WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.230 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.230 --> 00:00:02.380 align:middle line:90% I'll read one more poem. 00:00:02.380 --> 00:00:03.255 align:middle line:90% It's rather long. 00:00:03.255 --> 00:00:09.300 align:middle line:90% 00:00:09.300 --> 00:00:12.990 align:middle line:90% It's about five pages long. 00:00:12.990 --> 00:00:13.870 align:middle line:90% Did somebody gasp? 00:00:13.870 --> 00:00:17.645 align:middle line:90% 00:00:17.645 --> 00:00:19.020 align:middle line:84% Is that alright, five pages long? 00:00:19.020 --> 00:00:21.600 align:middle line:90% 00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:24.960 align:middle line:84% The lines are long, so it takes longer than-- 00:00:24.960 --> 00:00:26.490 align:middle line:90% It's a long lined poem. 00:00:26.490 --> 00:00:30.900 align:middle line:90% 00:00:30.900 --> 00:00:33.240 align:middle line:84% All my life, I wanted to write a song 00:00:33.240 --> 00:00:35.190 align:middle line:90% of songs, my song of songs. 00:00:35.190 --> 00:00:41.940 align:middle line:84% I thought that was the most beautiful poem in the world. 00:00:41.940 --> 00:00:45.720 align:middle line:84% And of course, it's archaic and everything else, 00:00:45.720 --> 00:00:46.920 align:middle line:90% but it's lovely. 00:00:46.920 --> 00:00:48.750 align:middle line:90% It's so impassioned. 00:00:48.750 --> 00:00:51.570 align:middle line:84% And the reason I guess I love it is because 00:00:51.570 --> 00:00:53.820 align:middle line:90% of its cultural setting. 00:00:53.820 --> 00:00:56.970 align:middle line:84% It's not merely an utterance of love. 00:00:56.970 --> 00:01:00.870 align:middle line:84% And it is that, but it has a kind of cultural setting to it, 00:01:00.870 --> 00:01:02.130 align:middle line:90% even historical setting. 00:01:02.130 --> 00:01:06.090 align:middle line:84% The metaphors are historically and I think and culturally 00:01:06.090 --> 00:01:08.250 align:middle line:90% informed. 00:01:08.250 --> 00:01:09.630 align:middle line:90% And I never could-- 00:01:09.630 --> 00:01:11.370 align:middle line:90% the language never came to me. 00:01:11.370 --> 00:01:15.650 align:middle line:84% And about two years ago, I think the language 00:01:15.650 --> 00:01:16.525 align:middle line:90% started coming to me. 00:01:16.525 --> 00:01:17.567 align:middle line:90% And I've been working on. 00:01:17.567 --> 00:01:19.800 align:middle line:84% I'm not entirely finished with it but I'll read it. 00:01:19.800 --> 00:01:23.790 align:middle line:90% 00:01:23.790 --> 00:01:27.540 align:middle line:84% Alas, it isn't what I thought it was, but what can you do? 00:01:27.540 --> 00:01:34.620 align:middle line:84% And in the meantime, I've been reading 00:01:34.620 --> 00:01:38.250 align:middle line:84% a lot of the poetry of the troubadours. 00:01:38.250 --> 00:01:39.900 align:middle line:84% And it's probably not a good idea 00:01:39.900 --> 00:01:42.330 align:middle line:90% to read poetry, the troubadours. 00:01:42.330 --> 00:01:43.620 align:middle line:90% It's a little-- 00:01:43.620 --> 00:01:45.120 align:middle line:84% I don't know, romantic or something. 00:01:45.120 --> 00:01:48.780 align:middle line:84% But I'm apologizing for my own being, for standing up, 00:01:48.780 --> 00:01:51.540 align:middle line:90% this is awful. 