WEBVTT

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I think, this is a poem roughly
about insomnia, and it's--

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I always thought insomnia
sounds like the name of one

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of the muses, doesn't it?

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I mean, the 10th
muse, she stands there

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at the foot of the bed every
night, Insomnia in her robes.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It's also about how different
philosophies and religions tend

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to take our invisible
insides, and partition them up

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like pie slices.

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So that-- I mean, Freud
would be id, ego, super-ego,

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and Christianity would
be conscience and soul

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and rationality, and everyone
who sort of has a theory--

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one of the obligations
of a philosophy

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is to partition our
invisible parts,

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and the poem is also
based on that dividing.

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It's called "The Night House."

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"Every day, the body works
in the fields of the world,

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mending a stone wall
or swinging a sickle

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through the tall grass.

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The grass of civics,
the grass of money.

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And every night, the body
curls around itself and listens

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for the soft bells of sleep.

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But the heart is
restless and rises

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from the body in the
middle of the night,

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leaves the trapezoidal bedroom
with its thick, pictureless

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walls, to sit by herself
at the kitchen table

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and heat some milk in a pan.

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And the mind gets up
too, puts on a robe

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and goes downstairs,
lights a cigarette,

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and opens a book on engineering.

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Even the conscience
awakens and roams from room

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to room in the
dark, darting away

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from every mirror
like a strange fish.

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And the soul is up on the
roof in her nightdress,

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straddling the
ridge, singing a song

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about the wildness of the sea,
until the first rip of pink

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appears in the sky.

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Then, they will all return
to the sleeping body

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the way a flock of birds
settles back into a tree,

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resuming their daily
colloquy, talking

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to each other or
themselves, even

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through the heat of
the long afternoons.

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Which is why the body,
that house of voices,

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sometimes puts down its metal
tongs, its needle, or its pen

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to stare into the distance,
to listen to all its names

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being called before bending
again to its labor."

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[APPLAUSE]

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