WEBVTT

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The last piece from
here is a prose poem.

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Someone asked me
this afternoon how--

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what was the-- there were
about three questions.

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How did I know?

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Did I consider it really a poem?

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And if it were a journal
entry or a prose poem.

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Well, there was a mix of them.

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And what determined whether
something went into lines

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or into a prose poem?

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I had no answers.

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This just seemed to
need to be explored

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in a more prose-like space.

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That's the best way
I can describe it.

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I didn't want to
think about lines.

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I was circling more or just or--

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I don't know.

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I'll stop.

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This is called "Not
to Be Reproduced."

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And the image in this picture
is of a man formally dressed

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in a black suit.

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It's the back of him,
and he has a bowler on.

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And he's looking in a very
fancy mirror with a gilt frame.

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And the image coming back
out is also of his back.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"I am interested in the logic
of secrets, how it has always

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moved me, in particular,
to be invited by a phase

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into the aura of
its withholding,

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as though we were
designed to bring forward

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two opposing sets of
facts and bathe ourselves

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in the resulting struggle.

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As in watching a
tightrope walker move

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from one point in
space to another,

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each foot brought
precisely from behind

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and placed in
front of the other,

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but without the delicious
possibility of falling,

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were it not for the rope
stretched tautly beneath him,

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cutting the air with
its odor of hemp.

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The secrets between
men and women

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are of peculiar fascination.

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My father, for example,
invited me into a dream

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last summer where I discovered
that he was making preparations

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to die.

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He was busy doing
small errands, rushing

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about in his impeccably
tailored suit and polished

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shoes with a face so sad, so
preoccupied with its secret,

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so designed to escape
observation that I immediately

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began to pay attention,
invited, as I

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was, by that
closed-off expression

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to become the rope upon which
he demonstrated his journey.

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As I watched him moving
to get everything in order

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before leaving,
my sense of dismay

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began to take on its
own life, expanding

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into anger and then curiosity.

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How does he know?

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I asked my mother.

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The fibers in me were
twisting and vibrating.

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A conviction was growing.

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I became filled
with the possibility

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of his life continuing and
decided to speak to him

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directly, hoping to convince
him that his death need not

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be imminent.

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I go to my father
and I say, why do you

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think you are going to die?

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His feeling is more one of
resignation or tiredness

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than any specific illness.

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I ask him matter-of-factly
to take off his clothes

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so that I may look at his body.

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He does so, and his
body appears to be fine.

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A bit shorter and
stockier than I remember,

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but ruddy and glowing.

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I see immediately that he's
perfectly well and able

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to live for a very long time.

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I tell him with
conviction and energy

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that there is no reason
for him to continue

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on this course of dying,
that he is wholly alive

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and has many things yet to do.

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As I tell him this,
we are walking

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outside through a woods, now up
a slight incline to a clearing.

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My father seems very joyous
and happy to hear the news.

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He accepts it, but
with a kind of privacy

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that he's always had,
savoring it for himself,

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indicating that he hopes I
won't make a public issue of it.

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There is a kind of charged
excitement between us,

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a flirtation with
the possibilities

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that now lie ahead.

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In 1965, my father was hit
by a car and pronounced dead.

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I asked for his first set of
architect's drawing tools,

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wrapped in a chamois
case he'd sewn himself,

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each metal pencil
and compass enclosed

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in its own soft pocket, each a
potential source of precision

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and invention, given
a hand to hold it."

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