WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.190 align:middle line:84% It certainly couldn't just before this at home. 00:00:05.190 --> 00:00:09.360 align:middle line:84% Again, a necessary memorialized in poems essays 00:00:09.360 --> 00:00:12.135 align:middle line:90% in respect of German readers. 00:00:12.135 --> 00:00:15.090 align:middle line:90% 00:00:15.090 --> 00:00:18.660 align:middle line:84% I think the thing most dramatic about being 00:00:18.660 --> 00:00:20.490 align:middle line:90% this age is that one-- 00:00:20.490 --> 00:00:25.050 align:middle line:84% I think the sense of young is that it will be one's own life. 00:00:25.050 --> 00:00:27.310 align:middle line:90% Gee, I may die. 00:00:27.310 --> 00:00:29.490 align:middle line:84% And not to say that that's to be taken lightly, 00:00:29.490 --> 00:00:32.005 align:middle line:84% but it can certainly take care of itself. 00:00:32.005 --> 00:00:32.505 align:middle line:90% The-- 00:00:32.505 --> 00:00:33.550 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:33.550 --> 00:00:36.690 align:middle line:84% --of death is the death of France and thus 00:00:36.690 --> 00:00:38.520 align:middle line:90% to those who locate you. 00:00:38.520 --> 00:00:40.140 align:middle line:84% Until one day, you recognize there's 00:00:40.140 --> 00:00:43.410 align:middle line:84% no one left on Earth who remembers the world is 00:00:43.410 --> 00:00:46.650 align:middle line:84% as I know it not to make it, but no one 00:00:46.650 --> 00:00:48.270 align:middle line:84% can share it any longer than that-- 00:00:48.270 --> 00:00:51.000 align:middle line:90% in that common information. 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:52.620 align:middle line:84% And there's nothing at all that holds 00:00:52.620 --> 00:00:55.740 align:middle line:84% who cares or isn't contemptuous of one's life, 00:00:55.740 --> 00:00:58.810 align:middle line:84% it's just hey, that must have been nice then. 00:00:58.810 --> 00:01:01.110 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:01.110 --> 00:01:07.367 align:middle line:84% So I've had all falls, people generously asking 00:01:07.367 --> 00:01:08.200 align:middle line:90% what were you doing? 00:01:08.200 --> 00:01:09.180 align:middle line:90% Oh, grief. 00:01:09.180 --> 00:01:12.870 align:middle line:84% I was frankly out a great deal on memorials. 00:01:12.870 --> 00:01:15.390 align:middle line:84% I mean, I almost became unwittingly 00:01:15.390 --> 00:01:22.400 align:middle line:84% a kind of professional mourner, which is kind of cold. 00:01:22.400 --> 00:01:27.630 align:middle line:84% Then John, the same time, other friends were sadly dying, 00:01:27.630 --> 00:01:30.690 align:middle line:90% I mean at this age people died. 00:01:30.690 --> 00:01:33.010 align:middle line:90% So "For John Weiners." 00:01:33.010 --> 00:01:35.970 align:middle line:84% "Glass roses or something else, hardly expected 00:01:35.970 --> 00:01:41.970 align:middle line:84% an abundance of goodwill, a kind hand in usual troubles. 00:01:41.970 --> 00:01:43.890 align:middle line:84% Do you hear the voices all around 00:01:43.890 --> 00:01:47.250 align:middle line:84% you, a sort of whispering, echoing silence as if someone 00:01:47.250 --> 00:01:49.770 align:middle line:90% had left the window open? 00:01:49.770 --> 00:01:52.020 align:middle line:84% Reading those several times with John, 00:01:52.020 --> 00:01:56.550 align:middle line:84% we were first in a Great Hall, the Y uptown where he said, 00:01:56.550 --> 00:01:59.640 align:middle line:84% he heard Auden read, and now we did. 00:01:59.640 --> 00:02:02.670 align:middle line:84% The great velvet curtains, the useful sense 00:02:02.670 --> 00:02:07.680 align:middle line:84% of a company in the same place we now stood echoing. 00:02:07.680 --> 00:02:10.410 align:middle line:84% Then at Bard, first time I'd met Tom Meyer, 00:02:10.410 --> 00:02:13.920 align:middle line:84% still a student and we, John, Bobby, 00:02:13.920 --> 00:02:16.800 align:middle line:84% and me had driven up from New York together. 00:02:16.800 --> 00:02:19.170 align:middle line:84% In bleak aftermath of Olson's telling 00:02:19.170 --> 00:02:21.630 align:middle line:84% John he was going off with Panna, 00:02:21.630 --> 00:02:24.660 align:middle line:84% on the phone in the Chelsea the blasted 00:02:24.660 --> 00:02:29.130 align:middle line:90% heath we were leaving behind. 00:02:29.130 --> 00:02:32.940 align:middle line:84% Sweet, you might say impeccable gentleman like Claude Rains, 00:02:32.940 --> 00:02:36.713 align:middle line:84% his Boston accent held each word a particular obligation 00:02:36.713 --> 00:02:38.820 align:middle line:90% and value. 00:02:38.820 --> 00:02:42.900 align:middle line:84% I see his face as still a young man in San Francisco, 00:02:42.900 --> 00:02:47.610 align:middle line:84% hearing him talking with Joanne, hearing him talk with Joe Dunn, 00:02:47.610 --> 00:02:49.950 align:middle line:90% with friends. 00:02:49.950 --> 00:02:54.060 align:middle line:84% When you are a poet as he was have no confusions, 00:02:54.060 --> 00:02:56.670 align:middle line:84% you write the words you are given to, 00:02:56.670 --> 00:03:00.360 align:middle line:84% you are possessed or protected by a vision. 00:03:00.360 --> 00:03:04.350 align:middle line:84% We are not going anywhere, we are somewhere here 00:03:04.350 --> 00:03:07.590 align:middle line:84% where John is where he's brought us much as he might 00:03:07.590 --> 00:03:11.130 align:middle line:90% himself this evening to listen. 00:03:11.130 --> 00:03:14.370 align:middle line:84% I think of all the impossible loves of my life, 00:03:14.370 --> 00:03:18.150 align:middle line:84% all the edges of feeling, all the helpless reach to others 00:03:18.150 --> 00:03:22.110 align:middle line:84% one tried so bitterly to effect, to reach as one 00:03:22.110 --> 00:03:25.200 align:middle line:84% might a hilltop, an edge of the sea where the waves can 00:03:25.200 --> 00:03:27.840 align:middle line:90% break at last on the shore. 00:03:27.840 --> 00:03:32.220 align:middle line:84% I think of just jumping into darkness, into deep water. 00:03:32.220 --> 00:03:35.340 align:middle line:84% Into nothing one can ever point to as a place out 00:03:35.340 --> 00:03:39.930 align:middle line:84% there, just its shadow, a beckoning echo of something, 00:03:39.930 --> 00:03:44.250 align:middle line:84% the premonition, which does not warn, but invites. 00:03:44.250 --> 00:03:48.120 align:middle line:84% There is music in pain, but not because of it. 00:03:48.120 --> 00:03:50.910 align:middle line:90% Love in each persistent breath. 00:03:50.910 --> 00:03:56.160 align:middle line:84% He was the light of the world, a lit match or the whole city, 00:03:56.160 --> 00:03:57.500 align:middle line:90% burning. 00:03:57.500 --> 00:03:58.000 align:middle line:90%