And this will be the last poem I read.
It's another eclogue.
It's also a short poem and the title
is "Eclogue in Line to View 'The Clock' by Christian Marclay."
And that art piece is a 24-hour looped film
that Christian Marclay and many other artists working for him
created entirely out of snippets, excerpts from cinema,
only excerpts where a clock or a mention of time
occur so that you can watch the entire film or any part of it
and always know what time it is because the characters
on screen are always concerned with the time.
It's a fascinating experience because you're
used to going to the theater and losing time in some way
and you can't stop knowing what time it is.
The last line and the last line of this reading
is kind of a line by Allen Grossman who
died just a couple of months ago, a poet and critic, whose
death is a real loss.
The line is from "Summa Lyrica" in a wonderful book
called The Sighted Singer by Allen Grossman.
"Eclogue in Line to View 'The Clock' by Christian Marclay."
"OK, but now imagine someone, one of 50, say, in the queue,
50th first and advancing little, somewhere
within the 72-hour window of efficacy
for post-exposure prophylaxis, and later, in the screening
room, watching The Clock, with a few dozen others in rows behind
and ahead who had waited too.
He knows he has to but he hasn't yet.
We pick it up there.
It is 2011, a few days more.
The movie tells what time it is.
In poetry too we all face forward."
Thank you.