WEBVTT

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Over the years--

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I don't read much fiction.

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I have read a lot
of anthropology,

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and I've read a lot
about the history

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of religions and whatnot.

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And so for a period
of time I read

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a lot of the great historian of
religions, Mircea Eliade, who

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happens to have been
we now know a fascist.

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But what are you going to do?

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He's a - no, I just
read Bellow's new book,

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Ravelstein, Ravelstein.

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And there's a character
in Bellow's book,

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I can't remember his name.

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He has a Romanian name.

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And it's unmistakably Eliade.

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And Bellow worked
with Eliade for years

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at the University of Chicago.

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So presumably he had I
mean, the worst dope one

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could have about Eliade.

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Anyway the title of this
poem is, "The Bull Roars."

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And you know what a
bull roar is, right?

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And the poem itself is
in South Philadelphia.

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Every year there is this
big Mummer's Day parade

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on New Year's day.

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People get dressed up in
these cockamamie costumes,

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and whatever.

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Make music with string bands.

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The epigraph in this
poem is from Eliade.

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The title of the poem
is "The Bull Roars."

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"Young men in an Australian
tribe are seized by masked men,

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carried far from their
familiar surroundings,

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laid on the ground and
covered with branches.

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For the first time they face
an absolute darkness, made

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terrifying by the approach of
divinity announced by the bull

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roars.

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They come from me
when it gets dark.

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Large and silent,
wearing Mummer's masks.

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Badger claws chinging
at their waists.

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Orange street cones
on their heads

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like party hats, tied with gut.

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They lift and carry me from
bed to a field by our red movie

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house to bury me in
the pit they've primed.

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The stars rub their
great noise on me.

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I think I have my own things to
bury before it gets too late.

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Herewith first I bury anger.

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May it's sparky pus not touch
my lips again, not hardly ever.

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Second into the
pit I send greed.

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May it choke on its
ashen hairy tongue.

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Go down you too covetousness and
lick the Earth's dungy scabs.

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But for myself I
keep the following:

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Lust, my favorite panic;
Charity for my friends,

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and a few exceptions;
Desire, because what else

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is there when warm
chestnuts split their skins;

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Last I keep willfulness to
shoot my mouth off as I please,

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even when the roaring buries me,
and dirt crawls ear to throat

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to tongue."

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