WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.370 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.370 --> 00:00:03.960 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:00:03.960 --> 00:00:06.930 align:middle line:84% First, I'd like to invite you all to join us for a reception 00:00:06.930 --> 00:00:09.840 align:middle line:84% after the reading in the St Phillip's West gallery, which 00:00:09.840 --> 00:00:13.920 align:middle line:84% is just this way from the sanctuary where we are now. 00:00:13.920 --> 00:00:16.410 align:middle line:84% And there will be refreshments and books 00:00:16.410 --> 00:00:19.650 align:middle line:84% will be for sale, courtesy of the U of A bookstore. 00:00:19.650 --> 00:00:21.870 align:middle line:84% Also, there will be a question and answer session 00:00:21.870 --> 00:00:24.720 align:middle line:84% with the poet tomorrow morning at the University Alumni 00:00:24.720 --> 00:00:27.510 align:middle line:84% building, on the corner of Speedway and Cherry. 00:00:27.510 --> 00:00:33.870 align:middle line:84% That will be at 11:30 AM in room 303 at the alumni building. 00:00:33.870 --> 00:00:36.090 align:middle line:84% It gives me great pleasure to introduce the poet 00:00:36.090 --> 00:00:38.760 align:middle line:90% and essayist, Carolyn Forché. 00:00:38.760 --> 00:00:41.490 align:middle line:84% Forché is the author of three books of poetry. 00:00:41.490 --> 00:00:44.670 align:middle line:84% Gathering the Tribes, which was a Yale Younger 00:00:44.670 --> 00:00:48.190 align:middle line:84% Poets Series selection, The Country Between Us, 00:00:48.190 --> 00:00:50.880 align:middle line:84% which was the winner of the Poetry Society of America's 00:00:50.880 --> 00:00:53.070 align:middle line:84% Alice Fay Di Castagnola award, 00:00:53.070 --> 00:00:57.090 align:middle line:84% and the Lamont selection of the Academy of American Poets. 00:00:57.090 --> 00:01:00.840 align:middle line:84% And The Angel of History, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book 00:01:00.840 --> 00:01:02.100 align:middle line:90% Award. 00:01:02.100 --> 00:01:05.280 align:middle line:84% She has also edited the anthology, Against Forgetting-- 00:01:05.280 --> 00:01:09.030 align:middle line:84% 20th Century Poetry of Witness, and translated the work 00:01:09.030 --> 00:01:13.020 align:middle line:84% of Robert Desnos, Claribel Alegría, and most recently, 00:01:13.020 --> 00:01:16.380 align:middle line:84% the work of Lebanese poet, Mahmoud Darwish. 00:01:16.380 --> 00:01:20.430 align:middle line:84% In addition to her substantial literary contributions, 00:01:20.430 --> 00:01:22.950 align:middle line:84% Forché has worked as a journalist and activist 00:01:22.950 --> 00:01:24.060 align:middle line:90% in El Salvador. 00:01:24.060 --> 00:01:26.700 align:middle line:84% And has served as a member of the commission of the United 00:01:26.700 --> 00:01:29.280 align:middle line:84% States Central American Relations. 00:01:29.280 --> 00:01:32.700 align:middle line:84% She was a National Public Radio correspondent in Beirut, 00:01:32.700 --> 00:01:35.970 align:middle line:84% and in 1998, she was invited to Stockholm 00:01:35.970 --> 00:01:39.480 align:middle line:84% to receive the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation 00:01:39.480 --> 00:01:41.850 align:middle line:90% for Peace and Culture award. 00:01:41.850 --> 00:01:44.880 align:middle line:84% Just last week, she received an award from the Centers 00:01:44.880 --> 00:01:47.910 align:middle line:84% for the Study of War and its Social Consequences, 00:01:47.910 --> 00:01:51.750 align:middle line:84% at their national symposium on post-war communities. 00:01:51.750 --> 00:01:55.500 align:middle line:84% Her recently completed collection of poems, Blue Hour, 00:01:55.500 --> 00:01:57.300 align:middle line:84% will be published by HarperCollins 00:01:57.300 --> 00:02:00.840 align:middle line:84% and released in the spring of 2003. 00:02:00.840 --> 00:02:04.020 align:middle line:84% In an essay entitled, "Emergence," Carolyn Forché 00:02:04.020 --> 00:02:08.100 align:middle line:84% writes, "there was first what could be said, 00:02:08.100 --> 00:02:11.880 align:middle line:84% and later, the way of saying which was superior to the 00:02:11.880 --> 00:02:13.350 align:middle line:90% said." 00:02:13.350 --> 00:02:16.620 align:middle line:84% Forché continues to astonish readers with both what 00:02:16.620 --> 00:02:18.810 align:middle line:90% and how she articulates. 00:02:18.810 --> 00:02:21.300 align:middle line:84% From the self-reflective lyrics of Gathering 00:02:21.300 --> 00:02:24.390 align:middle line:84% the Tribes, through the political interrogations 00:02:24.390 --> 00:02:28.440 align:middle line:84% of The Country Between Us, and the metaphysical orchestrations 00:02:28.440 --> 00:02:32.190 align:middle line:84% of Angel of History, Forché has mastered and reinvented 00:02:32.190 --> 00:02:34.020 align:middle line:90% her poetic identity. 00:02:34.020 --> 00:02:37.590 align:middle line:84% This is no less true in her new collection, Blue Hour, 00:02:37.590 --> 00:02:40.980 align:middle line:84% a book in which she fuses the imprint of the self, 00:02:40.980 --> 00:02:43.050 align:middle line:84% of the intellect, and of that which 00:02:43.050 --> 00:02:45.450 align:middle line:90% is sacred, and surrounds us. 00:02:45.450 --> 00:02:49.110 align:middle line:84% Hers is a reverence of breath and of breathlessness. 00:02:49.110 --> 00:02:54.150 align:middle line:84% Any culture, in any lifetime, is lucky to have such a visionary. 00:02:54.150 --> 00:02:59.400 align:middle line:84% Carolyn Forché, in her pitch and song makes to and of us, 00:02:59.400 --> 00:03:00.850 align:middle line:90% an offering. 00:03:00.850 --> 00:03:05.880 align:middle line:84% And here I quote "between here and here, between hidden points 00:03:05.880 --> 00:03:09.690 align:middle line:84% in the soul, between saying and said, 00:03:09.690 --> 00:03:12.750 align:middle line:84% beyond what one has oneself done." 00:03:12.750 --> 00:03:14.808 align:middle line:90% Please welcome Carolyn Forché. 00:03:14.808 --> 00:03:17.796 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:03:17.796 --> 00:03:30.270 align:middle line:90% 00:03:30.270 --> 00:03:30.870 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:03:30.870 --> 00:03:33.730 align:middle line:84% Thank you for that wonderful introduction, 00:03:33.730 --> 00:03:37.350 align:middle line:84% welcome. To the Poetry Center, Gail Browne. 00:03:37.350 --> 00:03:40.020 align:middle line:84% And thank you to the University of Arizona 00:03:40.020 --> 00:03:43.080 align:middle line:84% and the Poetry Center for bringing me back. 00:03:43.080 --> 00:03:47.190 align:middle line:84% I'm very honored to be introduced by Frances Sjoberg, 00:03:47.190 --> 00:03:50.640 align:middle line:90% she's a poet I greatly admire. 00:03:50.640 --> 00:03:53.730 align:middle line:84% I'd like to begin tonight with a few poems from the Country 00:03:53.730 --> 00:03:55.530 align:middle line:90% Between Us. 00:03:55.530 --> 00:03:59.820 align:middle line:84% In honor of Tucson, which was a sanctuary city 00:03:59.820 --> 00:04:03.120 align:middle line:84% during the war of intervention in Central America. 00:04:03.120 --> 00:04:06.030 align:middle line:84% So I thank you, and so, this is for you 00:04:06.030 --> 00:04:08.190 align:middle line:84% that I'm reading this, this evening. 00:04:08.190 --> 00:04:10.200 align:middle line:84% And it comes from a section of The Country 00:04:10.200 --> 00:04:13.140 align:middle line:84% Between Us, which was dedicated to the memory of Monsignor 00:04:13.140 --> 00:04:17.610 align:middle line:84% Oscar Romero, who was the Archbishop of San Salvador. 00:04:17.610 --> 00:04:22.500 align:middle line:84% He was assassinated, as you remember, in March 1980. 00:04:22.500 --> 00:04:25.200 align:middle line:84% I worked for him at his human rights office 00:04:25.200 --> 00:04:29.610 align:middle line:84% Socorro Juridico at the end of my time there. 00:04:29.610 --> 00:04:32.700 align:middle line:84% And he managed to get me out of the country 00:04:32.700 --> 00:04:34.530 align:middle line:90% the week before he died. 00:04:34.530 --> 00:04:37.890 align:middle line:90% I believe he was a saint. 00:04:37.890 --> 00:04:41.580 align:middle line:84% So I dedicate this these poems and this whole section to him. 00:04:41.580 --> 00:04:45.210 align:middle line:84% So, it's fitting that we be in the church for this. 00:04:45.210 --> 00:04:49.620 align:middle line:84% The section has an epigraph by the poet Antonio Machado. 00:04:49.620 --> 00:04:53.664 align:middle line:84% These words are carved on Machado's own tombstone. 00:04:53.664 --> 00:04:54.706 align:middle line:90% Caminante, no hay camino. 00:04:54.706 --> 00:04:55.831 align:middle line:90% Se hace el camino al andar. 00:04:55.831 --> 00:05:00.570 align:middle line:90% 00:05:00.570 --> 00:05:03.570 align:middle line:90% Walker, there is no path. 00:05:03.570 --> 00:05:08.040 align:middle line:84% You make the path while you walk. 00:05:08.040 --> 00:05:11.062 align:middle line:84% The first is a small poem, which was written 00:05:11.062 --> 00:05:12.270 align:middle line:90% for a prisoner in Ahuachapan. 00:05:12.270 --> 00:05:15.450 align:middle line:90% 00:05:15.450 --> 00:05:20.190 align:middle line:84% "In Spanish he whispers, there is no time left. 00:05:20.190 --> 00:05:24.330 align:middle line:84% It is the sound of scythes arcing in wheat. 00:05:24.330 --> 00:05:29.400 align:middle line:84% The ache of some field song in Salvador. 00:05:29.400 --> 00:05:33.360 align:middle line:84% The wind along the prison, cautious. 00:05:33.360 --> 00:05:39.360 align:middle line:84% As Francisco's hands on the inside touching the walls as he 00:05:39.360 --> 00:05:41.400 align:middle line:90% walks. 00:05:41.400 --> 00:05:45.900 align:middle line:84% It is his wife's breath slipping into his cell 00:05:45.900 --> 00:05:53.730 align:middle line:84% each night, while he imagines his hand to be hers. 00:05:53.730 --> 00:05:56.560 align:middle line:90% It is a small country. 00:05:56.560 --> 00:06:01.095 align:middle line:84% There is nothing one man will not do to another." 00:06:01.095 --> 00:06:07.130 align:middle line:90% 00:06:07.130 --> 00:06:09.410 align:middle line:84% I have to apologize, there is an obscenity 00:06:09.410 --> 00:06:11.300 align:middle line:90% in the following poem. 00:06:11.300 --> 00:06:13.460 align:middle line:84% And I'm in a church, but I've been 00:06:13.460 --> 00:06:15.500 align:middle line:84% assured by its parishioners that it's all 00:06:15.500 --> 00:06:20.270 align:middle line:84% right to use this word in this poem in this church. 00:06:20.270 --> 00:06:22.610 align:middle line:84% I think there are two obscenities in the poem, 00:06:22.610 --> 00:06:26.210 align:middle line:84% but National Public Radio only thinks there's one. 00:06:26.210 --> 00:06:30.240 align:middle line:84% So you can decide for yourselves. 00:06:30.240 --> 00:06:32.760 align:middle line:90% 00:06:32.760 --> 00:06:34.770 align:middle line:90% "The Colonel." 