00:01:51.540 --> 00:01:54.230 align:middle line:84% That's it, I wrote a long love poem. 00:01:54.230 --> 00:01:59.440 align:middle line:84% [LAUGHTER] You're here, I'm going to read it. 00:01:59.440 --> 00:02:03.540 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] 00:02:03.540 --> 00:02:06.610 align:middle line:84% It's called "The City in Which I Love You." 00:02:06.610 --> 00:02:09.780 align:middle line:84% There's the scene in it that I witnessed 00:02:09.780 --> 00:02:12.100 align:middle line:90% when I was very young. 00:02:12.100 --> 00:02:16.230 align:middle line:84% My father and I were in-- it's called a becak in Indonesia. 00:02:16.230 --> 00:02:19.200 align:middle line:84% It's like a rickshaw except the person who's 00:02:19.200 --> 00:02:24.570 align:middle line:84% pulling it is behind you, he's pushing it on a bicycle. 00:02:24.570 --> 00:02:28.550 align:middle line:84% And I remember once we were going down the road-- 00:02:28.550 --> 00:02:29.400 align:middle line:90% what's it called? 00:02:29.400 --> 00:02:30.630 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:02:30.630 --> 00:02:33.240 align:middle line:84% And we were going down the road and there was a big commotion 00:02:33.240 --> 00:02:36.030 align:middle line:90% ahead, and we stopped. 00:02:36.030 --> 00:02:40.030 align:middle line:84% And we knew that there were arrests being made and so on. 00:02:40.030 --> 00:02:42.490 align:middle line:84% And when my father got out, he said stay here. 00:02:42.490 --> 00:02:45.593 align:middle line:84% And he walked a little ways and I followed him. 00:02:45.593 --> 00:02:47.010 align:middle line:84% And all I remember seeing is this, 00:02:47.010 --> 00:02:49.450 align:middle line:84% the commotion and somebody lying on the ground. 00:02:49.450 --> 00:02:56.730 align:middle line:84% And what I noticed, there was a cart 00:02:56.730 --> 00:03:00.420 align:middle line:90% that a man sells pastries in. 00:03:00.420 --> 00:03:04.200 align:middle line:84% And on the cart, plastered, no hanging, 00:03:04.200 --> 00:03:14.580 align:middle line:84% was a gray even white, whitish-gray gelatinous stuff. 00:03:14.580 --> 00:03:16.410 align:middle line:84% And it wasn't until later my father told me 00:03:16.410 --> 00:03:18.390 align:middle line:90% that was a guy's brains. 00:03:18.390 --> 00:03:21.480 align:middle line:90% But I remember being horrified. 00:03:21.480 --> 00:03:26.230 align:middle line:84% I couldn't understand how his brains got on there. 00:03:26.230 --> 00:03:29.730 align:middle line:90% It was so wild. 00:03:29.730 --> 00:03:31.860 align:middle line:84% And in fact, it was something comical about it. 00:03:31.860 --> 00:03:33.555 align:middle line:90% I may have laughed. 00:03:33.555 --> 00:03:42.550 align:middle line:84% Children are-- I think they're not taught how to react. 00:03:42.550 --> 00:03:45.810 align:middle line:84% So I may have found it comical, it seemed strange to me. 00:03:45.810 --> 00:03:47.480 align:middle line:90% And I talk about that in here. 00:03:47.480 --> 00:03:49.350 align:middle line:84% And I just wanted to let you know 00:03:49.350 --> 00:03:50.650 align:middle line:90% that that's what's going on. 00:03:50.650 --> 00:03:52.692 align:middle line:84% And let me see if there's anything else I should. 00:03:52.692 --> 00:03:55.170 align:middle line:90% 00:03:55.170 --> 00:03:57.450 align:middle line:84% I mentioned another city, that's the city of Jakarta. 00:03:57.450 --> 00:04:01.600 align:middle line:90% 00:04:01.600 --> 00:04:03.730 align:middle line:84% And there's an epigraph here from the Song of Songs 00:04:03.730 --> 00:04:08.200 align:middle line:84% that says, I will arise now and go 00:04:08.200 --> 00:04:12.430 align:middle line:84% about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways, 00:04:12.430 --> 00:04:16.870 align:middle line:90% I will seek whom I so loveth. 