WEBVTT

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Well, I think these
are a suite of poems.

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The first one is
called "Art and Life."

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And it started as a poem
written out of envy,

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because I feel like my wife has
greater powers of concentration

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than I do.

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And it ended up being
a poem about making up

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with the milkmaid in
the Vermeer painting.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"Art and Life."

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"Often melancholy when my
love is otherwise engaged.

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You know that
milkmaid in Vermeer?

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Entirely absorbed in
the act of pouring

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a small stream of white milk
shocking in the Moritshuis

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museum in The Hague to
see how white it was.

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As seeing people sometimes
reading their poetry

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or singing in a
chorus, you think

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you see the soul is an animal
going about its business.

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A squirrel, its coat
sheening toward autumn,

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stretching its body
down the slim branch

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to gather the last bright
haw from a Hawthorne tree,

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testing the branch
with its weight,

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stilling as it sinks and then,
gingerly reaching out a paw.

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Animal attention is the least
ambivalent thing there is

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and so, you honor
it, love it, even.

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That her attention turned
away from you is so alive

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and you are melancholy,
nevertheless.

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It is best of course
to be the one engaged

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and being thought of.

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Best to be the
pouring of the milk.

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In The Hague in the
employees cafeteria,

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I wondered who the restorer was.

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The efficient, young woman and
the boxy expensive Japanese

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coat picking at a
dish of cottage cheese

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and by some act of mental
compromise, a pastry.

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The sugar of the
pastry long before she

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woke up and suffered
its agony in the oven.

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She seemed the person who
had counted up the cost

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and decided what
she'd settle for.

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It was there in the way
her soft abstracted mouth

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received the bits of bread
and the placid sugars.

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Or the older man, thinning
brown hair, brown tweed coat,

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brown buckskin shoes, like the
place where dust and sunset

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meet and disappear.

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Or the whip thin guy with
slicked back black hair

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and the scarified zigzag flash
of lightning at the temple.

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I didn't know if
there was a type.

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I wanted to interview
him or her, what

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do you do with your life?

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I am an acolyte.

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I peel time with infinite
care in thin strips of pigment

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from 300-year-old canvas.

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I make the milk, a milk that
flows from the gray-brown pitch

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--

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paint of a picture held by a
woman, young rose and tender

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yellow for the cheeks.

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The light is lucky
enough to seem

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to touch by a certain
window that refracts it.

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I am the servant of a gesture
so complete, a body so at peace,

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it has become a thought entirely
unreadable by you or anyone

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else and infinitely
to be desired

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and certainly not possessed.

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Has anyone ever
told you, I think

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it must be the copper haired
woman in the coat whos saying

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this, and she's
speaking to me that you

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resemble a bit those sad
face harlequins of Picasso.

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Are you American or English?

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The man with the black
hair must be a curator.

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He's the only one who
thinks he is a work of art.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Everywhere in The Hague, the
low lying smell of sea salt,

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we don't know a thing about
the mother of Vermeer.

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Obviously, he displaced
her nipple there,

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took the whole
Madonna tradition,

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turned it into milk and light by
some meticulous habit of mind,

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the placid geometries of
composition worked in him.

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It's not Vermeer
who interests us

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in any case, strong
Dutch body, almost tender

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light, the plainness of the
room, the rich, red rub.

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Her skin reddened a little from
the roughness of the towel,

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perhaps picks up
at the river thrust

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of what long stares in
you toward what dark

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and what days
grateful afterward.

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One of you touches a
vein in the other's neck,

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feels the pulse
there as a shock.

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The current of a rigored river
or the drawing down this hill.

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Who wants Amida's
Western Paradise when

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there is all this world
for tongue to taste,

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fingers to touch, small hairs,
like spuds simply falling

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on another body's arms
and legs and lower back.

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And so, you talk.

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Always, the other shock
them of a singular

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lived life, a mother in a rest
home, maybe a difficult person

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grievous, somehow or vindictive,
gossip of the other servants,

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a brother who
works as a hosteler

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and has grand plans, that not
entirely trustworthy girlfriend

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who is given to taking
small advantages.

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You listen.

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You have learned
long ago the trick

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of not thinking what
you're going to say next

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when someone else is speaking.

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Part of you drinks
her in like milk.

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Part of you begins to
notice that she's trying out

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self-deceptions in an account
of some difficulty lazily

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formulated.

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You watch her shake her head
suddenly in self-correction.

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You've noticed she has a mind
that wants to get things right.

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That tremor of her body
makes a nuzzling motion

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all along your flank.

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And you reach down
to feel it again,

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the wetness which is what
we have been given instead

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of the luminosity of paint.

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Afterward, she begins to
speak in one of those tracks,

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the mind returns to
when it's on its feet

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again, of Hans the butler,
how he bullies the girls,

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and prays vigorously
in the kitchen

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at hourly intervals on Sundays.

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Now, she's getting dressed.

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It is Sunday.

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You've agreed to
call the cab and take

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her to see her mother up in
Gronigen. She's grateful,

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a little teary, makes the first
small gesture of possession,

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brushing off your coat.

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Outside, you can hear the
hoof beats of shod horses

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on the cobbles.

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This is the moment when the
burden of another person's life

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seems insupportable.

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By love, help.

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Get me out of this mess.

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We all want to be
reborn incessantly.

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But actually, doing it.

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Have you noticed?

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Begins to seem redundant.

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It was the whiteness
of the milk,

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I mean the paint,
that moved me so.

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The whiteness."

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[APPLAUSE]

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