00:06:34.770 --> 00:06:36.970 align:middle line:90% "What you have heard is true. 00:06:36.970 --> 00:06:39.670 align:middle line:90% I was in his house. 00:06:39.670 --> 00:06:43.290 align:middle line:84% His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. 00:06:43.290 --> 00:06:48.210 align:middle line:84% His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night. 00:06:48.210 --> 00:06:52.920 align:middle line:84% There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion 00:06:52.920 --> 00:06:55.140 align:middle line:90% beside him. 00:06:55.140 --> 00:07:00.120 align:middle line:84% The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. 00:07:00.120 --> 00:07:05.850 align:middle line:84% On the television, was a cop show, it was in English. 00:07:05.850 --> 00:07:09.090 align:middle line:84% Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house 00:07:09.090 --> 00:07:11.520 align:middle line:84% to scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs 00:07:11.520 --> 00:07:15.150 align:middle line:90% or cut his hands to lace. 00:07:15.150 --> 00:07:16.980 align:middle line:84% On the windows, there were gratings 00:07:16.980 --> 00:07:19.980 align:middle line:90% like those in liquor stores. 00:07:19.980 --> 00:07:22.350 align:middle line:90% We had dinner. 00:07:22.350 --> 00:07:24.600 align:middle line:90% Rack of lamb. 00:07:24.600 --> 00:07:26.280 align:middle line:90% Good wine. 00:07:26.280 --> 00:07:29.970 align:middle line:84% A gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. 00:07:29.970 --> 00:07:34.800 align:middle line:84% The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of bread. 00:07:34.800 --> 00:07:38.550 align:middle line:84% I was asked how I enjoyed the country. 00:07:38.550 --> 00:07:41.790 align:middle line:84% There was a brief commercial in Spanish. 00:07:41.790 --> 00:07:45.060 align:middle line:90% His wife took everything away. 00:07:45.060 --> 00:07:47.850 align:middle line:84% There was some talk then, of how difficult 00:07:47.850 --> 00:07:51.390 align:middle line:90% it had become to govern. 00:07:51.390 --> 00:07:54.870 align:middle line:84% The parrot said hello on the terrace. 00:07:54.870 --> 00:07:58.110 align:middle line:84% The Colonel told it to shut up, and pushed himself 00:07:58.110 --> 00:08:00.060 align:middle line:90% from the table. 00:08:00.060 --> 00:08:05.160 align:middle line:84% My friend said to me with his eyes, say nothing. 00:08:05.160 --> 00:08:10.740 align:middle line:84% The Colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. 00:08:10.740 --> 00:08:13.810 align:middle line:84% He spilled many human ears on the table. 00:08:13.810 --> 00:08:16.230 align:middle line:84% They were like dried peach halves. 00:08:16.230 --> 00:08:19.740 align:middle line:84% There is no other way to say this. 00:08:19.740 --> 00:08:24.180 align:middle line:84% He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, 00:08:24.180 --> 00:08:29.430 align:middle line:84% dropped it into a water glass. It came alive there. 00:08:29.430 --> 00:08:32.700 align:middle line:84% I am tired of fooling around, he said. 00:08:32.700 --> 00:08:36.210 align:middle line:84% As for the rights of anyone, tell your people 00:08:36.210 --> 00:08:39.900 align:middle line:90% they could go fuck themselves. 00:08:39.900 --> 00:08:42.150 align:middle line:84% He swept the ears to the floor with his arm, 00:08:42.150 --> 00:08:45.540 align:middle line:84% and held the last of his wine in the air. 00:08:45.540 --> 00:08:50.160 align:middle line:84% Something for your poetry, no, he said. 00:08:50.160 --> 00:08:54.630 align:middle line:84% Some of the ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. 00:08:54.630 --> 00:08:59.130 align:middle line:84% Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground." 00:08:59.130 --> 00:09:07.240 align:middle line:90% -- San Salvador May 1978. 00:09:07.240 --> 00:09:10.690 align:middle line:84% I came back to the United States in 1980 00:09:10.690 --> 00:09:16.900 align:middle line:84% and there was the beginning of the anti intervention 00:09:16.900 --> 00:09:20.560 align:middle line:84% work, the sanctuary movement of which you were a part. 00:09:20.560 --> 00:09:23.770 align:middle line:84% And the publication later, of this, The Country 00:09:23.770 --> 00:09:27.340 align:middle line:84% Between Us, which was controversial 00:09:27.340 --> 00:09:30.970 align:middle line:84% because it was viewed as political poetry, which 00:09:30.970 --> 00:09:32.570 align:middle line:90% was very controversial. 00:09:32.570 --> 00:09:35.830 align:middle line:84% So, I began to collect the work of poets 00:09:35.830 --> 00:09:40.030 align:middle line:84% from all over the world, who had endured conditions of extremity 00:09:40.030 --> 00:09:41.710 align:middle line:90% in the 20th century. 00:09:41.710 --> 00:09:45.220 align:middle line:84% Warfare, imprisonment, forced exile, 00:09:45.220 --> 00:09:49.540 align:middle line:84% torture, assassination, and so on. 00:09:49.540 --> 00:09:52.420 align:middle line:84% And I learned that most of the poets 00:09:52.420 --> 00:09:54.400 align:middle line:84% beyond the English speaking world 00:09:54.400 --> 00:09:57.730 align:middle line:90% had endured such conditions. 00:09:57.730 --> 00:10:00.670 align:middle line:84% But most of them had had one of those things, or more 00:10:00.670 --> 00:10:02.800 align:middle line:90% of those things, happen to them. 00:10:02.800 --> 00:10:07.990 align:middle line:84% My interest was in the fact that their language 00:10:07.990 --> 00:10:11.320 align:middle line:84% had also passed through those experiences, 00:10:11.320 --> 00:10:13.750 align:middle line:90% and was marked by it. 00:10:13.750 --> 00:10:16.390 align:middle line:84% That the trace of that suffering and endurance 00:10:16.390 --> 00:10:18.220 align:middle line:90% was in the language itself. 00:10:18.220 --> 00:10:21.160 align:middle line:84% And that their language was evidence 00:10:21.160 --> 00:10:23.180 align:middle line:90% of what had happened to them. 00:10:23.180 --> 00:10:26.650 align:middle line:84% So it's gathered together in a book called Against Forgetting, 00:10:26.650 --> 00:10:30.760 align:middle line:90% 145 poets, 30 languages. 00:10:30.760 --> 00:10:33.820 align:middle line:84% It's an anthological history of the century, 00:10:33.820 --> 00:10:36.220 align:middle line:90% according to its poets. 00:10:36.220 --> 00:10:41.710 align:middle line:84% And it begins with a motto by Bertolt Brecht, 00:10:41.710 --> 00:10:44.470 align:middle line:90% which applies to us now. 00:10:44.470 --> 00:10:49.510 align:middle line:84% "In the dark times, will there also be singing. 00:10:49.510 --> 00:10:55.660 align:middle line:84% Yes, there will be singing about the dark times." 00:10:55.660 --> 00:10:58.660 align:middle line:84% I have only one little poem I have committed 00:10:58.660 --> 00:11:00.520 align:middle line:90% to memory from that work. 00:11:00.520 --> 00:11:06.520 align:middle line:84% It's by Dan Pagis, who was of Bukovina, and later, 00:11:06.520 --> 00:11:10.360 align:middle line:84% of the Ukraine and wound up in Israel at the end of his life. 00:11:10.360 --> 00:11:13.480 align:middle line:84% He went through the Holocaust, passed through the camps. 00:11:13.480 --> 00:11:15.910 align:middle line:84% He gave up poetry reading in Jerusalem 00:11:15.910 --> 00:11:20.020 align:middle line:90% four years before he died. 00:11:20.020 --> 00:11:23.830 align:middle line:84% He prefaced his poem by saying, that when 00:11:23.830 --> 00:11:26.650 align:middle line:84% they were in the boxcars being shipped to the camps, 00:11:26.650 --> 00:11:28.510 align:middle line:84% if someone had a sharp instrument, 00:11:28.510 --> 00:11:31.180 align:middle line:84% they would-- or a pen, or pencil, or knife or anything, 00:11:31.180 --> 00:11:34.690 align:middle line:84% they would try to carve writing into the sides of the boxcars 00:11:34.690 --> 00:11:36.550 align:middle line:84% for the next people who would come. 00:11:36.550 --> 00:11:39.040 align:middle line:84% And then he recited this poem, which 00:11:39.040 --> 00:11:44.110 align:middle line:84% is titled Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car. 00:11:44.110 --> 00:11:46.680 align:middle line:90% 00:11:46.680 --> 00:11:55.200 align:middle line:84% "Here in this carload, I am Eve with Abel, my son. 00:11:55.200 --> 00:12:02.152 align:middle line:84% If you see my other son, Cain, son of man, tell him that I", 00:12:02.152 --> 00:12:04.580 align:middle line:90% and it's just finished. 00:12:04.580 --> 00:12:07.820 align:middle line:90% He doesn't get to finish it. 00:12:07.820 --> 00:12:10.730 align:middle line:84% The anthology ends with another motto. 00:12:10.730 --> 00:12:15.440 align:middle line:84% It goes from Armenian genocide to Tiananmen Square. 00:12:15.440 --> 00:12:17.390 align:middle line:84% There is a section on the United States, 00:12:17.390 --> 00:12:19.760 align:middle line:84% the struggle for civil rights and civil liberties 00:12:19.760 --> 00:12:22.040 align:middle line:90% in the United States. 00:12:22.040 --> 00:12:25.430 align:middle line:84% WW Norton was surprised that I included the US, 00:12:25.430 --> 00:12:28.040 align:middle line:90% but you aren't surprised. 00:12:28.040 --> 00:12:33.590 align:middle line:84% I had a motto at the end that said "This then, is all. 00:12:33.590 --> 00:12:35.870 align:middle line:90% It's not enough, I know. 00:12:35.870 --> 00:12:39.560 align:middle line:84% At least I'm still alive, as you can see. 00:12:39.560 --> 00:12:43.250 align:middle line:84% I am like the man who took a brick 00:12:43.250 --> 00:12:47.600 align:middle line:84% to show how beautiful his house used once to be." 00:12:47.600 --> 00:12:50.700 align:middle line:90% 00:12:50.700 --> 00:12:54.650 align:middle line:84% So, the next work was a gathering of those things, 00:12:54.650 --> 00:12:57.770 align:middle line:84% and alongside it, I wrote a book called 00:12:57.770 --> 00:13:00.680 align:middle line:84% The Angel of History, which, I thought 00:13:00.680 --> 00:13:03.710 align:middle line:90% was a separate project entirely. 00:13:03.710 --> 00:13:07.020 align:middle line:84% But it's a meditation on the 20th century. 00:13:07.020 --> 00:13:10.880 align:middle line:84% And most specifically, on two events. 00:13:10.880 --> 00:13:14.720 align:middle line:84% The Holocaust and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 00:13:14.720 --> 00:13:17.090 align:middle line:84% There are other things mixed in, but those are 00:13:17.090 --> 00:13:18.710 align:middle line:90% the two events of this book. 00:13:18.710 --> 00:13:21.830 align:middle line:84% And it begins with a quotation by Walter Benjamin, 00:13:21.830 --> 00:13:24.950 align:middle line:84% German Jewish philosopher, who committed suicide 00:13:24.950 --> 00:13:29.720 align:middle line:84% while attempting to flee the Nazis in 1940. 00:13:29.720 --> 00:13:32.180 align:middle line:84% This quote is from his book Theses 00:13:32.180 --> 00:13:34.865 align:middle line:84% on the Philosophy of History, part nine. 00:13:34.865 --> 00:13:38.260 align:middle line:90% 00:13:38.260 --> 00:13:42.700 align:middle line:84% "This is how one pictures the angel of history. 