WEBVTT

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Welcome, everybody.

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It's a great feeling when
this auditorium is full,

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particularly at this
time in the semester.

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Really happy that
you're all here tonight.

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I'd like to make a few
announcements about events that

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are coming up in the
community of some importance

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in the next few days you
may be interested in.

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Friday night, December 6, the
poet Ai and the poet Kimiko

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Hahn will be reading at
Pima Community College East

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Campus at 8:00 PM in
the community room.

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On Saturday night
this week, Steve Orlen

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will be reading for Among
Other Things at New Art

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Space at 9:30, North Stone.

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And on next Wednesday,
the 11th, Celia Medrano,

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president of the Salvadoran
Non-Governmental Commission

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for Human Rights,
will be speaking here

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on campus at 7:00 PM
next Wednesday in Harvill

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Auditorium.

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And also, we will have Carolyn
Forché's books for sale after

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the reading, as well
as current issues,

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and probably past issues
of the Sonora Review.

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Most of you know that the
Poetry Center's reading series

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is generally made possible
by grants from the NEA,

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the Arizona Commission
for the Arts,

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the University of
Arizona Foundation,

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and funds from the
Faculty of Humanities.

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But tonight's reading,
I'm happy to tell you,

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is sponsored by the Friends
of the Poetry Center,

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individuals whose modest or
major donations are helping

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the Poetry Center to build
an endowment so that we can

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continue to bring you such
writers as Carolyn Forché.

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So as you sort through
the voluminous year-end

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appeals I know
you're all receiving,

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keep your eyes open for
one from the Poetry Center,

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and do whatever
you can to help us

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keep this series both thriving
and independent of the whims

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and restrictions often
associated with grant funding.

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Our guest tonight will
be introduced by our poet

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and faculty member Jane Miller.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Good evening.

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It's a pleasure to
introduce Carolyn Forché,

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the poet of her generation
who has forced her audiences--

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certainly those among
them who are writers--

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to ask the question, what's
my relation to these times,

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to this historical moment.

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Carolyn Forché has brought to
our group consciousness a sense

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of history, responsibility,
and destiny.

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And not in the tone
of defeat or shame,

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but in the language of
intimacy, the language of love.

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Among her many
honors are included

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the Yale Younger Poets
award for her first book,

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Gathering the Tribes; the Lamont
award for her second book,

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The Country Between Us; National
Endowment and Guggenheim

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Foundation Fellowships; and the
Prestigious Poetry Fellowship

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from the Lannon Foundation.

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She is also widely known as
a translator from the Spanish

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of Claribel Alegría and the
French of Robert Desnos,

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and respected too for her
work as an essayist, editor,

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journalist, as well as for
her participation in Amnesty

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International.

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Her poetry happily does not
get lost among these honors

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and organizations.

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As you will hear, it has the
intensity one demands from art

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but seldom finds.

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Seldom finds, even
in life itself.

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In that case, let's
live a little tonight.

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Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps
the only poet of her generation

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of whom it may be said,
a legend in her own time,

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Carolyn Forché.

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[APPLAUSE]

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Thank you.

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I'm very happy to be here.

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I tried to come last
year, and I apologize

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for not being able to.

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Jane, this one's for you.

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This poem.

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I was asked to read a
poem from my first book

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and a couple of poems
from the second book,

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and so I've chosen a poem
particularly for Jane,

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and it's called "Kalaloch."

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And Kalaloch is a place
on the Olympic Peninsula,

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on the southernmost tip of
the last 20-mile stretch

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of the wilderness coastline in
the continental United States.

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And that is to
say coastline, not

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accessible within
three miles by road.

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And that's all we have left,
is this little stretch.

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So that's what the
poem comes from.

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"The bleached wood
massed in bone piles,

00:05:03.790 --> 00:05:06.760 align:middle line:84%
we pulled it from dark
beach and built fire

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in a fenced clearing.

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The posts' blunt
stubs sank down.