00:04:16.870 --> 00:04:18.399 align:middle line:90% "The City in Which I Love You." 00:04:18.399 --> 00:04:22.600 align:middle line:90% 00:04:22.600 --> 00:04:27.490 align:middle line:84% "And when in the city in which I love you, 00:04:27.490 --> 00:04:31.930 align:middle line:84% even my most excellent song goes unanswered 00:04:31.930 --> 00:04:35.350 align:middle line:84% and I mount the scabbed streets, the long 00:04:35.350 --> 00:04:42.520 align:middle line:84% shouts of avenues and tunnel sunken night in search of you. 00:04:42.520 --> 00:04:45.160 align:middle line:84% But I negotiate fog by two minutes 00:04:45.160 --> 00:04:49.210 align:middle line:84% rain, ringing like teeth into the beggar's tin. 00:04:49.210 --> 00:04:53.530 align:middle line:84% Or two men jackaling a third in some alley, weirdly 00:04:53.530 --> 00:04:58.150 align:middle line:84% lit by a couch on fire, that I drag my extinction 00:04:58.150 --> 00:05:01.450 align:middle line:90% in search of you. 00:05:01.450 --> 00:05:04.990 align:middle line:84% Past the guarded schoolyards, the boarded up churches, 00:05:04.990 --> 00:05:08.020 align:middle line:84% swastika-ed synagogues, defended houses 00:05:08.020 --> 00:05:11.860 align:middle line:84% of worship, past newspapered windows of tenements 00:05:11.860 --> 00:05:15.370 align:middle line:84% among the violated, the prosecuted citizenry 00:05:15.370 --> 00:05:19.840 align:middle line:84% throughout this storied, buttressed, scavenged, policed 00:05:19.840 --> 00:05:25.570 align:middle line:84% city I call home in which I am a guest. 00:05:25.570 --> 00:05:29.620 align:middle line:84% A bruise blue in the muscle, you impinge upon me. 00:05:29.620 --> 00:05:34.210 align:middle line:84% As bone hugs the ache home, so I'm vexed to love you. 00:05:34.210 --> 00:05:39.310 align:middle line:84% Your body, the shape of returns, your hair a torso of light, 00:05:39.310 --> 00:05:42.940 align:middle line:84% your heat, I must have, your opening, I'd 00:05:42.940 --> 00:05:46.780 align:middle line:84% eat each moment of that soft finned fruit, 00:05:46.780 --> 00:05:52.090 align:middle line:84% inverted fountain in which I don't see me. 00:05:52.090 --> 00:05:57.070 align:middle line:84% My tongue remembers your wounded flavor, the vein in my neck 00:05:57.070 --> 00:05:58.420 align:middle line:90% adores you. 00:05:58.420 --> 00:06:01.090 align:middle line:84% A sword stands up between my hips, 00:06:01.090 --> 00:06:06.220 align:middle line:84% my hidden fleece sends forth its scent of human oil. 00:06:06.220 --> 00:06:09.580 align:middle line:84% The shadows under my arms, I promise, are tender, 00:06:09.580 --> 00:06:13.180 align:middle line:84% the shadows under my face do not calculate. 00:06:13.180 --> 00:06:17.890 align:middle line:84% But come smooth other, rough sister. 00:06:17.890 --> 00:06:21.070 align:middle line:84% Yet how will you know me among the captives? 00:06:21.070 --> 00:06:24.220 align:middle line:84% My hair grown long, my blood motley, 00:06:24.220 --> 00:06:26.560 align:middle line:90% my ways trespassed upon. 00:06:26.560 --> 00:06:30.460 align:middle line:84% In the uproar, the confusion of accents and inflections, 00:06:30.460 --> 00:06:33.820 align:middle line:84% how will you hear me when I open my mouth? 