00:13:42.700 --> 00:13:46.360 align:middle line:84% His face is turned toward the past. 00:13:46.360 --> 00:13:50.020 align:middle line:84% Where we perceive a chain of events, 00:13:50.020 --> 00:13:55.720 align:middle line:84% he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage, 00:13:55.720 --> 00:13:58.990 align:middle line:84% and throws it in front of his feet. 00:13:58.990 --> 00:14:03.850 align:middle line:84% The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, 00:14:03.850 --> 00:14:08.440 align:middle line:84% and make whole what has been smashed. 00:14:08.440 --> 00:14:12.040 align:middle line:84% But a storm is blowing in from paradise. 00:14:12.040 --> 00:14:15.820 align:middle line:84% It has got caught in his wings with such a violence 00:14:15.820 --> 00:14:19.220 align:middle line:84% that the angel can no longer close them. 00:14:19.220 --> 00:14:21.340 align:middle line:84% The storm irresistibly propels him 00:14:21.340 --> 00:14:26.140 align:middle line:84% into the future to which his back is turned. 00:14:26.140 --> 00:14:32.260 align:middle line:84% While the pile of debris before him grows skyward. 00:14:32.260 --> 00:14:38.900 align:middle line:84% This storm is what we call progress." 00:14:38.900 --> 00:14:40.490 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read one little part 00:14:40.490 --> 00:14:42.620 align:middle line:90% from The Angel of History poem. 00:14:42.620 --> 00:14:47.540 align:middle line:84% A small part because I want you to meet Ellie. 00:14:47.540 --> 00:14:50.480 align:middle line:90% I was in Paris-- 00:14:50.480 --> 00:14:54.020 align:middle line:90% I lived in Paris in 1986. 00:14:54.020 --> 00:14:56.960 align:middle line:90% I had my son there, Sean. 00:14:56.960 --> 00:15:00.680 align:middle line:84% He's now-- you can do the math, well he'll be 16 soon. 00:15:00.680 --> 00:15:04.430 align:middle line:84% And I had to go into the hospital 00:15:04.430 --> 00:15:08.420 align:middle line:84% in the middle of the night, for a reason unrelated to the baby. 00:15:08.420 --> 00:15:09.860 align:middle line:90% And I was taken to the 00:15:09.860 --> 00:15:11.180 align:middle line:90% Hotel Dieu 00:15:11.180 --> 00:15:12.865 align:middle line:90% --God's hotel. 00:15:12.865 --> 00:15:14.240 align:middle line:84% It's the name of a hospital right 00:15:14.240 --> 00:15:16.190 align:middle line:90% next to Notre-Dame cathedral. 00:15:16.190 --> 00:15:17.930 align:middle line:90% It looks like a cathedral. 00:15:17.930 --> 00:15:19.280 align:middle line:90% And it's got vaulted-- 00:15:19.280 --> 00:15:23.300 align:middle line:84% you know, stone, vaulted corridors. 00:15:23.300 --> 00:15:25.100 align:middle line:84% And they're open to the courtyard. 00:15:25.100 --> 00:15:27.110 align:middle line:84% So you, not only, are holding your gown 00:15:27.110 --> 00:15:30.320 align:middle line:84% closed for that reason, but you're cold. 00:15:30.320 --> 00:15:32.180 align:middle line:90% But it's a beautiful hospital. 00:15:32.180 --> 00:15:34.910 align:middle line:90% Rilke was a patient there. 00:15:34.910 --> 00:15:38.210 align:middle line:84% All the way back through the First World War patients there. 00:15:38.210 --> 00:15:40.670 align:middle line:90% Lots of ghosts in this hospital. 00:15:40.670 --> 00:15:43.070 align:middle line:84% And in the middle of the night, I was taken to my room, 00:15:43.070 --> 00:15:45.060 align:middle line:90% and my roommate was awake. 00:15:45.060 --> 00:15:47.030 align:middle line:90% She was on the other bed. 00:15:47.030 --> 00:15:48.510 align:middle line:90% And she was very tiny. 00:15:48.510 --> 00:15:53.180 align:middle line:84% And she was-- oh gosh, she was in her late 70s then. 00:15:53.180 --> 00:15:59.480 align:middle line:84% And she didn't say good evening, she said, and what are you? 00:15:59.480 --> 00:16:01.940 align:middle line:90% So I said, I'm a poet. 00:16:01.940 --> 00:16:05.720 align:middle line:84% And she said, and I am also a poet. 00:16:05.720 --> 00:16:07.160 align:middle line:90% It's going to be dueling poets. 00:16:07.160 --> 00:16:09.860 align:middle line:84% But anyway, she said-- the next thing she said was, 00:16:09.860 --> 00:16:14.250 align:middle line:84% and I don't speak any languages fluently. 00:16:14.250 --> 00:16:17.810 align:middle line:84% So I thought, I'd never heard anyone ever say that. 00:16:17.810 --> 00:16:21.140 align:middle line:84% But Ellie had rejected languages more or less. 00:16:21.140 --> 00:16:24.530 align:middle line:84% She didn't like anyone well enough to speak their language, 00:16:24.530 --> 00:16:25.820 align:middle line:90% as it turned out. 00:16:25.820 --> 00:16:28.940 align:middle line:84% She was she was in France, living in Paris, 00:16:28.940 --> 00:16:30.660 align:middle line:84% but she was originally from Germany. 00:16:30.660 --> 00:16:33.650 align:middle line:84% She was a German Jew who had hid first in Germany, and then 00:16:33.650 --> 00:16:35.900 align:middle line:84% in France, with her young children who 00:16:35.900 --> 00:16:37.880 align:middle line:90% didn't escape this hiding. 00:16:37.880 --> 00:16:39.470 align:middle line:90% So she didn't want to-- 00:16:39.470 --> 00:16:42.660 align:middle line:84% everyone she knew who spoke Yiddish was dead. 00:16:42.660 --> 00:16:44.930 align:middle line:84% She didn't want to speak German anymore, 00:16:44.930 --> 00:16:47.240 align:middle line:90% although she spoke German. 00:16:47.240 --> 00:16:50.000 align:middle line:84% There were too many collaborators in France, 00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:52.100 align:middle line:84% so she didn't want to speak French. 00:16:52.100 --> 00:16:54.950 align:middle line:84% The Soviet Union, that was the problem with Russia-- 00:16:54.950 --> 00:16:56.385 align:middle line:90% With Russian language. 00:16:56.385 --> 00:16:58.760 align:middle line:84% And she didn't really like the Americans too much either, 00:16:58.760 --> 00:17:00.980 align:middle line:84% although, I never got clear about why that was. 00:17:00.980 --> 00:17:03.960 align:middle line:84% So, English was out of the question. 00:17:03.960 --> 00:17:07.460 align:middle line:84% So she just spoke what she called, cassoulet, of language. 00:17:07.460 --> 00:17:08.690 align:middle line:90% She mixed everything up. 00:17:08.690 --> 00:17:11.970 align:middle line:90% She talked to me for a week. 00:17:11.970 --> 00:17:15.740 align:middle line:84% And so, I put-- so she's in my book Ellie. 00:17:15.740 --> 00:17:17.240 align:middle line:84% I'm just going to do a little piece. 00:17:17.240 --> 00:17:21.410 align:middle line:84% A little invocation from her, that has her voice in it. 00:17:21.410 --> 00:17:23.990 align:middle line:90% 00:17:23.990 --> 00:17:27.280 align:middle line:90% "This is Izieu during the war. 00:17:27.280 --> 00:17:31.570 align:middle line:84% Izieu and the neighboring village of Brégnier-Cordon. This 00:17:31.570 --> 00:17:34.390 align:middle line:90% is a farmhouse in Izieu. 00:17:34.390 --> 00:17:39.700 align:middle line:84% Itself, a quiet place of stone houses over the Rhone, 00:17:39.700 --> 00:17:43.600 align:middle line:84% where between Aprils, 44 children 00:17:43.600 --> 00:17:50.350 align:middle line:84% were hidden successfully for a year in view of the mountains. 00:17:50.350 --> 00:17:55.360 align:middle line:84% Until the fields were black, and snow fell all night. 00:17:55.360 --> 00:17:59.140 align:middle line:84% Over the little plaque, which does not mention that they were 00:17:59.140 --> 00:18:03.550 align:middle line:84% Jewish children hidden April to April in Izieu near 00:18:03.550 --> 00:18:06.370 align:middle line:90% Brégnier-Cordon. 00:18:06.370 --> 00:18:12.080 align:middle line:90% Comment me vint l'criture? Comme un duvet d'oiseau sur ma vitre, en hiver. 00:18:12.400 --> 00:18:20.560 align:middle line:84% In every window, a blank photograph of their internment. 00:18:20.560 --> 00:18:24.340 align:middle line:84% Within the house, the silence of God. 00:18:24.340 --> 00:18:29.380 align:middle line:90% 44 bed rolls, 44 metal cups. 00:18:29.380 --> 00:18:33.820 align:middle line:90% And the silence of God is God. 00:18:33.820 --> 00:18:39.520 align:middle line:90% In Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande, in Les Milles, Les Tourelles, Moussac and Aubagne, 00:18:40.030 --> 00:18:42.850 align:middle line:90% The silence of God is God. 00:18:42.850 --> 00:18:45.500 align:middle line:90% 00:18:45.500 --> 00:18:48.560 align:middle line:84% The children were taken to Poland. 00:18:48.560 --> 00:18:51.260 align:middle line:84% The children were taken to Auschwitz, in Poland. 00:18:51.260 --> 00:18:52.250 align:middle line:90% Singing 00:18:52.250 --> 00:18:55.510 align:middle line:90% Vous n'aurez pas L'Alsace et la Lorraine. 00:18:55.970 --> 00:18:59.480 align:middle line:84% In a farmhouse, still standing in Izieu, 00:18:59.480 --> 00:19:03.370 align:middle line:90% le silence de Dieu est Dieu. 00:19:07.420 --> 00:19:11.620 align:middle line:84% I would like to read another two poems from this work. 00:19:11.620 --> 00:19:16.660 align:middle line:84% This one is called the Garden Shukkei-En. 00:19:16.660 --> 00:19:20.290 align:middle line:90% I went to Japan in 1983. 00:19:20.290 --> 00:19:24.790 align:middle line:84% The Asian Writers Congress was held in Japan that year. 00:19:24.790 --> 00:19:30.310 align:middle line:84% They invited 12 non-Asian writers to the Congress. 00:19:30.310 --> 00:19:32.410 align:middle line:84% Galway Kinnell and I were the two-- 00:19:32.410 --> 00:19:36.130 align:middle line:84% well, they wanted two from each of the nuclear powered nations. 00:19:36.130 --> 00:19:38.680 align:middle line:84% Which, by the way, then included also South Africa. 00:19:38.680 --> 00:19:40.690 align:middle line:84% Galway Kinnell and I were the nuclear poets 00:19:40.690 --> 00:19:42.400 align:middle line:90% from the United States. 00:19:42.400 --> 00:19:44.680 align:middle line:84% So, they brought us to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 00:19:44.680 --> 00:19:46.060 align:middle line:90% so you see there was a theme. 00:19:46.060 --> 00:19:48.430 align:middle line:84% It was called Writing Under the Nuclear Cloud, 00:19:48.430 --> 00:19:53.200 align:middle line:84% the implications of writing in the time of nuclear threat. 00:19:53.200 --> 00:19:57.040 align:middle line:84% So, we were taken to the Peace Parks, 00:19:57.040 --> 00:19:58.720 align:middle line:84% the museums where all the objects 00:19:58.720 --> 00:20:02.620 align:middle line:84% retrieved from the epicenters are still kept and labeled. 00:20:02.620 --> 00:20:04.630 align:middle line:84% And we were also introduced to a number 00:20:04.630 --> 00:20:06.970 align:middle line:84% of hibakusha, survivors, people who 00:20:06.970 --> 00:20:09.460 align:middle line:90% survived the pika, the light. 00:20:09.460 --> 00:20:11.080 align:middle line:90% They told us their stories. 00:20:11.080 --> 00:20:13.450 align:middle line:84% There was something strange about the stories. 