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They circled and were roofed
by milled lumber, dragged

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at one time to the coast.

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We slept there.

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Each morning, the minus tide.

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Weeds flowed it
like hair swimming.

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The starfish gripped
rock, pastel, rough.

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Fish bones lay in sun.

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Each noon, the milk fog
sank from cloud cover,

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came in our clothes, and
held them tighter on us.

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Sea stacks stood
and disappeared.

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They came back when the
sun scrubbed out the inlet.

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We went down to
piles to get mussels.

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I made my shirt a
bowl of mussel stones,

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carted them to our crate
where they smoked apart.

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I pulled the mussel lip bodies
out, chewed their squeak.

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We went up the path for
fresh water, berries,

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hardly speaking, thinking.

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During low tide, we
crossed to the island,

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climbed its wet summit.

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The redfoots and pelicans
dropped for fish.

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Oclets so silent fell toward
water with linked feet.

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Jacynthe said little.

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Long since we had spoken
Nova Scotia, Michigan,

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and knew beauty
in saying nothing.

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She told me about
her mother who would

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come at them with bread
knives, then stop herself,

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her face emptied.

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I told her about me, never lied.

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At night, at times,
the moon floated.

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We sat with arms tight,
watching flames spit, snap.

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On stone and sand, picking
up wood shaped like a body,

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like a gull.

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I ran barefoot, not only on
beach, but harsh gravels up

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through the woods.

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I shit easy.

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Covered my droppings.

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Some nights, no fires,
we watched sea pucker

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and get stabbed by the
beacon circling on Tatoosh.

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I stripped and spread
on the sea lip,

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stretched to the slap of the
foam and the vast red dulce.

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Jacynthe gripped the earth
in her fists, opened.

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The boil of the tide
shuffled into her.

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The beach revolved,
headlands behind us,

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put their pines in the sun.

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Gulls turned a strong sky.

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Their pained wings held.

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They bit water quick, lifted,
their looping eyes continually

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measure the distance from us.

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Bare women who do not touch.

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Rocks drowsed, holes filled
with suds from a distance.

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A deep laugh bounced in
my flesh and sprayed her.

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Flies crawled us.

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Jacynthe crawled.

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With her palm, she
spread my calves.

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She moved my heels
from each other.

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A woman's mouth
is not different.

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Sand moved wild beneath me.

00:08:06.340 --> 00:08:08.470 align:middle line:90%
Her long hair wiped my legs.

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With women, there is sucking.

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The water slaps our bodies.

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We come clean.

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Our clits beat like twins
to the loons rising up.

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We are awake.

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Snails sprinkle our gulps.

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Fish die in our grips.

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There is sand in
the anus of dancing.

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Tatoosh Island hardens
in the distance.

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We see its empty stone
sticking out of the sea again.

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Jacynthe holds tinder under
fire to cook the night's wood.

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If we had men, I would
make milk in me simply.

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She is quiet.

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I like that you
cover your teeth."

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[APPLAUSE]

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OK.

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Barbara.

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Thank you.

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I would like to read a couple
of poems from The Country

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Between Us, specifically from
the first section of the book.

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The first section of the book,
In Salvador 1978 to 1980,

00:09:11.180 --> 00:09:14.280 align:middle line:84%
is dedicated to the memory
of Monsignor Óscar Romero,

00:09:14.280 --> 00:09:17.390 align:middle line:84%
who was the Archbishop
of San Salvador until his

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assassination in March 1980.

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I was a roommate of Barbara
Cully's when I first met

00:09:29.150 --> 00:09:33.380 align:middle line:84%
Claribel Alegría and her nephew
and began to go to Salvador.

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And I worked there off
and on for two years,

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and during my last months
there, I worked four months

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in Monsignor's human rights
office called the Socorro

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Jurídico.

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So he was like my boss,
and I think he was a saint.

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I don't think I'd ever seen one
before, but I think he was one.