00:06:33.820 --> 00:06:34.750 align:middle line:90% Look for me. 00:06:34.750 --> 00:06:38.560 align:middle line:84% One of the drab population under fissured edifices, 00:06:38.560 --> 00:06:43.720 align:middle line:84% fractured artifices, make my various names flock overhead, 00:06:43.720 --> 00:06:45.100 align:middle line:90% I will follow you. 00:06:45.100 --> 00:06:46.960 align:middle line:90% Hew me to your beauty. 00:06:46.960 --> 00:06:49.660 align:middle line:84% Stack in me the unaccountable fire. 00:06:49.660 --> 00:06:51.730 align:middle line:90% Bring on me the iron leaf. 00:06:51.730 --> 00:06:56.020 align:middle line:84% But tenderly, folded one hundred times and creased, 00:06:56.020 --> 00:06:57.400 align:middle line:90% I'll not crack. 00:06:57.400 --> 00:07:02.020 align:middle line:84% Threshed to excellence, I'll achieve you. 00:07:02.020 --> 00:07:05.470 align:middle line:84% But in the city in which I love you, no one comes. 00:07:05.470 --> 00:07:07.930 align:middle line:84% No one meets me in the brick clefts. 00:07:07.930 --> 00:07:11.890 align:middle line:84% In the wedged dark, no finger touches me secretly. 00:07:11.890 --> 00:07:14.980 align:middle line:84% No mouth tastes my flawless salt. 00:07:14.980 --> 00:07:17.470 align:middle line:84% No one awakens the honey in the cells, 00:07:17.470 --> 00:07:19.570 align:middle line:90% finds the humming in the ribs. 00:07:19.570 --> 00:07:22.000 align:middle line:84% The rich business in the recesses. 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:27.070 align:middle line:84% Hulls clogged, I continue laden, translated by exhaustion 00:07:27.070 --> 00:07:28.720 align:middle line:90% and time's appetite. 00:07:28.720 --> 00:07:32.350 align:middle line:84% My sleep abandoned in bus stations and storefronts 00:07:32.350 --> 00:07:33.100 align:middle line:90% stoops. 00:07:33.100 --> 00:07:36.940 align:middle line:84% My insomnia erected under a sky cross-hatched 00:07:36.940 --> 00:07:41.560 align:middle line:84% by wires, branches, and black flights of rain. 00:07:41.560 --> 00:07:46.030 align:middle line:84% Lewd body of wind jams me in the passageways. 00:07:46.030 --> 00:07:48.880 align:middle line:90% Doors slam like guns going off. 00:07:48.880 --> 00:07:51.490 align:middle line:84% A gun goes off, a pie plate spins 00:07:51.490 --> 00:07:56.980 align:middle line:84% past whizzing its thin tremolo, a plastic bag fat with wind 00:07:56.980 --> 00:08:00.250 align:middle line:84% barrels by and slaps a chain-link fence, 00:08:00.250 --> 00:08:02.680 align:middle line:90% wraps it like clung skin. 00:08:02.680 --> 00:08:05.780 align:middle line:84% In the excavated places, I waited for you. 00:08:05.780 --> 00:08:07.480 align:middle line:90% And I did not cry out. 00:08:07.480 --> 00:08:10.240 align:middle line:84% In the derelict rooms my body needed you 00:08:10.240 --> 00:08:12.940 align:middle line:84% and there was such flight in my breast. 00:08:12.940 --> 00:08:15.820 align:middle line:84% During the daily assaults, I called to you. 00:08:15.820 --> 00:08:19.120 align:middle line:84% And my voice pursued you even backward 00:08:19.120 --> 00:08:23.590 align:middle line:84% to that other city in which I saw a woman squat in the street 00:08:23.590 --> 00:08:26.560 align:middle line:84% beside a body and fan with hr handkerchief 00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:28.660 align:middle line:90% flies from its face. 00:08:28.660 --> 00:08:31.210 align:middle line:90% That woman was not me. 00:08:31.210 --> 00:08:33.970 align:middle line:90% And the corpse lying there. 