00:20:13.450 --> 00:20:16.510 align:middle line:84% I listened to many of them, until I realized 00:20:16.510 --> 00:20:18.820 align:middle line:84% that I was listening-- even though I was listening 00:20:18.820 --> 00:20:24.220 align:middle line:84% to older people, I was listening to the stories of children. 00:20:24.220 --> 00:20:27.610 align:middle line:84% They had all been five, six, seven years old. 00:20:27.610 --> 00:20:32.080 align:middle line:84% The older ones had already all died early of leukemias. 00:20:32.080 --> 00:20:35.500 align:middle line:84% So, I was getting the view of children. 00:20:35.500 --> 00:20:39.670 align:middle line:84% The one woman said, I was in an ornamental garden called 00:20:39.670 --> 00:20:43.300 align:middle line:84% Shukkei-En, and some trees jumped out of the ground 00:20:43.300 --> 00:20:46.180 align:middle line:90% and surrounded me to save me. 00:20:46.180 --> 00:20:47.740 align:middle line:84% So, she believed that she had been 00:20:47.740 --> 00:20:50.980 align:middle line:84% saved by the intervention of some trees. 00:20:50.980 --> 00:20:52.960 align:middle line:84% She had never gone back to this garden, 00:20:52.960 --> 00:20:54.520 align:middle line:84% but she made the decision to come 00:20:54.520 --> 00:20:58.880 align:middle line:84% with us when we were to take our tour of it, that afternoon. 00:20:58.880 --> 00:21:01.400 align:middle line:90% So, I just-- I went with her. 00:21:01.400 --> 00:21:03.190 align:middle line:84% I stuck with her during the tour because I 00:21:03.190 --> 00:21:07.370 align:middle line:84% wanted to see what she would say, and what would happen. 00:21:07.370 --> 00:21:10.090 align:middle line:84% So, we walk together, and this is the poem. 00:21:10.090 --> 00:21:13.090 align:middle line:90% She gave me this poem. 00:21:13.090 --> 00:21:16.450 align:middle line:90% "The Garden Shukkei-En". 00:21:16.450 --> 00:21:21.040 align:middle line:84% "By way of a vanished bridge, we cross this river. 00:21:21.040 --> 00:21:26.020 align:middle line:84% As a cloud of lifted snow would ascend the mountain, 00:21:26.020 --> 00:21:30.130 align:middle line:84% she has always been afraid to come here. 00:21:30.130 --> 00:21:33.790 align:middle line:84% It is the river she most remembers. 00:21:33.790 --> 00:21:38.860 align:middle line:84% The living and the dead, both crying for help. 00:21:38.860 --> 00:21:43.600 align:middle line:84% A world that allowed neither tears nor lamentation. 00:21:43.600 --> 00:21:47.230 align:middle line:84% The Matsu trees brush her hair as she passes beneath them, 00:21:47.230 --> 00:21:51.760 align:middle line:84% as do the shining strands of barbed wire. 00:21:51.760 --> 00:21:56.770 align:middle line:84% Where this lake is, there was a lake. 00:21:56.770 --> 00:22:02.980 align:middle line:84% Where these black pine grow, there grew black pine. 00:22:02.980 --> 00:22:07.060 align:middle line:84% Where there is no teahouse, I see a wooden teahouse. 00:22:07.060 --> 00:22:11.710 align:middle line:84% And the corpses of those who slept in it. 00:22:11.710 --> 00:22:15.790 align:middle line:84% On the opposite bank of the Ota, a weeping willow 00:22:15.790 --> 00:22:20.380 align:middle line:84% etches its memory of their faces into the water. 00:22:20.380 --> 00:22:24.940 align:middle line:84% Where light touches the face, that character for heart 00:22:24.940 --> 00:22:27.100 align:middle line:90% is written. 00:22:27.100 --> 00:22:31.810 align:middle line:84% She strokes a burnt trunk wrapped in straw. 00:22:31.810 --> 00:22:33.340 align:middle line:90% I was weak. 00:22:33.340 --> 00:22:38.050 align:middle line:84% And my skin hung from my fingertips like cloth. 00:22:38.050 --> 00:22:44.470 align:middle line:84% Do you think for a moment, we were human beings to them? 00:22:44.470 --> 00:22:47.770 align:middle line:84% She comes to the stone angel holding paper cranes. 00:22:47.770 --> 00:22:51.160 align:middle line:84% Not an angel, but a woman where she once had been, 00:22:51.160 --> 00:22:54.310 align:middle line:84% who walks through the garden Shukkei-En, 00:22:54.310 --> 00:22:59.710 align:middle line:84% calling the carp to the surface by clapping her hands. 00:22:59.710 --> 00:23:03.760 align:middle line:90% Do Americans think of us? 00:23:03.760 --> 00:23:09.070 align:middle line:84% So she began as we squatted over the toilets, if you want, 00:23:09.070 --> 00:23:09.880 align:middle line:90% I'll tell you. 00:23:09.880 --> 00:23:13.640 align:middle line:84% But nothing I say will be enough. 00:23:13.640 --> 00:23:19.870 align:middle line:84% We tried to dress our burns with vegetable oil. 00:23:19.870 --> 00:23:24.820 align:middle line:84% Her hair is the white froth of rice rising up 00:23:24.820 --> 00:23:28.780 align:middle line:90% kettle sides, her mind also. 00:23:28.780 --> 00:23:31.660 align:middle line:84% In the post-war years, she thought 00:23:31.660 --> 00:23:35.920 align:middle line:90% deeply about how to live. 00:23:35.920 --> 00:23:37.450 align:middle line:90% The common greeting 00:23:37.450 --> 00:23:38.710 align:middle line:90% "dozo yoroshiku" 00:23:38.710 --> 00:23:42.790 align:middle line:90% is "please, take care of me". 00:23:42.790 --> 00:23:47.110 align:middle line:84% All hibakusha still alive, were children then. 00:23:47.110 --> 00:23:54.190 align:middle line:84% A cemetery seen from the air is a child's city. 00:23:54.190 --> 00:23:57.520 align:middle line:84% I don't like this particular red flower 00:23:57.520 --> 00:24:00.610 align:middle line:84% because it reminds me of a woman's brain crushed 00:24:00.610 --> 00:24:02.650 align:middle line:90% under a roof. 00:24:02.650 --> 00:24:06.630 align:middle line:84% Perhaps my language is too precise, and therefore, 00:24:06.630 --> 00:24:09.780 align:middle line:90% difficult to understand. 00:24:09.780 --> 00:24:15.330 align:middle line:84% We have not, all these years, felt what you call happiness. 00:24:15.330 --> 00:24:22.440 align:middle line:84% But at times, with good fortune, we experience something close. 00:24:22.440 --> 00:24:30.910 align:middle line:84% As our life resembles life, and this garden, the garden. 00:24:30.910 --> 00:24:35.580 align:middle line:84% And in the silence surrounding what happened to us. 00:24:35.580 --> 00:24:40.710 align:middle line:84% It is the bell to awaken God that we've heard ringing." 00:24:40.710 --> 00:24:44.540 align:middle line:90% 00:24:44.540 --> 00:24:47.210 align:middle line:84% And then, you see I have these poems called 00:24:47.210 --> 00:24:50.990 align:middle line:90% Book Codes in the back. 00:24:50.990 --> 00:24:55.580 align:middle line:84% During the Second World War, they were called piano players. 00:24:55.580 --> 00:24:59.990 align:middle line:84% Men dropped behind enemy lines to send back information 00:24:59.990 --> 00:25:01.460 align:middle line:90% about enemy positions. 00:25:01.460 --> 00:25:03.830 align:middle line:84% I read about them, they had a life expectancy 00:25:03.830 --> 00:25:06.620 align:middle line:90% of six weeks behind enemy lines. 00:25:06.620 --> 00:25:12.200 align:middle line:84% And the material they sent back were called Book Codes. 00:25:12.200 --> 00:25:13.700 align:middle line:84% I started thinking, I was talking 00:25:13.700 --> 00:25:16.070 align:middle line:84% to the students at the University today, 00:25:16.070 --> 00:25:19.670 align:middle line:84% and I thank them for giving me a beautiful hour and a half. 00:25:19.670 --> 00:25:22.363 align:middle line:84% But they understood this idea of mine, 00:25:22.363 --> 00:25:23.780 align:middle line:84% and they were the first group ever 00:25:23.780 --> 00:25:27.150 align:middle line:84% to let me know that they liked it or understood it. 00:25:27.150 --> 00:25:30.750 align:middle line:84% But it's the idea of all the voices. 00:25:30.750 --> 00:25:33.680 align:middle line:84% Anything that's ever been uttered on Earth 00:25:33.680 --> 00:25:35.300 align:middle line:90% could stay close to the Earth. 00:25:35.300 --> 00:25:37.910 align:middle line:84% Could rise from the Earth, and sort of hover around it 00:25:37.910 --> 00:25:39.890 align:middle line:90% like a form of weather. 00:25:39.890 --> 00:25:42.920 align:middle line:84% I got this from the idea of those I Love Lucy programs 00:25:42.920 --> 00:25:45.890 align:middle line:84% in outer space, on radio waves that last forever. 00:25:45.890 --> 00:25:49.350 align:middle line:84% So I thought, well, maybe everything lasts forever. 00:25:49.350 --> 00:25:52.460 align:middle line:84% And if you can stand in a field and attune yourself, 00:25:52.460 --> 00:25:55.010 align:middle line:84% you can hear all of these things being said 00:25:55.010 --> 00:25:56.990 align:middle line:84% and the Book Codes came out of that. 00:25:56.990 --> 00:26:03.260 align:middle line:84% And this one is, of course, from the same field of experience 00:26:03.260 --> 00:26:06.380 align:middle line:90% that Shukkei-En was. 00:26:06.380 --> 00:26:10.730 align:middle line:84% "Stories no more substantial than the clouds, 00:26:10.730 --> 00:26:13.550 align:middle line:90% or what had been his face. 00:26:13.550 --> 00:26:18.140 align:middle line:84% The view, the wind, the light, disposing of the bodies. 00:26:18.140 --> 00:26:20.570 align:middle line:84% Who walked in the realm of dreams, 00:26:20.570 --> 00:26:23.600 align:middle line:90% but like everything else. 00:26:23.600 --> 00:26:29.180 align:middle line:84% For our having tried to cross the river caught between walls. 00:26:29.180 --> 00:26:33.860 align:middle line:84% One could hear a voice, bear the unbearable, 00:26:33.860 --> 00:26:37.100 align:middle line:90% and the broadcast was at an end. 00:26:37.100 --> 00:26:41.660 align:middle line:84% You might relay the message, the rivers and mountains remained. 00:26:41.660 --> 00:26:46.250 align:middle line:84% The unseen figure of the enemy entirely covered. 00:26:46.250 --> 00:26:49.160 align:middle line:84% The central portion of their visual fields, 00:26:49.160 --> 00:26:52.250 align:middle line:90% this blindness for names. 00:26:52.250 --> 00:26:57.440 align:middle line:84% The bone became black with flies again, hatching in ruins. 00:26:57.440 --> 00:27:02.870 align:middle line:84% Here were the black burnt ceilings and boxes of flags. 00:27:02.870 --> 00:27:08.270 align:middle line:84% The walls covered with soot like a kitchen. 00:27:08.270 --> 00:27:11.720 align:middle line:84% Smaller clouds spread out a golden screen, 00:27:11.720 --> 00:27:14.990 align:middle line:84% given the task of painting wounds 00:27:14.990 --> 00:27:19.700 align:middle line:84% through the darkened town, as though it had been light, 00:27:19.700 --> 00:27:22.100 align:middle line:84% at the moment of the birth of this cloud." 00:27:22.100 --> 00:27:25.430 align:middle line:90% 00:27:25.430 --> 00:27:28.970 align:middle line:84% I have a new book, which is rare for me. 00:27:28.970 --> 00:27:31.280 align:middle line:84% I don't make new books very often. 