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And the last time I saw him,
we were in the convent kitchen

00:10:02.040 --> 00:10:04.920 align:middle line:84%
of the hospital where he
was later assassinated,

00:10:04.920 --> 00:10:07.200 align:middle line:84%
and we were having an
argument because he

00:10:07.200 --> 00:10:10.410 align:middle line:84%
wanted me to come back
to the United States

00:10:10.410 --> 00:10:13.980 align:middle line:84%
quickly and spend my time
here talking to Americans.

00:10:13.980 --> 00:10:16.350 align:middle line:84%
And I thought, since
he was on a death list,

00:10:16.350 --> 00:10:18.600 align:middle line:84%
that he should leave too,
and he didn't want to.

00:10:18.600 --> 00:10:22.830 align:middle line:84%
And he told me, no, my
place is with my people,

00:10:22.830 --> 00:10:25.230 align:middle line:90%
and your place is with yours.

00:10:25.230 --> 00:10:28.560 align:middle line:84%
And so that was the first
time I had an understanding,

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I think, that I had a people.

00:10:31.620 --> 00:10:34.830 align:middle line:84%
There's an epigraph
to this section,

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and it's from the poetry
of Antonio Machado.

00:10:38.850 --> 00:10:43.050 align:middle line:84%
And the epigraph in Spanish
is "Caminante, no hay camino.

00:10:43.050 --> 00:10:46.210 align:middle line:90%
Se hace camino al andar."

00:10:46.210 --> 00:10:50.980 align:middle line:84%
And this is roughly in English,
"walker, there is no path.

00:10:50.980 --> 00:10:53.395 align:middle line:84%
You make the path
while you walk."

00:10:53.395 --> 00:10:56.480 align:middle line:90%


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For Barbara, I would like to
read the poem "San Onofre,

00:10:58.940 --> 00:11:01.950 align:middle line:90%
California."

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When you drive from San Diego
to Los Angeles along Highway 5,

00:11:05.310 --> 00:11:07.800 align:middle line:84%
you have to slow your car down
when you come to the beach

00:11:07.800 --> 00:11:09.450 align:middle line:90%
town of San Onofre.

00:11:09.450 --> 00:11:11.160 align:middle line:84%
Or at least in the
old days you did.

00:11:11.160 --> 00:11:13.890 align:middle line:84%
And you had to pass
through booths that set up

00:11:13.890 --> 00:11:16.920 align:middle line:84%
on the highway that
resemble toll gates,

00:11:16.920 --> 00:11:19.680 align:middle line:84%
but they are the booths
of the US Immigration

00:11:19.680 --> 00:11:23.420 align:middle line:84%
and Naturalization Service, an
organization you'll probably

00:11:23.420 --> 00:11:26.310 align:middle line:90%
be somewhat familiar with.

00:11:26.310 --> 00:11:28.080 align:middle line:84%
They want you to slow
down so that they

00:11:28.080 --> 00:11:31.680 align:middle line:84%
could look in your car and see
if you look like an American.

00:11:31.680 --> 00:11:33.990 align:middle line:84%
I always thought, I wonder
what kind of description

00:11:33.990 --> 00:11:35.940 align:middle line:84%
they had of us that they would
know what we looked like.

00:11:35.940 --> 00:11:38.220 align:middle line:84%
But anyway, if they didn't
think you look like one,

00:11:38.220 --> 00:11:41.340 align:middle line:84%
they would pull you over and
make you identify yourself.

00:11:41.340 --> 00:11:42.870 align:middle line:84%
And while you're
slowing down, you

00:11:42.870 --> 00:11:47.430 align:middle line:84%
can have a little tour
of this community.

00:11:47.430 --> 00:11:51.600 align:middle line:84%
On your left, on the
ocean side of the highway,

00:11:51.600 --> 00:11:55.290 align:middle line:84%
are the twin white igloos of
the San Onofre nuclear reactors.

