WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.610 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.610 --> 00:00:04.680 align:middle line:84% This next work, The Music We Dance 00:00:04.680 --> 00:00:08.850 align:middle line:84% To has a number of elegies in it for my father. 00:00:08.850 --> 00:00:12.300 align:middle line:90% 00:00:12.300 --> 00:00:15.240 align:middle line:84% And I'm going to read this one because I always-- 00:00:15.240 --> 00:00:17.970 align:middle line:84% one of the first poems I wrote, that I 00:00:17.970 --> 00:00:22.050 align:middle line:84% remember being happy with, was a Father's Day present. 00:00:22.050 --> 00:00:24.030 align:middle line:84% It was one of those school assignments. 00:00:24.030 --> 00:00:26.160 align:middle line:84% And usually, Father's Day is missed 00:00:26.160 --> 00:00:29.250 align:middle line:84% because it's after the school year has ended. 00:00:29.250 --> 00:00:31.020 align:middle line:84% But for some reason, we had a teacher 00:00:31.020 --> 00:00:34.750 align:middle line:84% who wanted us to make Father's Day cards. 00:00:34.750 --> 00:00:36.930 align:middle line:84% So I was quite pleased with myself 00:00:36.930 --> 00:00:41.700 align:middle line:84% when I made this poem that went, "Bison is a buffalo. 00:00:41.700 --> 00:00:43.770 align:middle line:90% Bully is his name. 00:00:43.770 --> 00:00:47.370 align:middle line:84% Bully gallops up and snorts, Happy Father's Day." 00:00:47.370 --> 00:00:50.328 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:50.328 --> 00:00:51.810 align:middle line:90% 00:00:51.810 --> 00:00:53.940 align:middle line:84% And my father, who was a painter, one 00:00:53.940 --> 00:00:55.710 align:middle line:84% of the first paintings he ever did 00:00:55.710 --> 00:01:01.960 align:middle line:84% was of an Indian and a buffalo from one of my kids' books. 00:01:01.960 --> 00:01:05.820 align:middle line:84% So in this poem, I'm always happy because it's, in a way, 00:01:05.820 --> 00:01:09.090 align:middle line:84% as if I still have that childhood 00:01:09.090 --> 00:01:13.470 align:middle line:84% home, even though the poem says absolutely nothing about it. 00:01:13.470 --> 00:01:16.050 align:middle line:90% "Great Circle." 00:01:16.050 --> 00:01:19.860 align:middle line:84% "As he aged into impassive calm, strangers 00:01:19.860 --> 00:01:22.230 align:middle line:90% thought my father was a Navajo. 00:01:22.230 --> 00:01:26.580 align:middle line:84% But as a child, I knew he was a buffalo. 00:01:26.580 --> 00:01:29.550 align:middle line:84% That beast, with its puzzled stare, 00:01:29.550 --> 00:01:32.970 align:middle line:84% bred back from the edge of extinction, 00:01:32.970 --> 00:01:37.500 align:middle line:84% ruminating among the repetitive flowers, his shoulders 00:01:37.500 --> 00:01:40.290 align:middle line:84% beginning to slump from emphysema, 00:01:40.290 --> 00:01:45.630 align:middle line:84% like and unlike a calf's emerging hump. 00:01:45.630 --> 00:01:49.260 align:middle line:84% The great circle, my picture book called it, 00:01:49.260 --> 00:01:53.160 align:middle line:84% on one side of the page, an Indian, black brains flying 00:01:53.160 --> 00:01:58.780 align:middle line:84% behind him, bow and arrow in hand, urged his pinto on. 00:01:58.780 --> 00:02:03.690 align:middle line:84% On the other, a single buffalo, the muscles beneath his thick 00:02:03.690 --> 00:02:08.160 align:middle line:84% hide rippling in a stampede of alarm. 00:02:08.160 --> 00:02:11.940 align:middle line:84% Cracking the book's spine as he flattened the pages, 00:02:11.940 --> 00:02:16.920 align:middle line:84% my father drew a grid over the Indian and the buffalo, 00:02:16.920 --> 00:02:22.020 align:middle line:84% then enlarged each section onto whitewashed Masonite. 00:02:22.020 --> 00:02:27.060 align:middle line:84% Painting for the first time, he was an ancient cartographer 00:02:27.060 --> 00:02:30.990 align:middle line:84% who, mapping around Earth on a flat surface, 00:02:30.990 --> 00:02:34.320 align:middle line:84% blurs the outlines of separate things. 00:02:34.320 --> 00:02:39.640 align:middle line:84% The man's face smudged into sky, the curly hump extending 00:02:39.640 --> 00:02:46.980 align:middle line:84% too far down the buffalo's right foreleg, dissolving into grass. 00:02:46.980 --> 00:02:50.850 align:middle line:84% What he caught exactly was the wound. 00:02:50.850 --> 00:02:53.070 align:middle line:84% The blood seeping around the arrow 00:02:53.070 --> 00:02:57.330 align:middle line:84% in the bison's flank, as vivid and as distant 00:02:57.330 --> 00:03:01.200 align:middle line:90% as the scar on my father's back. 00:03:01.200 --> 00:03:05.520 align:middle line:84% Long before my birth, someone tried to rob him. 00:03:05.520 --> 00:03:09.300 align:middle line:84% He walked home with a knife in his torso, 00:03:09.300 --> 00:03:14.100 align:middle line:84% but only knew it when he glimpsed the shaft embedded 00:03:14.100 --> 00:03:16.080 align:middle line:90% in the mirror. 00:03:16.080 --> 00:03:19.560 align:middle line:90% What did I know of my father? 00:03:19.560 --> 00:03:22.470 align:middle line:84% His pain lived at such a distance. 00:03:22.470 --> 00:03:26.760 align:middle line:84% It was an imaginary line that, circling the globe, 00:03:26.760 --> 00:03:30.480 align:middle line:90% dissected the Earth into halves. 00:03:30.480 --> 00:03:35.730 align:middle line:84% While he brooded at the window, his black moon and injured bull 00:03:35.730 --> 00:03:40.770 align:middle line:84% haunting the edge of his herd, I circled the house 00:03:40.770 --> 00:03:42.930 align:middle line:90% with war crimes. 00:03:42.930 --> 00:03:48.710 align:middle line:84% Pretending to be in Indian, I thought we were opposed. 00:03:48.710 --> 00:03:53.180 align:middle line:84% But now, only this painting remains of my father. 00:03:53.180 --> 00:03:57.590 align:middle line:84% I see, in the great circle of the Indian and the buffalo, 00:03:57.590 --> 00:04:03.940 align:middle line:84% the way in which my father and I were divided and are one." 00:04:03.940 --> 00:04:06.000 align:middle line:90%