00:27:31.280 --> 00:27:34.025 align:middle line:84% I'm slow and I throw a lot of things away. 00:27:34.025 --> 00:27:36.800 align:middle line:90% 00:27:36.800 --> 00:27:39.890 align:middle line:84% So, I'm very happy it's going to come out in the spring 00:27:39.890 --> 00:27:41.240 align:middle line:90% next year. 00:27:41.240 --> 00:27:44.030 align:middle line:90% In 2003, they say. 00:27:44.030 --> 00:27:48.200 align:middle line:84% And I'd like to share some of the new work with you because-- 00:27:48.200 --> 00:27:49.910 align:middle line:84% and the parts I'm going to read, I've 00:27:49.910 --> 00:27:52.730 align:middle line:90% never read before to anyone. 00:27:52.730 --> 00:27:56.390 align:middle line:84% I have never even read them aloud to myself. 00:27:56.390 --> 00:27:58.430 align:middle line:90% So, I hope you'll-- 00:27:58.430 --> 00:28:00.080 align:middle line:90% I hope it'll work out OK. 00:28:00.080 --> 00:28:04.890 align:middle line:84% This is a dangerous experiment but I want to do this. 00:28:04.890 --> 00:28:11.390 align:middle line:84% The first one, I will tell you, I had a very close friend who 00:28:11.390 --> 00:28:15.350 align:middle line:84% Terrence Des Pres, who wrote a work The Survivor-- 00:28:15.350 --> 00:28:17.330 align:middle line:84% An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps. 00:28:17.330 --> 00:28:19.070 align:middle line:84% It was not only about the Holocaust, 00:28:19.070 --> 00:28:24.560 align:middle line:84% but about the Stalin purges during the '30s and the Soviet 00:28:24.560 --> 00:28:25.070 align:middle line:90% Union. 00:28:25.070 --> 00:28:27.710 align:middle line:84% And he was studying the spirit of people 00:28:27.710 --> 00:28:31.610 align:middle line:84% who managed to survive, endure, and write about it, 00:28:31.610 --> 00:28:32.720 align:middle line:90% and speak about it. 00:28:32.720 --> 00:28:37.730 align:middle line:84% And he was-- it was a beautiful study he did. 00:28:37.730 --> 00:28:39.747 align:middle line:90% Harrowing, but beautiful. 00:28:39.747 --> 00:28:41.330 align:middle line:84% When you get to the end of it, he said 00:28:41.330 --> 00:28:43.580 align:middle line:84% and now, you must decide whether you 00:28:43.580 --> 00:28:45.830 align:middle line:90% are justified in despairing. 00:28:45.830 --> 00:28:49.040 align:middle line:84% Because he's giving us an example of people who 00:28:49.040 --> 00:28:52.910 align:middle line:84% endure everything and keep going. 00:28:52.910 --> 00:28:56.280 align:middle line:90% And he died in 1987. 00:28:56.280 --> 00:29:00.410 align:middle line:84% And this first poem is called "Nocturne", and I believe-- 00:29:00.410 --> 00:29:02.690 align:middle line:84% I believe that it's a poem that is for him. 00:29:02.690 --> 00:29:05.420 align:middle line:90% 00:29:05.420 --> 00:29:06.110 align:middle line:90% An elegy. 00:29:06.110 --> 00:29:10.000 align:middle line:90% 00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:12.460 align:middle line:90% "What happened? 00:29:12.460 --> 00:29:16.270 align:middle line:90% His face was visible, then not. 00:29:16.270 --> 00:29:19.540 align:middle line:84% Around him, snow fell, but over him, grass 00:29:19.540 --> 00:29:25.330 align:middle line:84% remained wet and young and shaped like a coffin. 00:29:25.330 --> 00:29:27.460 align:middle line:90% I laid her in the snow. 00:29:27.460 --> 00:29:32.410 align:middle line:90% She, who I was, and walked away. 00:29:32.410 --> 00:29:39.580 align:middle line:84% And the house shuttered against fog, awake, wind blown. 00:29:39.580 --> 00:29:41.680 align:middle line:84% The children had cocoa for breakfast, 00:29:41.680 --> 00:29:44.080 align:middle line:84% and milk with bread and jam at lunch. 00:29:44.080 --> 00:29:47.320 align:middle line:84% They took naps in the afternoon, they had a dog. 00:29:47.320 --> 00:29:52.450 align:middle line:84% At the end of the winter, there was no more snow. 00:29:52.450 --> 00:29:56.935 align:middle line:84% And the cries were those of gulls following a seed plow. 00:29:56.935 --> 00:29:59.530 align:middle line:90% 00:29:59.530 --> 00:30:04.510 align:middle line:84% The people of this world are moving into the next. 00:30:04.510 --> 00:30:08.500 align:middle line:84% And with them, their hours, and the ink 00:30:08.500 --> 00:30:12.130 align:middle line:84% of their ability to make thought. 00:30:12.130 --> 00:30:17.660 align:middle line:84% Particles of light have taken from them antiphon, asylum, 00:30:17.660 --> 00:30:19.450 align:middle line:90% bail fire, benediction. 00:30:19.450 --> 00:30:22.110 align:middle line:90% 00:30:22.110 --> 00:30:26.130 align:middle line:84% Snow fell onto her coat and chewn gloves 00:30:26.130 --> 00:30:29.400 align:middle line:84% at night, like apple blossoms in tar 00:30:29.400 --> 00:30:34.950 align:middle line:84% and my solace became that she would remain as she was. 00:30:34.950 --> 00:30:37.470 align:middle line:84% When the house was alive, its walls 00:30:37.470 --> 00:30:42.690 align:middle line:84% recorded the rising and falling of the bed as if a wind. 00:30:42.690 --> 00:30:48.060 align:middle line:84% The hurrying forth, took with it cask, casement, chalice. 00:30:48.060 --> 00:30:52.560 align:middle line:84% So why does it matter, how precisely? 00:30:52.560 --> 00:30:56.670 align:middle line:84% Behind a curtain, in late day, with a length of rope. 00:30:56.670 --> 00:31:01.230 align:middle line:84% In one of the upper rooms, where a cold rose even when 00:31:01.230 --> 00:31:04.260 align:middle line:90% the house was shuttered. 00:31:04.260 --> 00:31:08.610 align:middle line:84% His mother on the porch, dressing like a man even then. 00:31:08.610 --> 00:31:12.370 align:middle line:84% And the house in the photograph behind her, in flames. 00:31:12.370 --> 00:31:16.410 align:middle line:90% Mother and house. 00:31:16.410 --> 00:31:21.750 align:middle line:84% Beneath the ice, open-eyed, but absent, she who I was. 00:31:21.750 --> 00:31:24.810 align:middle line:84% With ribbon scars faint across her. 00:31:24.810 --> 00:31:30.360 align:middle line:84% Every tip of wheat stalk lit by sun. 00:31:30.360 --> 00:31:33.720 align:middle line:84% They took with them, cruet communicant, and the ability 00:31:33.720 --> 00:31:36.510 align:middle line:90% to keep watch. 00:31:36.510 --> 00:31:41.790 align:middle line:84% Having lit the night sky, their heaven vanished. 00:31:41.790 --> 00:31:45.720 align:middle line:84% He needed to feel as if he were going to die. 00:31:45.720 --> 00:31:47.670 align:middle line:90% Many times to feel it. 00:31:47.670 --> 00:31:50.460 align:middle line:90% Many hundreds of times. 00:31:50.460 --> 00:31:54.600 align:middle line:84% He'd came along and passed beyond. 00:31:54.600 --> 00:31:59.550 align:middle line:84% Had I been, were you not, because I believed I was alone. 00:31:59.550 --> 00:32:04.030 align:middle line:84% Until the derelict house offered its last apparition. 00:32:04.030 --> 00:32:06.570 align:middle line:90% 00:32:06.570 --> 00:32:13.470 align:middle line:84% As a star plummets from darkness, a soul is exiled. 00:32:13.470 --> 00:32:19.140 align:middle line:84% Light, silk, the rope, black storms of dream. 00:32:19.140 --> 00:32:21.780 align:middle line:84% But one day, he was given a new mother. 00:32:21.780 --> 00:32:24.150 align:middle line:90% And it was she who starved them. 00:32:24.150 --> 00:32:29.580 align:middle line:84% She who sent them into the wood to cut the very switch. 00:32:29.580 --> 00:32:35.130 align:middle line:84% So, with the rope, as if he could replace the past. 00:32:35.130 --> 00:32:41.250 align:middle line:84% A child awakened by a whip until his narrow coffin and cup 00:32:41.250 --> 00:32:43.830 align:middle line:90% of sleep. 00:32:43.830 --> 00:32:47.400 align:middle line:84% He was only a boy when the world darkened. 00:32:47.400 --> 00:32:52.860 align:middle line:84% But the switches were easy to find, so red in winter. 00:32:52.860 --> 00:32:55.920 align:middle line:84% The house where one could dance without clothes, 00:32:55.920 --> 00:33:01.290 align:middle line:84% imagined an invisible piano, stove mice, chimney swallows, 00:33:01.290 --> 00:33:07.050 align:middle line:84% a curtain, a cry, what may have been the beginning of life 00:33:07.050 --> 00:33:07.800 align:middle line:90% after death. 00:33:07.800 --> 00:33:10.920 align:middle line:90% 00:33:10.920 --> 00:33:15.000 align:middle line:84% In the open arms of a burnt wind, he returned to me. 00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.230 align:middle line:84% Barefoot by choice, bearing gingerbread, chocolate, 00:33:19.230 --> 00:33:22.290 align:middle line:90% quince jam, a bag of candy. 00:33:22.290 --> 00:33:27.300 align:middle line:84% Look, whole villages intact and shimmering. 00:33:27.300 --> 00:33:30.450 align:middle line:84% The very body itself, begins to evanesce. 00:33:30.450 --> 00:33:32.940 align:middle line:90% It has no true boundary. 00:33:32.940 --> 00:33:37.890 align:middle line:84% Death changes it as a mirror changes a face. 00:33:37.890 --> 00:33:41.370 align:middle line:84% Then he used the past to refer to the present. 00:33:41.370 --> 00:33:46.890 align:middle line:84% Flour sacks, school chalk, a coherent life. 00:33:46.890 --> 00:33:50.940 align:middle line:84% Wings slap along the wall, and in the hardened owl dung, 00:33:50.940 --> 00:33:54.120 align:middle line:84% crickets glint, dust settles on the house 00:33:54.120 --> 00:33:58.260 align:middle line:84% until entire sentences are written. 00:33:58.260 --> 00:34:01.290 align:middle line:84% A window haunted by an open hand. 00:34:01.290 --> 00:34:05.925 align:middle line:84% Here, he said, his voice like gauze, like grieving. 00:34:05.925 --> 00:34:08.639 align:middle line:90% 00:34:08.639 --> 00:34:11.610 align:middle line:84% Over the writing table, an empty map. 00:34:11.610 --> 00:34:14.460 align:middle line:84% Years to connect the little marks. 00:34:14.460 --> 00:34:18.179 align:middle line:84% In his closet among the linens, his weapon of choice. 00:34:18.179 --> 00:34:21.840 align:middle line:84% In answer to your question, no, he could not have done it. 00:34:21.840 --> 00:34:24.270 align:middle line:84% The rope was used for something else. 00:34:24.270 --> 00:34:26.010 align:middle line:90% Worn from use. 00:34:26.010 --> 00:34:28.260 align:middle line:90% A cry, a stiffening. 00:34:28.260 --> 00:34:32.699 align:middle line:84% It was with this he untied himself again and again 00:34:32.699 --> 00:34:36.810 align:middle line:84% in the bed, and before the fire, blue voiced and changed 00:34:36.810 --> 00:34:38.489 align:middle line:90% of face. 00:34:38.489 --> 00:34:40.530 align:middle line:90% The house saw everything. 00:34:40.530 --> 00:34:43.500 align:middle line:90% As does every house. 00:34:43.500 --> 00:34:48.360 align:middle line:84% Hollow, walls, staircase, sorrow in ink. 00:34:48.360 --> 00:34:51.330 align:middle line:90% It was the last time. 00:34:51.330 --> 00:34:52.830 align:middle line:90% They had been children. 00:34:52.830 --> 00:34:55.440 align:middle line:90% In towns, years apart. 