00:11:55.290 --> 00:11:57.930 align:middle line:84%
They are built on a tributary
of the San Andreas fault

00:11:57.930 --> 00:11:59.040 align:middle line:90%
line on the beach.

00:11:59.040 --> 00:12:01.540 align:middle line:84%
And on your right
is a cyclone fence,

00:12:01.540 --> 00:12:04.160 align:middle line:84%
which is the beginning of
the San Clemente compound.

00:12:04.160 --> 00:12:06.030 align:middle line:84%
Do you all remember--
some of you

00:12:06.030 --> 00:12:08.760 align:middle line:84%
must remember-- that used to be
called the Western White House.

00:12:08.760 --> 00:12:11.730 align:middle line:84%
And just up the coast
is Camp Pendleton,

00:12:11.730 --> 00:12:15.180 align:middle line:84%
and then there was a camp
for re-educating Vietnamese

00:12:15.180 --> 00:12:16.710 align:middle line:90%
refugees who came here.

00:12:16.710 --> 00:12:19.590 align:middle line:84%
So I thought the town
needed a peom badly.

00:12:19.590 --> 00:12:20.220 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:12:20.220 --> 00:12:23.130 align:middle line:84%
So I wrote this
poem for that town,

00:12:23.130 --> 00:12:26.520 align:middle line:84%
but it's really for
all of the region down

00:12:26.520 --> 00:12:28.950 align:middle line:90%
in this part of America.

00:12:28.950 --> 00:12:30.930 align:middle line:90%
And it's, I think, how--

00:12:30.930 --> 00:12:33.870 align:middle line:84%
when I was teaching
at San Diego State,

00:12:33.870 --> 00:12:37.350 align:middle line:84%
we didn't think much then
about conditions in countries

00:12:37.350 --> 00:12:40.620 align:middle line:90%
to the south of us.

00:12:40.620 --> 00:12:43.370 align:middle line:90%
"We have come far south.

00:12:43.370 --> 00:12:47.540 align:middle line:84%
Beyond here, the
oldest women shelling

00:12:47.540 --> 00:12:50.270 align:middle line:90%
limas into black shawls.

00:12:50.270 --> 00:12:53.090 align:middle line:84%
Portillo scratching
his name on the walls,

00:12:53.090 --> 00:12:57.560 align:middle line:84%
the slender ribbons of piss,
children patting the mud.

00:12:57.560 --> 00:13:01.340 align:middle line:84%
If we go on, we might
stop in the street,

00:13:01.340 --> 00:13:04.430 align:middle line:84%
in the very place where
someone disappeared.

00:13:04.430 --> 00:13:07.850 align:middle line:84%
And the words, come with
us, we might hear them.

00:13:07.850 --> 00:13:11.030 align:middle line:84%
If that happened, we
would pass our lives

00:13:11.030 --> 00:13:12.860 align:middle line:90%
with our hands tied together.

00:13:12.860 --> 00:13:18.890 align:middle line:84%
That is why we feel it is enough
to listen to the wind jostling

00:13:18.890 --> 00:13:23.180 align:middle line:84%
lemons, to dogs ticking
across the terraces,

00:13:23.180 --> 00:13:27.530 align:middle line:84%
knowing that wild birds
and warmer weather

00:13:27.530 --> 00:13:30.460 align:middle line:90%
are forever moving north.

00:13:30.460 --> 00:13:35.775 align:middle line:84%
The cries of those who vanish
might take years to get here."

00:13:35.775 --> 00:13:39.650 align:middle line:90%


00:13:39.650 --> 00:13:40.940 align:middle line:90%
This is a little poem.

00:13:40.940 --> 00:13:45.050 align:middle line:84%
It's for a prisoner I was
visiting in I Ahuachapán,

00:13:45.050 --> 00:13:49.100 align:middle line:84%
a prison in the countryside in
Salvador which had been turned

00:13:49.100 --> 00:13:52.110 align:middle line:84%
into an army cartel later
after I left the country.

