I embarked a few years ago on a long project
that I fortunately never completed,
because it was unnatural to me in the manner in which it
was written to some extent called Lives of the Saints.
This is a part of that, what was projected
to be a long poem in many small parts.
They're little vignettes involving artists--
by and large, artists.
Some of them involve old people like Sacco and Vanzetti, say.
But what connects them in the sections of the poem
that I did complete to an extent,
it has to do with a Bresson poem that they're
connected by the suffering of their lives,
even insanity in some cases, poverty, whatever.
Artists used to suffer.
Now, they make us teach.
[LAUGHTER]
These are four little parts of it.
Each one is sort of antithetical.
It's kind of a statement about the person's life
or whatever, and a kind of personal response to it.
I don't think you have to know much about them.
Mozart died in poverty.
That's all you have to know, I guess.
The first part of the John Clare section
is a letter from John Clare which
I believe is the last letter that he wrote in his life.
It begins "Dear Sir" and ends "John Clare."
Tolstoy gave up all his possessions and left his manor.
One of the earliest Russian films was of his funeral,
huge masses of people at a place called Astapovo Station.
In the Chopin part, I'm thinking of that little strange little
flurry at the end of what's popularly called
the funeral march sonata.
And Robert Schumann, the composer, as John Clare
spent the last part of his life in saying--
Lives of the Saints.
This is the rain on Mozart's grave, sheering to glissandi.
Where do you little lie, exhausted,
whole, and holy done?
Sweet Amadeus, when I sit my bourbon, weaving myself
toward pure abstraction--
the recollection of emotion without the tired events.
I'd trade my part in this to bear your song.
Even the most last broken human moan, you were so friendly,
and your pillow is a stone.
This is Mozart, a curtain of rain,
the turning heads of certain women,
the sweetness of bourbon, sweetness of music,
the poor politeness of oblivion.
Dear Sir, I am in a Madhouse and quite forget your name
or who you are.
You must excuse me for I have nothing to communicate or tell.
And why I am shut up, I don't know.
I have nothing to say.
So I must conclude, yours respectfully, John Clare.
Was this his letter into the earth?
Was it wholly composed of solitude?
It was wholly composed.
Did he bear extravagant pain, whose
poems of such light fragrance as to be--
Dear Sir, forgive me-- small?
You are minor, Sir, and would not offend.
I am, respectfully, yours.
Under the gathering, luminous clouds he walked his grounds,
thought--
another reigns.
I must not, Tolstoy, be myself, and fled from home.
We have the early flickering films, the mourning strangers,
waving.
All day, he lay at Astapovo Station, over and over--
I do not understand what it is I have to do.
Part of this is quotes from stories.
Yes, one good deed, a cup of water given.
Prevailed-- his gentleness, his pride, who would not bow--
the light a small tin lamp without a shade--
to read himself, I have no passport.
I am a servant of God.
I am Chopin.
I enclose a little time, I bow and play.
The sea, the chandelier, this room, the sky,
the cliffs at Sourash, even the whole of Europe,
blown black, spin--
music speeds, retreats.
And I am Robert Schumann, mad and done,
yet must, a little time, go on.
Now at the hour, we lately lie awake,
give us that surety on which our fragile art depends.
I am Robert Schumann, bewildered,
woken by a strange sonata in a foreign bed.
Give me a little time, eternity, and I will mend.