00:34:55.440 --> 00:35:01.230 align:middle line:84% She who I was, and the man in the coroner's arms. 00:35:01.230 --> 00:35:04.050 align:middle line:84% Perhaps those born after the war, 00:35:04.050 --> 00:35:09.240 align:middle line:84% are those whose lives the war took. 00:35:09.240 --> 00:35:12.990 align:middle line:84% An abandoned house, after all, will soon give itself back. 00:35:12.990 --> 00:35:20.070 align:middle line:84% And its walls become as unreadable as symbols on silk. 00:35:20.070 --> 00:35:24.030 align:middle line:84% With the departed, a sense of time and sleep. 00:35:24.030 --> 00:35:30.090 align:middle line:84% Even sleep is taken, and the world appears as if it were. 00:35:30.090 --> 00:35:32.370 align:middle line:90% Every spring I returned to her. 00:35:32.370 --> 00:35:37.480 align:middle line:84% Laying my thoughts to rest, like a wreath on water. 00:35:37.480 --> 00:35:40.860 align:middle line:90% These are the words no longer. 00:35:40.860 --> 00:35:43.830 align:middle line:84% Here are the photographs taken when we were alive." 00:35:43.830 --> 00:35:47.920 align:middle line:90% 00:35:47.920 --> 00:35:52.180 align:middle line:84% I have something very weird to share with you now. 00:35:52.180 --> 00:35:54.730 align:middle line:84% I'm glad you can take a break and spell each other, 00:35:54.730 --> 00:35:56.260 align:middle line:90% because this must be very hard. 00:35:56.260 --> 00:35:59.620 align:middle line:90% 00:35:59.620 --> 00:36:02.560 align:middle line:84% I'm going to share with you a strange piece, 00:36:02.560 --> 00:36:04.600 align:middle line:84% and only tiny little excerpts of it, 00:36:04.600 --> 00:36:06.370 align:middle line:84% because I can't give you the whole thing. 00:36:06.370 --> 00:36:09.202 align:middle line:90% 00:36:09.202 --> 00:36:13.660 align:middle line:84% It's what's passing through the mind of someone who's dying. 00:36:13.660 --> 00:36:17.050 align:middle line:90% And it's an alphabetical order. 00:36:17.050 --> 00:36:19.930 align:middle line:84% I know that sounds very weird, and it is. 00:36:19.930 --> 00:36:21.830 align:middle line:90% Maybe you won't notice that. 00:36:21.830 --> 00:36:24.460 align:middle line:84% But the whole thing happened-- it was happened in a sort 00:36:24.460 --> 00:36:25.870 align:middle line:90% of white heat of-- 00:36:25.870 --> 00:36:31.120 align:middle line:84% and it has a lot of material from my own-- 00:36:31.120 --> 00:36:33.580 align:middle line:84% obviously well, what else do I have to work with. 00:36:33.580 --> 00:36:35.380 align:middle line:90% My own life. 00:36:35.380 --> 00:36:36.760 align:middle line:90% So you'll hear little bits. 00:36:36.760 --> 00:36:40.780 align:middle line:84% There are things about the war in Beirut. 00:36:40.780 --> 00:36:44.260 align:middle line:90% Things about Central America. 00:36:44.260 --> 00:36:47.920 align:middle line:84% Little images, you'll recognize them. 00:36:47.920 --> 00:36:51.520 align:middle line:84% After I finished it, a book fell open-- 00:36:51.520 --> 00:36:52.720 align:middle line:90% it literally fell. 00:36:52.720 --> 00:36:55.180 align:middle line:84% It flew it by itself off the shelf 00:36:55.180 --> 00:36:57.010 align:middle line:84% and fell flat open on the ground. 00:36:57.010 --> 00:36:59.500 align:middle line:84% And I picked it up, and there was a paragraph. 00:36:59.500 --> 00:37:01.840 align:middle line:90% It was a book I had never read. 00:37:01.840 --> 00:37:04.510 align:middle line:90% I have a lot of those, anyway. 00:37:04.510 --> 00:37:08.140 align:middle line:84% This is by George Burges, it was written in 1850. 00:37:08.140 --> 00:37:12.280 align:middle line:84% This is-- and I read the paragraph, and I thought, 00:37:12.280 --> 00:37:14.560 align:middle line:84% this, I have to put this in front of the poem. 00:37:14.560 --> 00:37:18.670 align:middle line:90% The poem is called "On Earth". 00:37:18.670 --> 00:37:21.310 align:middle line:84% "The recollections of a whole life. 00:37:21.310 --> 00:37:24.280 align:middle line:84% The consciousness of spiritual existence and all 00:37:24.280 --> 00:37:27.370 align:middle line:84% which is mightiest and deepest in our nature, 00:37:27.370 --> 00:37:30.160 align:middle line:84% become brighter even in opposition 00:37:30.160 --> 00:37:33.280 align:middle line:90% to extreme bodily languor. 00:37:33.280 --> 00:37:35.920 align:middle line:84% In the immediate vicinity of death, 00:37:35.920 --> 00:37:39.520 align:middle line:84% the mind enters on an unaccustomed order 00:37:39.520 --> 00:37:41.230 align:middle line:90% of sensations. 00:37:41.230 --> 00:37:45.640 align:middle line:84% A region untrodden before, from which few, very few, travelers 00:37:45.640 --> 00:37:46.810 align:middle line:90% have returned. 00:37:46.810 --> 00:37:50.140 align:middle line:84% And from which those few have brought back 00:37:50.140 --> 00:37:53.680 align:middle line:84% but vague remembrance, sometimes accompanied 00:37:53.680 --> 00:37:58.120 align:middle line:84% with a kind of homesickness for the higher sphere of which they 00:37:58.120 --> 00:38:01.270 align:middle line:90% had some transient prospect. 00:38:01.270 --> 00:38:07.390 align:middle line:84% Here amidst images, dim images of solemnity or peace, 00:38:07.390 --> 00:38:10.240 align:middle line:90% of glory, or of terror. 00:38:10.240 --> 00:38:13.720 align:middle line:84% The Pilgrim pursues his course alone. 00:38:13.720 --> 00:38:17.650 align:middle line:90% And is lost to our eye." 00:38:17.650 --> 00:38:20.050 align:middle line:84% So I'm giving you little pieces, and you'll see, 00:38:20.050 --> 00:38:22.130 align:middle line:90% they stay in alphabetical order. 00:38:22.130 --> 00:38:24.190 align:middle line:84% But you can't have the whole alphabet. 00:38:24.190 --> 00:38:28.930 align:middle line:90% 00:38:28.930 --> 00:38:31.970 align:middle line:84% It's kind of a litany, or a chant. 00:38:31.970 --> 00:38:34.000 align:middle line:84% Is, I think, what I was hoping for. 00:38:34.000 --> 00:38:37.750 align:middle line:84% There were ancient Gnostic hymns written in the fourth century 00:38:37.750 --> 00:38:39.160 align:middle line:90% in this form. 00:38:39.160 --> 00:38:41.920 align:middle line:90% They've been found, these hymns. 00:38:41.920 --> 00:38:45.040 align:middle line:84% A lot of them were found around the Nag Hammadi discovery 00:38:45.040 --> 00:38:48.070 align:middle line:90% of the Dead Sea Scrolls. 00:38:48.070 --> 00:38:52.690 align:middle line:84% "Open the Book of What Happened". 00:38:52.690 --> 00:38:55.030 align:middle line:90% "A barn loft of horse dreams"-- 00:38:55.030 --> 00:38:56.590 align:middle line:90% wait, yes, OK. 00:38:56.590 --> 00:39:00.760 align:middle line:84% "A barn loft of horse dreams with basin and bedclothes. 00:39:00.760 --> 00:39:05.440 align:middle line:84% A bit of polished quiet from a locked church. 00:39:05.440 --> 00:39:08.650 align:middle line:90% A black coat in smoke. 00:39:08.650 --> 00:39:11.620 align:middle line:90% A map of clouds on a lake. 00:39:11.620 --> 00:39:15.100 align:middle line:84% A blackened book leaf, straw, and implements. 00:39:15.100 --> 00:39:18.670 align:middle line:84% A blue day book hidden in my bed with his name. 00:39:18.670 --> 00:39:21.610 align:middle line:90% A branch weighted with pears. 00:39:21.610 --> 00:39:24.550 align:middle line:90% A brittle crack of dawn light. 00:39:24.550 --> 00:39:28.270 align:middle line:84% A broken clock, a boy awakened by his father's whip. 00:39:28.270 --> 00:39:32.200 align:middle line:84% Then the world as if it had whirled into place. 00:39:32.200 --> 00:39:35.560 align:middle line:84% A broken equation, a partita, a bullet 00:39:35.560 --> 00:39:39.160 align:middle line:84% clicking through her hair, a bullet hold, supper plate, 00:39:39.160 --> 00:39:41.950 align:middle line:84% a burnt room strewn with toy tanks, 00:39:41.950 --> 00:39:45.880 align:middle line:90% a century passing through it. 00:39:45.880 --> 00:39:49.360 align:middle line:84% A chaos of microphones, a city, a motherboard, 00:39:49.360 --> 00:39:53.680 align:middle line:84% a city of thousand years, a city shaken and snowing. 00:39:53.680 --> 00:39:56.530 align:middle line:84% A coin of moonlight on the shattered place, 00:39:56.530 --> 00:40:01.300 align:middle line:84% a confusion of birds and fishes, a consciousness not within us, 00:40:01.300 --> 00:40:05.350 align:middle line:84% a corpse broken into many countries, a cup of sleep, 00:40:05.350 --> 00:40:09.350 align:middle line:84% a desire to live as long as the world itself. 00:40:09.350 --> 00:40:17.340 align:middle line:90% 00:40:17.340 --> 00:40:21.240 align:middle line:84% And we, separated on Earth by decades. 00:40:21.240 --> 00:40:27.090 align:middle line:84% And what intervened more, war or the passage of time? 00:40:27.090 --> 00:40:31.380 align:middle line:84% And what of those who have made this same journey, 00:40:31.380 --> 00:40:34.290 align:middle line:84% and whispering what could, and writing 00:40:34.290 --> 00:40:36.390 align:middle line:90% the guardian of the past. 00:40:36.390 --> 00:40:40.980 align:middle line:84% Angelica, Anne's Lace, Aria, ash, asylum. 00:40:40.980 --> 00:40:43.770 align:middle line:90% 00:40:43.770 --> 00:40:46.470 align:middle line:84% Apparition in a vacant house appears 00:40:46.470 --> 00:40:48.630 align:middle line:90% to feel the soul go forth. 00:40:48.630 --> 00:40:52.590 align:middle line:84% Apple blossoms and wet wind approaching the other 00:40:52.590 --> 00:40:53.835 align:middle line:90% with empty hands. 00:40:53.835 --> 00:40:57.210 align:middle line:90% 00:40:57.210 --> 00:41:00.690 align:middle line:84% As if, with the future, we could replace the past. 00:41:00.690 --> 00:41:04.320 align:middle line:84% As in the childhood of terror and holiness. 00:41:04.320 --> 00:41:07.470 align:middle line:84% As light, or the retreat of light. 00:41:07.470 --> 00:41:10.110 align:middle line:90% As memory, a futile attempt. 00:41:10.110 --> 00:41:14.700 align:middle line:84% As more beautiful than it had been because it is lost. 00:41:14.700 --> 00:41:17.730 align:middle line:90% As rain, before it reaches us. 00:41:17.730 --> 00:41:23.670 align:middle line:84% As rain strikes the pails in our tents of wakefulness. 00:41:23.670 --> 00:41:26.580 align:middle line:84% As the fence has recorded the wind, 00:41:26.580 --> 00:41:28.740 align:middle line:84% as the water, in which the corpse has 00:41:28.740 --> 00:41:32.340 align:middle line:84% been washed, as those who have returned have said. 00:41:32.340 --> 00:41:35.820 align:middle line:84% As though when past and present converge, there is a gap. 00:41:35.820 --> 00:41:38.490 align:middle line:84% As though thought affects the universe 00:41:38.490 --> 00:41:42.420 align:middle line:90% in as yet immeasurable ways. 00:41:42.420 --> 00:41:45.780 align:middle line:84% As unexpected rain craters the fields. 00:41:45.780 --> 00:41:48.990 align:middle line:84% As when cicadas sing at the cenotaph. 00:41:48.990 --> 00:41:51.840 align:middle line:90% 00:41:51.840 --> 00:41:58.440 align:middle line:84% Between here and here, between hidden points in the soul, 00:41:58.440 --> 00:42:00.870 align:middle line:84% between hidden points in the soul 00:42:00.870 --> 00:42:06.360 align:middle line:84% born from nothing, between saying and said. 00:42:06.360 --> 00:42:11.940 align:middle line:84% Beyond what one has oneself done. 00:42:11.940 --> 00:42:15.090 align:middle line:84% Birch bark curling from the birch limbs. 