00:13:52.110 --> 00:13:56.510 align:middle line:84%
But the prisoner inside,
at great risk to himself,

00:13:56.510 --> 00:14:00.410 align:middle line:84%
took me around and
managed to show me

00:14:00.410 --> 00:14:03.410 align:middle line:84%
the places in the prison
where people were being abused

00:14:03.410 --> 00:14:07.440 align:middle line:84%
and asked me to make a
map and to tell Amnesty

00:14:07.440 --> 00:14:09.840 align:middle line:84%
and other human rights
organizations about this place

00:14:09.840 --> 00:14:11.560 align:middle line:90%
when I left.

00:14:11.560 --> 00:14:12.670 align:middle line:90%
So this is for him.

00:14:12.670 --> 00:14:15.990 align:middle line:90%


00:14:15.990 --> 00:14:20.220 align:middle line:84%
"In Spanish, he whispers
there is no time left.

00:14:20.220 --> 00:14:23.040 align:middle line:84%
It is the sound
of scythes arching

00:14:23.040 --> 00:14:28.310 align:middle line:84%
in wheat, the ache of some
field song in Salvador.

00:14:28.310 --> 00:14:33.640 align:middle line:84%
The wind along the prison
cautious as Francisco's hands

00:14:33.640 --> 00:14:39.490 align:middle line:84%
on the inside, touching
the walls as he walks.

00:14:39.490 --> 00:14:44.080 align:middle line:84%
It is his wife's breath
slipping into his cell

00:14:44.080 --> 00:14:51.530 align:middle line:84%
each night while he imagines
his hand to be hers.

00:14:51.530 --> 00:14:54.660 align:middle line:90%
It is a small country.

00:14:54.660 --> 00:14:59.375 align:middle line:84%
There is nothing one man
will not do to another."

00:14:59.375 --> 00:15:07.695 align:middle line:90%


00:15:07.695 --> 00:15:12.550 align:middle line:84%
I had a friend,
Terrence Des Pres,

00:15:12.550 --> 00:15:18.370 align:middle line:84%
who wrote a book published in
1976 with the Oxford University

00:15:18.370 --> 00:15:21.430 align:middle line:84%
Press, and it was called The
Survivor: An Anatomy of Life

00:15:21.430 --> 00:15:23.330 align:middle line:90%
in the Death Camps.

00:15:23.330 --> 00:15:26.500 align:middle line:84%
And it was a very moving book
about the spirits of people

00:15:26.500 --> 00:15:27.970 align:middle line:90%
who survived the camps.

00:15:27.970 --> 00:15:32.780 align:middle line:84%
A study of their souls, a
study of how they were after

00:15:32.780 --> 00:15:34.030 align:middle line:90%
and what had happened to them.

00:15:34.030 --> 00:15:38.105 align:middle line:84%
And also who had survived
the gulag and under Stalin

00:15:38.105 --> 00:15:38.605 align:middle line:90%
and later.

00:15:38.605 --> 00:15:43.640 align:middle line:90%


00:15:43.640 --> 00:15:47.360 align:middle line:84%
And Terrence died
suddenly three years ago,

00:15:47.360 --> 00:15:50.925 align:middle line:84%
and I would like to read this
poem which I wrote for him.

00:15:50.925 --> 00:15:52.550 align:middle line:84%
And it's called
"Ourselves or Nothing,"

00:15:52.550 --> 00:15:55.310 align:middle line:84%
and it's about
his work in trying

00:15:55.310 --> 00:15:58.070 align:middle line:84%
to write that book, that
first book of his about

00:15:58.070 --> 00:15:59.150 align:middle line:90%
the survivors.

00:15:59.150 --> 00:16:02.210 align:middle line:90%
And so it roams around a lot.

00:16:02.210 --> 00:16:04.880 align:middle line:90%
There's some of that book here.