00:08:33.970 --> 00:08:37.659 align:middle line:84% Lying there so still, it seemed with great effort 00:08:37.659 --> 00:08:40.330 align:middle line:84% as though his whole being was concentrating 00:08:40.330 --> 00:08:42.490 align:middle line:90% on the hole in his forehead. 00:08:42.490 --> 00:08:47.800 align:middle line:84% So still I expected he'd sit up any minute and laugh out loud. 00:08:47.800 --> 00:08:49.810 align:middle line:90% That man was not me. 00:08:49.810 --> 00:08:51.280 align:middle line:90% His wound was his. 00:08:51.280 --> 00:08:53.390 align:middle line:90% His death not mine. 00:08:53.390 --> 00:08:56.830 align:middle line:84% And the soldier who fired the shot then lit a cigarette. 00:08:56.830 --> 00:08:58.300 align:middle line:90% He was not me. 00:08:58.300 --> 00:09:01.550 align:middle line:84% And the ones I do not see in cities all over the world, 00:09:01.550 --> 00:09:05.450 align:middle line:84% the ones sitting, standing, lying down, those in prisons 00:09:05.450 --> 00:09:08.000 align:middle line:84% playing checkers with their knocked out teeth, 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:09.330 align:middle line:90% they are not me. 00:09:09.330 --> 00:09:14.000 align:middle line:84% Some of them are my age, even my height and weight, none of them 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:15.470 align:middle line:90% are me. 00:09:15.470 --> 00:09:18.290 align:middle line:84% The woman who is slapped, the man who was kicked, 00:09:18.290 --> 00:09:21.890 align:middle line:84% the ones who don't survive, whose names I do not know, 00:09:21.890 --> 00:09:23.880 align:middle line:90% they are not me forever. 00:09:23.880 --> 00:09:26.630 align:middle line:84% The ones who no longer live in the cities 00:09:26.630 --> 00:09:32.390 align:middle line:84% in which you are not, the cities in which I looked for you. 00:09:32.390 --> 00:09:38.030 align:middle line:84% The rain stops, the moon in her breaths appears overhead. 00:09:38.030 --> 00:09:41.930 align:middle line:84% The only sound now is a far flapping. 00:09:41.930 --> 00:09:45.320 align:middle line:84% Over the National Bank, the flag of some republic 00:09:45.320 --> 00:09:50.390 align:middle line:84% or other gallops like water or fire to tear itself away. 00:09:50.390 --> 00:09:54.920 align:middle line:84% If I feel the night move to disclosures or crescendos, 00:09:54.920 --> 00:09:58.100 align:middle line:84% it's only because I'm famished for meaning. 00:09:58.100 --> 00:10:01.010 align:middle line:90% The night merely dissolves. 00:10:01.010 --> 00:10:04.520 align:middle line:84% And your otherness is perfect as my death. 00:10:04.520 --> 00:10:09.200 align:middle line:84% Your otherness exhausts me like looking suddenly up from here 00:10:09.200 --> 00:10:12.140 align:middle line:90% to impossible stars fading. 00:10:12.140 --> 00:10:16.190 align:middle line:84% Everything is punished by your absence. 00:10:16.190 --> 00:10:19.130 align:middle line:84% Is prayer then the proper attitude 00:10:19.130 --> 00:10:22.280 align:middle line:84% for the mind that longs to be freely blown 00:10:22.280 --> 00:10:26.270 align:middle line:84% but which gets snagged on the barb called world, 00:10:26.270 --> 00:10:29.360 align:middle line:90% that toothache, the actual? 00:10:29.360 --> 00:10:33.050 align:middle line:84% What prayer would I build and to whom? 00:10:33.050 --> 00:10:35.870 align:middle line:84% Where are you in the cities in which I love you? 00:10:35.870 --> 00:10:39.140 align:middle line:84% The city's daily risen to work and to money, 00:10:39.140 --> 00:10:42.440 align:middle line:84% to the magnificent miles and the gold coasts. 