00:42:15.090 --> 00:42:19.170 align:middle line:84% Birds dropping from flight, leaving cries in the air. 00:42:19.170 --> 00:42:24.120 align:middle line:84% Birds in the clerestory a tapestry of broken light. 00:42:24.120 --> 00:42:26.100 align:middle line:90% Black corn in the fields. 00:42:26.100 --> 00:42:30.480 align:middle line:84% Crib smoke and bones enough to fill a sack. 00:42:30.480 --> 00:42:33.750 align:middle line:84% Black fingernails, blue hands, lost 00:42:33.750 --> 00:42:38.970 align:middle line:84% hair, black storms of dream, black with burnt up meaning. 00:42:38.970 --> 00:42:41.910 align:middle line:84% Blessed be a knowledge that burns thought. 00:42:41.910 --> 00:42:46.680 align:middle line:90% 00:42:46.680 --> 00:42:48.990 align:middle line:84% In thought, where they were lost, 00:42:48.990 --> 00:42:51.900 align:middle line:84% incapable of imagining annihilation, 00:42:51.900 --> 00:42:54.440 align:middle line:84% inhabiting a body to be abolished. 00:42:54.440 --> 00:42:59.670 align:middle line:84% Inter alia, inter knows, intercessor. 00:42:59.670 --> 00:43:03.700 align:middle line:84% Into a duration deep within her, into the world 00:43:03.700 --> 00:43:07.110 align:middle line:90% further illuminated by thought. 00:43:07.110 --> 00:43:09.840 align:middle line:90% Is there anything else? 00:43:09.840 --> 00:43:14.820 align:middle line:84% It appears to be an elegy put into the mouth of a corpse. 00:43:14.820 --> 00:43:18.600 align:middle line:84% It became what it was because of us. 00:43:18.600 --> 00:43:21.630 align:middle line:90% In that sense, loved. 00:43:21.630 --> 00:43:26.730 align:middle line:84% It is as if space were touching itself through us. 00:43:26.730 --> 00:43:31.620 align:middle line:84% It is more ominous than any oblivion to see the world 00:43:31.620 --> 00:43:32.520 align:middle line:90% as it is." 00:43:32.520 --> 00:43:42.220 align:middle line:90% 00:43:42.220 --> 00:43:45.580 align:middle line:84% "She went with him willingly, and without knowing 00:43:45.580 --> 00:43:48.310 align:middle line:84% where she was, she saw the country 00:43:48.310 --> 00:43:53.380 align:middle line:84% very much as she would have had she walked through a film 00:43:53.380 --> 00:43:55.570 align:middle line:90% about herself. 00:43:55.570 --> 00:43:58.510 align:middle line:90% She, within me. 00:43:58.510 --> 00:44:02.035 align:middle line:84% She would never again wander too far into the past. 00:44:02.035 --> 00:44:04.700 align:middle line:90% 00:44:04.700 --> 00:44:07.400 align:middle line:90% So this is how the past begins. 00:44:07.400 --> 00:44:11.980 align:middle line:84% So we walked pretending our empty suitcases burdened us. 00:44:11.980 --> 00:44:16.210 align:middle line:84% Some dance, one holds a dove aloft. 00:44:16.210 --> 00:44:19.300 align:middle line:84% Some flaw in the message itself, some 00:44:19.300 --> 00:44:22.780 align:middle line:84% were burned with cigarettes, some doused with turpentine. 00:44:22.780 --> 00:44:26.140 align:middle line:84% Every night they poured turpentine through their hair 00:44:26.140 --> 00:44:29.740 align:middle line:84% and slept like that, so as to keep the leeches 00:44:29.740 --> 00:44:32.590 align:middle line:90% from giving them head wounds. 00:44:32.590 --> 00:44:36.700 align:middle line:84% Some, with wicker baskets, others with gathered flax. 00:44:36.700 --> 00:44:40.000 align:middle line:84% Some with children in their arms, others with brooms. 00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:43.210 align:middle line:84% Some dance, others hold aloft a dove, 00:44:43.210 --> 00:44:46.900 align:middle line:84% someone will be pouring milk while another perishes. 00:44:46.900 --> 00:44:50.290 align:middle line:84% Something broken and personal in memory. 00:44:50.290 --> 00:44:53.650 align:middle line:84% Something holding back the pouring, a turn 00:44:53.650 --> 00:44:56.350 align:middle line:84% of the kaleidoscope, a turn again, 00:44:56.350 --> 00:44:59.770 align:middle line:90% radiant, beautiful, meaningless. 00:44:59.770 --> 00:45:03.670 align:middle line:84% So, it is easier to choose stones from the ground. 00:45:03.670 --> 00:45:08.510 align:middle line:84% A sack of words, pieces of language from something larger. 00:45:08.510 --> 00:45:14.320 align:middle line:84% And if a single event caused this ruin, what was that event? 00:45:14.320 --> 00:45:17.470 align:middle line:84% What made the night a country of terror? 00:45:17.470 --> 00:45:20.470 align:middle line:90% 00:45:20.470 --> 00:45:26.020 align:middle line:84% But even this refuge might be taken that -ing -ing 00:45:26.020 --> 00:45:29.230 align:middle line:90% of verbs in an eternal present. 00:45:29.230 --> 00:45:32.890 align:middle line:84% That light traveled from the eye to the world. 00:45:32.890 --> 00:45:36.430 align:middle line:84% That nothingness might not be there. 00:45:36.430 --> 00:45:39.790 align:middle line:84% That you might become one among others. 00:45:39.790 --> 00:45:43.240 align:middle line:84% The after touching memory of relief. 00:45:43.240 --> 00:45:47.620 align:middle line:84% The air around the ringing bells filled with ash. 00:45:47.620 --> 00:45:51.280 align:middle line:84% The being that lies half open, the birds 00:45:51.280 --> 00:45:55.690 align:middle line:84% become smoke, the blue whirling that once spoke. 00:45:55.690 --> 00:45:58.840 align:middle line:84% The blue stone streets of English river rock. 00:45:58.840 --> 00:46:01.750 align:middle line:84% The boiling sudden clouds of August. 00:46:01.750 --> 00:46:05.020 align:middle line:84% The border, anywhere, but the war zone. 00:46:05.020 --> 00:46:08.230 align:middle line:84% Mattresses roped to the roof, the boundless 00:46:08.230 --> 00:46:10.720 align:middle line:90% et cetera of indifference. 00:46:10.720 --> 00:46:13.360 align:middle line:84% The breath of the invisible, the bridge 00:46:13.360 --> 00:46:16.390 align:middle line:84% that doesn't touch the other bank, the buildings 00:46:16.390 --> 00:46:20.260 align:middle line:90% of the Center City, no longer. 00:46:20.260 --> 00:46:23.320 align:middle line:84% The candlelit stairwells in blackout. 00:46:23.320 --> 00:46:26.140 align:middle line:84% The cedared hills, smoking orchards 00:46:26.140 --> 00:46:28.240 align:middle line:90% and the rivers of ill luck. 00:46:28.240 --> 00:46:30.790 align:middle line:84% The cemetery workmen's wheelbarrow. 00:46:30.790 --> 00:46:34.570 align:middle line:84% The chandelier of water against stone. 00:46:34.570 --> 00:46:36.790 align:middle line:84% The chorus of mules and roosters, 00:46:36.790 --> 00:46:40.810 align:middle line:84% goat bells, little cries, the cinema trip wired, 00:46:40.810 --> 00:46:44.530 align:middle line:84% the small arms fire, the click night. 00:46:44.530 --> 00:46:48.430 align:middle line:84% The click night, pages turning by a wind and taken. 00:46:48.430 --> 00:46:51.580 align:middle line:84% The confessions written in gunpowder and spit. 00:46:51.580 --> 00:46:54.880 align:middle line:84% The danger of premature good conscience. 00:46:54.880 --> 00:46:58.300 align:middle line:84% The dawn sky at morning, pearl, and smoke. 00:46:58.300 --> 00:47:01.660 align:middle line:90% The trees stripped. 00:47:01.660 --> 00:47:03.790 align:middle line:90% The day has not yet come. 00:47:03.790 --> 00:47:07.630 align:middle line:84% The day will, of all days, be ordinary. 00:47:07.630 --> 00:47:09.880 align:middle line:84% The dead were left among the living, 00:47:09.880 --> 00:47:12.160 align:middle line:90% there were no questions. 00:47:12.160 --> 00:47:17.740 align:middle line:84% The dead were washed, and dressed, and touched. 00:47:17.740 --> 00:47:21.640 align:middle line:84% The dreams are a coffin, with an open window. 00:47:21.640 --> 00:47:23.350 align:middle line:84% The dreams of a mind in the grave." 00:47:23.350 --> 00:47:30.230 align:middle line:90% 00:47:30.230 --> 00:47:32.540 align:middle line:90% I tried to make these-- 00:47:32.540 --> 00:47:34.890 align:middle line:90% to make a notes on them. 00:47:34.890 --> 00:47:36.300 align:middle line:90% So I could find them easily. 00:47:36.300 --> 00:47:37.220 align:middle line:90% But it did not happen. 00:47:37.220 --> 00:47:42.080 align:middle line:90% 00:47:42.080 --> 00:47:44.970 align:middle line:84% "The end and the beginning within it. 00:47:44.970 --> 00:47:46.440 align:middle line:90% This is the city. 00:47:46.440 --> 00:47:47.960 align:middle line:90% This was the city. 00:47:47.960 --> 00:47:50.390 align:middle line:90% This open air asylum. 00:47:50.390 --> 00:47:52.670 align:middle line:90% This, only death can write. 00:47:52.670 --> 00:47:55.760 align:middle line:90% This ossuary of world. 00:47:55.760 --> 00:47:57.590 align:middle line:90% What is the phrase for it? 00:47:57.590 --> 00:48:01.640 align:middle line:84% This reversal, this shattering of indifference. 00:48:01.640 --> 00:48:04.940 align:middle line:84% Those things are obvious, which are invisible. 00:48:04.940 --> 00:48:08.210 align:middle line:84% Those who have entered and left unharmed. 00:48:08.210 --> 00:48:11.690 align:middle line:84% Thoughts turned back into ink and paper, 00:48:11.690 --> 00:48:15.380 align:middle line:84% throwing light, illumination by illumination, 00:48:15.380 --> 00:48:20.270 align:middle line:84% and time a severe border guard becomes imaginary. 00:48:20.270 --> 00:48:26.000 align:middle line:84% Time lapsed in one country, is only beginning in another. 00:48:26.000 --> 00:48:31.010 align:middle line:90% Time to which we are exiled. 00:48:31.010 --> 00:48:35.390 align:middle line:84% To abandon yearning for the body, to be unquiet. 00:48:35.390 --> 00:48:37.520 align:middle line:90% To be visible to oneself. 00:48:37.520 --> 00:48:40.790 align:middle line:84% To become endlessly what one has been. 00:48:40.790 --> 00:48:43.730 align:middle line:84% To cross the field without breaking the snow. 00:48:43.730 --> 00:48:46.970 align:middle line:84% To enter into itself and to stay awake. 00:48:46.970 --> 00:48:50.870 align:middle line:84% To expose ourselves to whatever may happen. 00:48:50.870 --> 00:48:53.750 align:middle line:90% To forget once having known it. 00:48:53.750 --> 00:48:58.760 align:middle line:84% To hide, safeguard, and trust to a protected place. 00:48:58.760 --> 00:49:03.920 align:middle line:84% To know not only what is, but the other of what is. 00:49:03.920 --> 00:49:07.790 align:middle line:84% To know that the great bell, is the great bell. 00:49:07.790 --> 00:49:12.230 align:middle line:90% 00:49:12.230 --> 00:49:17.900 align:middle line:84% What you see, is the beginning of life after death. 00:49:17.900 --> 00:49:21.110 align:middle line:90% What you see you shall become. 00:49:21.110 --> 00:49:24.260 align:middle line:84% When did we know, when I opened the door, 00:49:24.260 --> 00:49:27.050 align:middle line:84% when it was possible to walk across the river. 00:49:27.050 --> 00:49:30.530 align:middle line:84% When one could hear behind the curtain the whole thing. 