00:16:04.880 --> 00:16:09.800 align:middle line:84%
And allusion to the Russian
poet Anna Akhmatova and her poem

00:16:09.800 --> 00:16:11.210 align:middle line:90%
"Requiem."

00:16:11.210 --> 00:16:17.180 align:middle line:84%
And there's also
something of Vietnam here

00:16:17.180 --> 00:16:19.880 align:middle line:84%
and something of
Central America,

00:16:19.880 --> 00:16:23.130 align:middle line:84%
and it winds up
mostly everywhere.

00:16:23.130 --> 00:16:29.330 align:middle line:84%
So if you feel yourself sort
of pushed around, don't worry.

00:16:29.330 --> 00:16:31.640 align:middle line:90%
You are being pushed around.

00:16:31.640 --> 00:16:33.485 align:middle line:84%
Anyway, it's called
"Ourselves or Nothing."

00:16:33.485 --> 00:16:36.640 align:middle line:90%


00:16:36.640 --> 00:16:40.390 align:middle line:84%
"After seven years,
and as the wine leaves,

00:16:40.390 --> 00:16:44.200 align:middle line:84%
and black trunks of maples
wait beyond the window,

00:16:44.200 --> 00:16:48.580 align:middle line:84%
I think of you, north,
in the few lighted

00:16:48.580 --> 00:16:51.740 align:middle line:90%
rooms of that ruined house.

00:16:51.740 --> 00:16:55.070 align:middle line:84%
A candle in each
open pane of breath.

00:16:55.070 --> 00:16:57.850 align:middle line:90%
The absence of anyone.

00:16:57.850 --> 00:17:00.940 align:middle line:90%
Snow in a hurry to Earth.

00:17:00.940 --> 00:17:05.119 align:middle line:84%
My fingernails pressing
half moons into the sill.

00:17:05.119 --> 00:17:09.200 align:middle line:84%
As I watched you pouring
three, then four fingers

00:17:09.200 --> 00:17:12.069 align:middle line:90%
of scotch over ice.

00:17:12.069 --> 00:17:15.460 align:middle line:84%
The chill in your throat
like a small, blue bone.

00:17:15.460 --> 00:17:19.300 align:middle line:84%
Those years of your
work on the Holocaust.

00:17:19.300 --> 00:17:22.300 align:middle line:84%
You had to walk
off the darkness.

00:17:22.300 --> 00:17:26.170 align:middle line:90%
Miles of winter riverfront.

00:17:26.170 --> 00:17:29.320 align:middle line:84%
Windows, the eyes and
skulls along the river.

00:17:29.320 --> 00:17:32.530 align:middle line:84%
Gratings in the streets
over jeweled, human sewage.

00:17:32.530 --> 00:17:37.420 align:middle line:84%
Your breath hanging about
your face like tobacco.

00:17:37.420 --> 00:17:40.320 align:middle line:90%
I was with you even then.

00:17:40.320 --> 00:17:43.530 align:middle line:84%
Your face, the face
of a clock as you

00:17:43.530 --> 00:17:46.410 align:middle line:84%
swept through the
memoirs of men and women

00:17:46.410 --> 00:17:49.510 align:middle line:90%
who would not give up.

00:17:49.510 --> 00:17:51.820 align:middle line:84%
In the short light
of Decembers, you

00:17:51.820 --> 00:17:55.240 align:middle line:84%
took supper's of whole
white hens and pans of broth

00:17:55.240 --> 00:17:59.600 align:middle line:84%
in a city of liquor
bottles and light.

00:17:59.600 --> 00:18:04.960 align:middle line:84%
Go after that which is lost,
and all the mass graves

00:18:04.960 --> 00:18:09.840 align:middle line:84%
of the centuries dead will open
into your early waking hours.

00:18:09.840 --> 00:18:16.070 align:middle line:84%
Belsen, Dachau, Saigon,
Phnom Penh, and the one

00:18:16.070 --> 00:18:19.000 align:middle line:90%
meaning Bridge of Ravens.

