I'm not going to read too much longer,
so we'll all be very happy.
I'm going to read three more poems.
One of the poems is a little long.
I'm going to read a poem from Rose.
The next two poems I'm going to read are similar,
and I didn't realize this until later.
This imperative to remember, I think, poses a lot of problems,
especially for someone like me who doesn't
have a very good memory.
In the next two poems, I think that the poem
enacts within its duration the failure of memory, my memory.
The first one, I think, comes from,
I had a love for the tradition of the "Midrash," which
is a Hebraic tradition in which stories are told and retold
for clarification.
And I thought that made absolute sense.
But there are events that are in our lives that
are so huge or so mysterious--
death, love, exile.
They're so large that we can't understand them
except that we keep telling them over and over again
and each time modifying it maybe with the end of clarification
in mind.
This poem is called "Visions and Interpretations."
So it's about a failure of memory and it's retelling.
"Visions and Interpretations."
"Because this graveyard is a hill,
I must climb up to see my dead, stopping once midway
to rest beside this tree.
It was here between the anticipation
of exhaustion and exhaustion, between vale and peak.
My father came down to me and we climbed arm in arm to the top.
He cradled the bouquet I brought and, I,
a good son never mentioned his grave erect like a door
behind him.
And it was here one summer day I sat down
to read an old book when I looked up
from the moonlit page, I saw a vision of a world about to come
and a world about to go.
Truth is, I've not seen my father since he died.
And no, the dead do not walk arm in arm with me.
If I carry flowers to them, I do so without their help.
The blossom is not always bright, torch-like, but often
heavy as sun newspaper.
Truth is, I came here with my son one day
and we rested against this tree, and I fell asleep
and dreamed a dream which, upon my boy waking me, I told.
Neither of us understood.
Then we went up.
Even this is not accurate, let me begin again.
Between two griefs, a tree.
Between my hands, white chrysanthemums,
yellow chrysanthemums.
The old book I finished reading, I've
since read again and again.
And what was far grows near.
And what is near grows more dear.
And all of my visions and interpretations
depend on what I see and between my eyes is always
the rain, the migrant rain."