WEBVTT

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And now I'll read a
few poems from Bitters.

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Many of the poems
in this section

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have some connection
to the Bible, which

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I don't think you need
to know the Bible really

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to follow them.

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At least I hope not.

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But there's a story
here about King David.

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"Comparative religion"

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"1.

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So many of the truly horrible
accounts in the Bible

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leave so much out.

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For instance, when
King David was aged

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and infirm and his
advisors themselves

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wizened men,
thinking to minister

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his flesh, which gat no warm
with the warmth of a virgin's

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breast brought Abishag the
Shunammite to his death bed.

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Nothing is said of
this slip of a girl.

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Probably 12 or 13 given
the customs of the times,

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torn or sold out of
her mother's house.

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Or what she must have felt?

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Those all too fleshy fingers
gumming at her childish frock.

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We are told only that
she was medicinal,

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a bitter herb ministering
to him at all hours

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though the King knew her not.

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And God, he's so quiet.

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It's as if she didn't exist.

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As if he left the room
abandoning David and his virtue

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to the paltry
mechanisms of the flesh.

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But she, Abishag,
what happened to her

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after being embraced by the
corpse of a man and God.

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She must have been like
these apricot trees, who

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spun in a rush of
whiteness and bees.

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The living snowdrift
of spring is gripped

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by the last spasm of winter.

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Every pedal, its intricacy
shriven freezing to mud

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for which we all stand
about on this cold morning

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and lament, and lament,
and lament, and lament.

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2.

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Buddha in the apricot trees
is waving a multitude of arms.

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Each bud a cape of snow
on a temperate mountain.

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The opening of a baby's
mouth, the decavalent dance

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of becoming, an
imperishable seed.

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Buddha in the apricot tree is
weaving a ladder to heaven out

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of perishable sexual blossoms.

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A boy plucks a blossom
and scatters the petals

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in the street.

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A girl plucks a
branch from the tree

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and holds it to her
face breathing deeply.

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There is no serpent in the tree.

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Just the awakening
of the branches,

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a galaxy of white stars.

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Each one with an amber of color
still burning at its core.

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The bees swirling in the air.

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Our desire only our desire makes
a heaven of the apricot tree."

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