00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:23.260 align:middle line:84%
Sao Paulo, Armagh,
Calcutta, Salvador,

00:18:23.260 --> 00:18:26.140 align:middle line:90%
although these are not the same.

00:18:26.140 --> 00:18:29.710 align:middle line:84%
You wrote too of
Theresienstadt, that word

00:18:29.710 --> 00:18:32.230 align:middle line:84%
that ran screaming
into my girlhood,

00:18:32.230 --> 00:18:35.080 align:middle line:90%
lifting its gray, wool dress.

00:18:35.080 --> 00:18:37.870 align:middle line:84%
The smoke in its violent
plumes and feathers,

00:18:37.870 --> 00:18:43.250 align:middle line:84%
the dark, wormy heart of
the human desire to die.

00:18:43.250 --> 00:18:45.680 align:middle line:84%
In Prague, Anna
told me there was

00:18:45.680 --> 00:18:51.330 align:middle line:84%
bread, stubborn potatoes, and
fish, armies, and the women who

00:18:51.330 --> 00:18:52.770 align:middle line:90%
lie down with them.

00:18:52.770 --> 00:18:55.910 align:middle line:90%
Eggs, perhaps, but never meat.

00:18:55.910 --> 00:18:59.170 align:middle line:90%
Never meat but the dead.

00:18:59.170 --> 00:19:02.140 align:middle line:84%
In Theresienstadt, she said
there was only the dying.

00:19:02.140 --> 00:19:05.780 align:middle line:84%
Never bread, potatoes,
fish, or women.

00:19:05.780 --> 00:19:10.660 align:middle line:90%
They were all as yet girls then.

00:19:10.660 --> 00:19:13.420 align:middle line:84%
Vast numbers of men and
women died, you wrote,

00:19:13.420 --> 00:19:17.080 align:middle line:90%
because they did not have time.

00:19:17.080 --> 00:19:21.590 align:middle line:84%
The blessing of sheer
time to recover.

00:19:21.590 --> 00:19:26.840 align:middle line:84%
Your ration of time was smaller
than a tin spoon of winter,

00:19:26.840 --> 00:19:30.450 align:middle line:84%
piano notes one at a time
from the roof to the gutter.

00:19:30.450 --> 00:19:34.130 align:middle line:84%
I am only imagining this as I
had not yet entered your life.

00:19:34.130 --> 00:19:37.370 align:middle line:84%
Like the dark fact of
a gun on your pillow

00:19:37.370 --> 00:19:41.570 align:middle line:84%
or Anna Akhmatova's
Requiem and its final I

00:19:41.570 --> 00:19:44.960 align:middle line:84%
can when the faceless
woman before her asked,

00:19:44.960 --> 00:19:48.080 align:middle line:90%
can you describe this?

00:19:48.080 --> 00:19:49.790 align:middle line:84%
I was not yet in
your life when you

00:19:49.790 --> 00:19:53.720 align:middle line:84%
turned the bullet toward
the empty hole in yourself

00:19:53.720 --> 00:19:57.710 align:middle line:84%
and whispered,
finish this or die.

00:19:57.710 --> 00:19:59.330 align:middle line:84%
But you lived,
and what you wrote

00:19:59.330 --> 00:20:05.820 align:middle line:84%
became The Survivor, that act
of contrition for despair.

00:20:05.820 --> 00:20:09.570 align:middle line:84%
They turned to face
the worst, straight on,

00:20:09.570 --> 00:20:17.440 align:middle line:84%
without sentiment or hope,
simply to keep watch over life.

00:20:17.440 --> 00:20:21.080 align:middle line:84%
Now as you sleep
facedown on your papers,

00:20:21.080 --> 00:20:23.150 align:middle line:84%
the book pages
turning of themselves

00:20:23.150 --> 00:20:28.160 align:middle line:84%
in your invisible breath, I
climb the stairs of that house,

00:20:28.160 --> 00:20:31.370 align:middle line:84%
fragile with age and
the dry fear of burning,

00:20:31.370 --> 00:20:35.060 align:middle line:84%
and I touch the needle
to music to wake you.

