WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.600 align:middle line:90%


00:00:00.600 --> 00:00:03.780 align:middle line:84%
So, a lot of this
book is about grief

00:00:03.780 --> 00:00:05.370 align:middle line:84%
and the loss of my
brother and mother.

00:00:05.370 --> 00:00:08.880 align:middle line:84%
I'm not going to read
a lot of those poems

00:00:08.880 --> 00:00:12.300 align:middle line:84%
tonight because we're talking
about another kind of grief.

00:00:12.300 --> 00:00:15.410 align:middle line:90%


00:00:15.410 --> 00:00:18.980 align:middle line:84%
But I do want to read
one of these poems,

00:00:18.980 --> 00:00:24.740 align:middle line:84%
and this is a poem for my
brother written, I think,

00:00:24.740 --> 00:00:26.270 align:middle line:90%
about the day after he died.

00:00:26.270 --> 00:00:28.280 align:middle line:84%
It's set in Provincetown,
Massachusetts.

00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:30.890 align:middle line:90%


00:00:30.890 --> 00:00:33.860 align:middle line:84%
"Someone is making
love this afternoon.

00:00:33.860 --> 00:00:38.210 align:middle line:84%
Why not, when the sun has broken
through the low pressure that

00:00:38.210 --> 00:00:42.800 align:middle line:84%
had everyone in a lustless
sulk for weeks, and now

00:00:42.800 --> 00:00:45.150 align:middle line:90%
that electric blue sun--

00:00:45.150 --> 00:00:49.130 align:middle line:84%
blue sky, buzzes in the brain
and makes the heat rise.

00:00:49.130 --> 00:00:51.050 align:middle line:84%
Even those who are
not making love

00:00:51.050 --> 00:00:52.850 align:middle line:84%
are thinking of
someone who called

00:00:52.850 --> 00:00:56.540 align:middle line:84%
them my darling or
my plum, as I do,

00:00:56.540 --> 00:01:01.310 align:middle line:84%
remembering how he would harden
against my back in the morning

00:01:01.310 --> 00:01:04.599 align:middle line:90%
and I would turn to him.

00:01:04.599 --> 00:01:08.920 align:middle line:84%
Someone is being tortured this
afternoon by his own body,

00:01:08.920 --> 00:01:12.490 align:middle line:84%
as disease flares
into encampments

00:01:12.490 --> 00:01:15.490 align:middle line:90%
along the river of his spine.

00:01:15.490 --> 00:01:19.450 align:middle line:84%
He feels their fires
burning and prays,

00:01:19.450 --> 00:01:23.140 align:middle line:84%
as a soldier does the
night before battle.

00:01:23.140 --> 00:01:27.700 align:middle line:84%
He is growing porous from
the fight, his eyes becoming

00:01:27.700 --> 00:01:29.920 align:middle line:90%
wide and guileless.

00:01:29.920 --> 00:01:34.060 align:middle line:84%
A strange and gentle
kindness has come over him,

00:01:34.060 --> 00:01:38.260 align:middle line:84%
as if he is wandering
in a mysterious place

00:01:38.260 --> 00:01:42.790 align:middle line:84%
and wants to be especially
polite to the locals,

00:01:42.790 --> 00:01:47.310 align:middle line:90%
feeling he is a foreigner there.

00:01:47.310 --> 00:01:49.800 align:middle line:84%
someone is out on the
streets this afternoon.

00:01:49.800 --> 00:01:54.030 align:middle line:84%
Town beach packed with bikinis
and volleyball and a dog

00:01:54.030 --> 00:01:56.820 align:middle line:84%
wearing a sun hat who
rides in a convertible.

00:01:56.820 --> 00:02:01.020 align:middle line:84%
Someone is everyone out for the
pleasures of a town with a disk

00:02:01.020 --> 00:02:05.250 align:middle line:84%
jockey pumping up the beach
crowd into salutes to the sun

00:02:05.250 --> 00:02:08.009 align:middle line:84%
and living in the
body, and the day

00:02:08.009 --> 00:02:11.910 align:middle line:84%
all suffused with the
finest gold pollen that

00:02:11.910 --> 00:02:15.810 align:middle line:84%
keeps falling and
falling onto our glasses

00:02:15.810 --> 00:02:20.580 align:middle line:84%
and iPhones and windshields
and into our lungs,

00:02:20.580 --> 00:02:26.070 align:middle line:84%
matter made spirit, meaning
the breath and what's

00:02:26.070 --> 00:02:28.790 align:middle line:90%
deepest in us."

00:02:28.790 --> 00:02:30.118 align:middle line:90%