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This-- I think it's
characteristic of-- these

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are old.

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The-- '76.

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It's physical.

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I mean, hey, man, it's physical.

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[LAUGHS]

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[LAUGHTER]

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I've got news for you.

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You're really in real
bodies, you know?

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[LAUGHTER]

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Someone shouted and
said, age is your body.

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So this was Duncan.

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Yeah, Robert.

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He said, one's body is
phenomenal say for the first--

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I would figure-- about 17 or
18 [INAUDIBLE] who changed us.

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Both boys and girls,
men and women--

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certainly well remembered-- have
shifts in their physical body

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which effectually change their
sense of their own presence

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in the sense that is proposed
as a person in the world.

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Voices drop.

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Physical-- breasts,
penises, the whole bit.

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So your voice, for men,
a boy having his voice

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drop suddenly, talking more--

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et cetera.

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And then, you get to be 20, 22.

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And things feel
reasonably stable.

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One thing-- you can
make it wiped one night.

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And you can be up and
pretty much together

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by the next morning.

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And things happen.

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Obviously, said accidents occur,
illnesses and whatever-- that

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imposing time.

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But nonetheless, your body
is reasonably dependable.

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You put it to bed at night.

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And pretty much, when finally
you get up in the morning--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--no metamorphosis.

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[LAUGHS] But then, you get to
be, say, late 40s, early 50s.

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And you find that you
can't see as clearly.

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You used to be able
to see the feathers

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on an eagle at 20 miles.

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But now, you find you can't
really read the phone book.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And so you get a pair
of interim specs for $6,

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$10 in the Walmart or whatever.

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But I remember for myself--

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is the dentist saying, not
"this will fix things,"

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this filling, whatever it was.

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He would say, well,
this should hold you.

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[LAUGHTER]

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[INAUDIBLE] a different
imagination [INAUDIBLE]..

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And so all of that
begins to change.

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Your physical way of
being in the world alters.

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And only this time, you
recognize not ironically

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or even with terror
that you're not

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in a passage that's going to
take you to young manhood,

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whatever.

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This is it.

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This is the, as Williams
puts it, the ascent beckons.

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As the ascent beckoned--

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and memory is a kind
of accomplishment,

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since the places it
opens, places hither

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forth unknown, [INAUDIBLE].

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That's what everything
being always right now

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is really [INAUDIBLE]
interesting, therefore

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because of.

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So in the last few
years, I did not really

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engage with the kind of an
appointment in Samarra, Dodge,

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or trying to avoid, quote,
"death by moving to wherever"

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or even trying to
change remarkably.

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But I wanted community
with a hundred times

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that's absolutely voracious.

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And so far less
interested in simply

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what I do as I am in what
other people are doing,

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and working with various visual
artists, or terrifically,

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with musicians who aren't
there simply to back me up.

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But one of the most terrific
compliments I ever got

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was Steve Swallow saying that
I was as good a horn player

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as he'd ever worked with.

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And I don't play
any instruments.

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So that's pretty good.

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I thought about, as Charles
had remarked earlier

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in the evening, he says, as
soon as I speak, I speaks.

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He says, this fact
something-- speaker speaking.

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I had much the same take on it.

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I was trying to give a
lecture to the [INAUDIBLE]

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School of Art on imaginations
of art as a public fact.

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And I was asking them, for
example, do they themselves

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as visual artists
think there was any way

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to validate their activity
other than the market,

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or the gallery, or the museum?

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Is there anything else
that they knew of that

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might give them validation?

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I know that as poets, there
better be something else.

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Because that validation
comes, if at all, very late.

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Anyhow, they don't get it.

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But I used this poem as
the end of that lecture.

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"If I were writing this--

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which I am writing--

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if I were writing this with
the prospect of encouragement,

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or had I begun some work
intended to be what it was

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or even then and there it
was what had been started,

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even now, I no longer
thought to wait.

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Had begun, had found myself
in the time and place writing

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the words which I
knew, could say.

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Ring, dog, cat, car.

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Was rushing, it felt, to keep
up with the trembling impulse,

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the connivance,
the words contrived

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even themselves to be,
though I wrote them,

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thought they were me.

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This is not the end of the poem.

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I think it's a
bad mistake people

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make when they present
their writing that they

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think they're writing.

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Because that's really,
really the case.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And I said, with the
connivance of the words

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contrived even themselves
to be, though I wrote them,

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thought they were me.

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Once in, once out.

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Turns a roundabout.

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Seeing eyes get the nod
of dogs and mistaken god,

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god's a mistaken dog.

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Get you home on time rhymes with
time on time in time for two

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for tea, begins and ends it.

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The blue gray edge,
trees line it.

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Green field finds it.

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Eyes look.

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Let the aching heart take over.

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Pride to eyes blurred.

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Be as big as you were.

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Stir the pot.

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Whenever it's sense,
look for what else

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is meant in the under
thought of language.

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Words of apparent,
scene light turns off

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to the ambient luminescence.

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They're insufficient--
no electrician's.

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Same sight, shadows
at edge of light.

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Green field again where
hedgerow finds it.

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Read these words, then.

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And see the far trees.

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Hear the chittering
of the birds.

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Share my ease and dependence."

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