --> 00:02:58.140 align:middle line:90% Except my sons. 00:02:58.140 --> 00:03:00.170 align:middle line:90% Who is still alive.