00:10:42.440 --> 00:10:45.410 align:middle line:84% Morning comes to this city vacant of you. 00:10:45.410 --> 00:10:48.770 align:middle line:84% Pages and windows flair and you are not there. 00:10:48.770 --> 00:10:52.700 align:middle line:84% Someone sweeps his portion of sidewalk, wakens the drunk, 00:10:52.700 --> 00:10:55.430 align:middle line:84% slumped like laundry and you are gone. 00:10:55.430 --> 00:10:57.680 align:middle line:84% You are not in the wind which someone 00:10:57.680 --> 00:10:59.840 align:middle line:90% notes in the margins of a book. 00:10:59.840 --> 00:11:02.240 align:middle line:84% You are gone out of the small fires 00:11:02.240 --> 00:11:05.570 align:middle line:84% in abandoned lots where human figures huddle, 00:11:05.570 --> 00:11:08.960 align:middle line:90% each aspiring to its own ghost. 00:11:08.960 --> 00:11:13.280 align:middle line:84% Between brick walls in a space no wider than my face, 00:11:13.280 --> 00:11:16.280 align:middle line:84% a leafless sapling stands in mud. 00:11:16.280 --> 00:11:21.560 align:middle line:84% In its branches, a nest of raw mouths gaping and chirping, 00:11:21.560 --> 00:11:24.380 align:middle line:90% scrawny fires that must eat. 00:11:24.380 --> 00:11:29.060 align:middle line:84% My hunger for you is no less than theirs. 00:11:29.060 --> 00:11:32.270 align:middle line:84% At the gates of the city in which I love you, 00:11:32.270 --> 00:11:35.150 align:middle line:84% the sea hauls the sun on its back, 00:11:35.150 --> 00:11:37.940 align:middle line:84% strikes the land which rebukes it. 00:11:37.940 --> 00:11:42.470 align:middle line:84% What ardor in its sliding heft, a flameless friction 00:11:42.470 --> 00:11:43.910 align:middle line:90% on the rocks. 00:11:43.910 --> 00:11:47.960 align:middle line:84% Like the sea, I am recommended by my orphaning. 00:11:47.960 --> 00:11:51.650 align:middle line:84% Noisy with telegrams not received, quarrelsome 00:11:51.650 --> 00:11:55.280 align:middle line:84% with aliases, intricate with misguided journeys 00:11:55.280 --> 00:11:58.370 align:middle line:84% by my expulsions have I come to love you. 00:11:58.370 --> 00:12:01.250 align:middle line:84% Straight from my father's wrath and long 00:12:01.250 --> 00:12:04.430 align:middle line:84% from my mother's womb, late in this century 00:12:04.430 --> 00:12:07.730 align:middle line:84% and on a Wednesday morning, bearing the mark of one 00:12:07.730 --> 00:12:10.940 align:middle line:84% who's experienced neither heaven nor hell. 00:12:10.940 --> 00:12:15.230 align:middle line:84% My birthplace vanished, my citizenship earned. 00:12:15.230 --> 00:12:17.840 align:middle line:84% In league with the stones of the earth, 00:12:17.840 --> 00:12:22.050 align:middle line:84% I enter without retreat or help from history. 00:12:22.050 --> 00:12:26.480 align:middle line:84% The days of no day, my earth of no earth, 00:12:26.480 --> 00:12:30.200 align:middle line:84% I re-enter the city in which I love you. 00:12:30.200 --> 00:12:34.220 align:middle line:84% And I never believed that the multitude of dreams 00:12:34.220 --> 00:12:37.550 align:middle line:90% and many words was vain." 00:12:37.550 --> 00:12:38.090 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:12:38.090 --> 00:12:41.440 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:12:41.440 --> 00:12:49.000 align:middle line:90%