00:49:30.530 --> 00:49:33.890 align:middle line:84% When the light had gone beyond the limits of a room. 00:49:33.890 --> 00:49:36.800 align:middle line:84% When this sunlight reaches the future, 00:49:36.800 --> 00:49:40.250 align:middle line:84% when time seems to us a queer thing, when 00:49:40.250 --> 00:49:43.790 align:middle line:90% we wake from our deaths. 00:49:43.790 --> 00:49:46.100 align:middle line:84% When you know the worst, you can return 00:49:46.100 --> 00:49:49.280 align:middle line:90% to cut stalks of iris in April. 00:49:49.280 --> 00:49:53.300 align:middle line:84% Where, at least, one loveliness wanders. 00:49:53.300 --> 00:49:56.060 align:middle line:84% Where else would they have fallen where everything 00:49:56.060 --> 00:49:58.640 align:middle line:90% destroyed was left intact? 00:49:58.640 --> 00:50:01.430 align:middle line:84% Where he looked, where the helicopters landed, 00:50:01.430 --> 00:50:03.380 align:middle line:90% lifting trees from the ground. 00:50:03.380 --> 00:50:06.740 align:middle line:84% Where the sickness knew us, where the uranium ore is 00:50:06.740 --> 00:50:08.960 align:middle line:90% crushed into yellow cake. 00:50:08.960 --> 00:50:10.940 align:middle line:84% Where there is a message to convey. 00:50:10.940 --> 00:50:12.650 align:middle line:90% Where they go without sleep. 00:50:12.650 --> 00:50:15.110 align:middle line:84% Where thinking takes place, we have a right 00:50:15.110 --> 00:50:18.200 align:middle line:84% to say while I lived in that other world, 00:50:18.200 --> 00:50:22.040 align:middle line:90% years went by in this one. 00:50:22.040 --> 00:50:25.700 align:middle line:84% While out on the cobalt sea, the ship turned towards us. 00:50:25.700 --> 00:50:29.540 align:middle line:84% While we watched, transfixed, the repetitive novelty 00:50:29.540 --> 00:50:31.940 align:middle line:90% of death. 00:50:31.940 --> 00:50:36.500 align:middle line:84% Who cries for the Jasmine as he digs them up, and carries 00:50:36.500 --> 00:50:41.480 align:middle line:84% with him a can of black tobacco and a yellow Finch in a cage. 00:50:41.480 --> 00:50:44.390 align:middle line:84% Who, in mirrors, saw a strange woman, who 00:50:44.390 --> 00:50:46.580 align:middle line:90% no longer realized I was there. 00:50:46.580 --> 00:50:49.400 align:middle line:84% Who returns from the journey with her eyes ruined. 00:50:49.400 --> 00:50:53.000 align:middle line:84% Who wanted only to retrieve a few invisible souvenirs. 00:50:53.000 --> 00:50:54.830 align:middle line:84% Who wrote on the window in lipstick, 00:50:54.830 --> 00:50:57.080 align:middle line:90% "I will never forget you." 00:50:57.080 --> 00:51:01.080 align:middle line:84% Who, if rope were writing, would have hung himself. 00:51:01.080 --> 00:51:03.170 align:middle line:84% Whose white hands lift from this river, 00:51:03.170 --> 00:51:06.770 align:middle line:90% the sudden flight of cranes. 00:51:06.770 --> 00:51:09.890 align:middle line:90% Why do I seem no longer alive? 00:51:09.890 --> 00:51:14.540 align:middle line:84% Wide plane, wind of the sea, wild doves in a warehouse, 00:51:14.540 --> 00:51:17.750 align:middle line:84% Willow, wind throw, winter wisteria, 00:51:17.750 --> 00:51:21.860 align:middle line:84% wind etching the walls, wind singing in the chimney, windows 00:51:21.860 --> 00:51:23.840 align:middle line:90% exed against gun fire. 00:51:23.840 --> 00:51:27.560 align:middle line:84% Windshield wipers clearing a wedge of water, wisteria 00:51:27.560 --> 00:51:30.860 align:middle line:90% floating along a fence. 00:51:30.860 --> 00:51:33.770 align:middle line:84% With a camera hidden in a loaf of bread, 00:51:33.770 --> 00:51:37.340 align:middle line:84% with empty suitcases pretending to be refugees. 00:51:37.340 --> 00:51:40.100 align:middle line:84% With how much uncertainty they told it, 00:51:40.100 --> 00:51:45.230 align:middle line:84% with revolutionary hope we searched, believing. 00:51:45.230 --> 00:51:49.970 align:middle line:84% With the flurry of a dove coat, with personal history or desire 00:51:49.970 --> 00:51:55.400 align:middle line:84% for selfhood, without so much as a biscuit tin of water. 00:51:55.400 --> 00:51:58.400 align:middle line:84% Without passing through thought, without wandering 00:51:58.400 --> 00:52:01.550 align:middle line:90% too far into the past. 00:52:01.550 --> 00:52:06.200 align:middle line:84% Woman in black holding daisies in paper, woman in mourning 00:52:06.200 --> 00:52:09.110 align:middle line:84% black with baskets of lemons and eggs, 00:52:09.110 --> 00:52:12.380 align:middle line:84% wood crates of cognac and ordinance. 00:52:12.380 --> 00:52:14.570 align:middle line:90% Wooden crosses in snow. 00:52:14.570 --> 00:52:17.120 align:middle line:90% World without origin. 00:52:17.120 --> 00:52:19.220 align:middle line:84% Words burning in the windows, where it's 00:52:19.220 --> 00:52:21.020 align:middle line:90% carried by countless mouths. 00:52:21.020 --> 00:52:24.320 align:middle line:84% Work shoes, soda cans, holy braided palm, 00:52:24.320 --> 00:52:27.920 align:middle line:90% world without having been. 00:52:27.920 --> 00:52:30.200 align:middle line:84% Would return to the point of departure, 00:52:30.200 --> 00:52:33.260 align:middle line:84% would reveal itself as other than chance. 00:52:33.260 --> 00:52:37.910 align:middle line:84% Writing an anguished wind written over an open grave. 00:52:37.910 --> 00:52:41.690 align:middle line:90% X does not equal. 00:52:41.690 --> 00:52:44.540 align:middle line:84% Yet, the women dancing with white scarves, 00:52:44.540 --> 00:52:48.050 align:middle line:90% yet the women veiled in Ceres. 00:52:48.050 --> 00:52:53.030 align:middle line:84% You are the ghost, through whom we see the wall. 00:52:53.030 --> 00:52:56.750 align:middle line:84% You came to Earth at Paris in your sorrows. 00:52:56.750 --> 00:53:00.480 align:middle line:84% You might be the revenant of the earlier years. 00:53:00.480 --> 00:53:02.570 align:middle line:90% You might be within. 00:53:02.570 --> 00:53:03.890 align:middle line:90% You must leave. 00:53:03.890 --> 00:53:05.540 align:middle line:90% You cannot remain here. 00:53:05.540 --> 00:53:08.150 align:middle line:90% You must leave at once. 00:53:08.150 --> 00:53:10.640 align:middle line:84% You spit out your teeth, give it up. 00:53:10.640 --> 00:53:12.770 align:middle line:84% You will see the generation in which 00:53:12.770 --> 00:53:14.420 align:middle line:90% you should have been born. 00:53:14.420 --> 00:53:18.110 align:middle line:84% You, leaping tall fields, corn flour, and milk. 00:53:18.110 --> 00:53:19.760 align:middle line:90% Your breath in my mouth. 00:53:19.760 --> 00:53:22.880 align:middle line:84% Your churches will warehouse, weapons, and wheat. 00:53:22.880 --> 00:53:24.860 align:middle line:90% Your freedom is an abyss. 00:53:24.860 --> 00:53:28.490 align:middle line:84% Your hand awkward between us in the absence of love. 00:53:28.490 --> 00:53:31.730 align:middle line:84% Your heart in the guise of mysterious words. 00:53:31.730 --> 00:53:34.280 align:middle line:90% Your light narrow coffin. 00:53:34.280 --> 00:53:37.700 align:middle line:84% Your mother waving goodbye in the flames. 00:53:37.700 --> 00:53:40.340 align:middle line:84% Your notebooks, the sorrow of ink. 00:53:40.340 --> 00:53:42.650 align:middle line:84% Your things have been taken away. 00:53:42.650 --> 00:53:45.860 align:middle line:84% Your things have been taken away. 00:53:45.860 --> 00:53:48.484 align:middle line:90% Zero." 00:53:48.484 --> 00:53:51.680 align:middle line:84% You were good, you were really good. 00:53:51.680 --> 00:53:54.530 align:middle line:90% I have two things to close. 00:53:54.530 --> 00:53:56.800 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:53:56.800 --> 00:53:59.050 align:middle line:84% That was very nice, thank you so much. 00:53:59.050 --> 00:54:00.970 align:middle line:90% Thank you for waiting. 00:54:00.970 --> 00:54:02.540 align:middle line:90% I grew up in a haunted house. 00:54:02.540 --> 00:54:04.060 align:middle line:84% I have a little poem about my ghost. 00:54:04.060 --> 00:54:09.180 align:middle line:90% 00:54:09.180 --> 00:54:10.740 align:middle line:84% It's called "Sequestered Writing". 00:54:10.740 --> 00:54:12.360 align:middle line:84% It's the first poem I've ever written 00:54:12.360 --> 00:54:16.320 align:middle line:90% about this particular ghost. 00:54:16.320 --> 00:54:21.270 align:middle line:84% "Horses were turned loose in the child's sorrow. 00:54:21.270 --> 00:54:24.720 align:middle line:84% Black and roan cantering through snow. 00:54:24.720 --> 00:54:28.620 align:middle line:84% The way light fills the hand with light. 00:54:28.620 --> 00:54:32.160 align:middle line:84% November with graves, infancy with white. 00:54:32.160 --> 00:54:33.900 align:middle line:90% White. 00:54:33.900 --> 00:54:37.800 align:middle line:90% Given lilacs, lilacs disappear. 00:54:37.800 --> 00:54:41.580 align:middle line:84% Then, low voices rising in walls. 00:54:41.580 --> 00:54:44.640 align:middle line:84% The way they withdrew from the child's body, 00:54:44.640 --> 00:54:48.180 align:middle line:84% and spoke as if it were not there. 00:54:48.180 --> 00:54:52.950 align:middle line:84% What ghost comes to the bedside whispering, you. 00:54:52.950 --> 00:54:58.320 align:middle line:84% With it's no one, without its I. A dwarf ghost, 00:54:58.320 --> 00:55:01.110 align:middle line:90% a closet of empty clothes. 00:55:01.110 --> 00:55:04.320 align:middle line:84% Ours was a ghost who stole household goods. 00:55:04.320 --> 00:55:06.000 align:middle line:90% Nothing anyone would miss. 00:55:06.000 --> 00:55:11.430 align:middle line:84% Supper plates, apples, barbed wire, behind the house, what. 00:55:11.430 --> 00:55:14.640 align:middle line:84% At the end of the hall, its sleep walks into a mirror, 00:55:14.640 --> 00:55:16.980 align:middle line:90% wearing mother's robe. 00:55:16.980 --> 00:55:20.460 align:middle line:84% A bed sheet lifts from the bed, and hovers. 00:55:20.460 --> 00:55:22.950 align:middle line:90% Face with no face. 00:55:22.950 --> 00:55:24.960 align:middle line:90% Come here. 00:55:24.960 --> 00:55:26.850 align:middle line:90% The bookcase knows. 00:55:26.850 --> 00:55:29.580 align:middle line:90% And also, the darkness of books. 00:55:29.580 --> 00:55:36.720 align:middle line:84% Long passages into endless histories toward sleeping pages 00:55:36.720 --> 00:55:41.880 align:middle line:84% about why else toss gloves into a grave. 00:55:41.880 --> 00:55:47.580 align:middle line:84% A language that once sent Ravens through furs, the open world 00:55:47.580 --> 00:55:50.910 align:middle line:84% from which it came, words holding the scent 00:55:50.910 --> 00:55:53.070 align:middle line:90% of an asylum 50 years. 00:55:53.070 --> 00:55:55.500 align:middle line:90% It is 50 years then. 00:55:55.500 --> 00:56:00.120 align:middle line:84% The child hears from within, come here. 00:56:00.120 --> 00:56:04.110 align:middle line:84% And know below and unbeknownst to us, 00:56:04.110 --> 00:56:07.550 align:middle line:90% what these fields had been." 00:56:07.550 --> 00:56:09.000 align:middle line:90%