00:20:35.060 --> 00:20:37.460 align:middle line:90%
The snow long past falling.

00:20:37.460 --> 00:20:42.830 align:middle line:90%
Something by Vivaldi or Brahms.

00:20:42.830 --> 00:20:47.200 align:middle line:84%
I have come from our
cacophonous ordinary lives

00:20:47.200 --> 00:20:50.080 align:middle line:84%
where I stood at the sink
last summer, scrubbing mud

00:20:50.080 --> 00:20:55.720 align:middle line:84%
from potatoes and listening to
the supper fish in the skillet.

00:20:55.720 --> 00:21:00.070 align:middle line:84%
My eyes on the narrow streets
of rain through the window as I

00:21:00.070 --> 00:21:04.690 align:middle line:84%
thought of the long
war, that misted country

00:21:04.690 --> 00:21:08.350 align:middle line:84%
turned to the moon's
surface gray and ringwormed

00:21:08.350 --> 00:21:11.330 align:middle line:90%
with ridges of light.

00:21:11.330 --> 00:21:15.560 align:middle line:84%
The women in their silk
ao dais along the river,

00:21:15.560 --> 00:21:18.830 align:middle line:84%
those flowers under
fire, rolled at night

00:21:18.830 --> 00:21:22.370 align:middle line:84%
in the desperate
arms of American men.

00:21:22.370 --> 00:21:24.890 align:middle line:84%
Once I walked your
rooms with my nightdress

00:21:24.890 --> 00:21:27.560 align:middle line:84%
open, a cigarette from
my lips to the darkness

00:21:27.560 --> 00:21:31.070 align:middle line:84%
and back, as you worked
through to the morning.

00:21:31.070 --> 00:21:34.630 align:middle line:84%
Always on my waking,
you were gone.

00:21:34.630 --> 00:21:37.690 align:middle line:84%
The blue holes of your path
through snow to the road.

00:21:37.690 --> 00:21:40.360 align:middle line:84%
Your face still haggard
in the white mirror.

00:21:40.360 --> 00:21:42.430 align:middle line:84%
The pained note where
10 times you had

00:21:42.430 --> 00:21:44.170 align:middle line:90%
written the word recalcitrance.

00:21:44.170 --> 00:21:48.430 align:middle line:84%
And once you will die and
live under the name of someone

00:21:48.430 --> 00:21:50.140 align:middle line:90%
who has actually died.

00:21:50.140 --> 00:21:52.920 align:middle line:90%


00:21:52.920 --> 00:21:56.190 align:middle line:84%
I think of that night
in a tropical hotel.

00:21:56.190 --> 00:22:00.390 align:middle line:84%
The man who danced with a tray
over his head and offered us

00:22:00.390 --> 00:22:02.880 align:middle line:84%
free because we
were socialistas.

00:22:02.880 --> 00:22:07.410 align:middle line:84%
Not only that he sang,
but young and pretty.

00:22:07.410 --> 00:22:10.440 align:middle line:84%
Later, as I lay on
a cot in the heat,

00:22:10.440 --> 00:22:12.840 align:middle line:84%
my friend was able
to reach for the guns

00:22:12.840 --> 00:22:15.720 align:middle line:84%
and load them, clicking
in the moonlight with only

00:22:15.720 --> 00:22:17.970 align:middle line:90%
the barest of sounds.

00:22:17.970 --> 00:22:22.560 align:middle line:84%
He had heard them before
me, moving among the palms.

00:22:22.560 --> 00:22:25.520 align:middle line:90%
We were going to die there.

00:22:25.520 --> 00:22:27.650 align:middle line:84%
I remember the moon
notching its way

00:22:27.650 --> 00:22:30.080 align:middle line:84%
through the palms and
the calm sense that came

00:22:30.080 --> 00:22:32.600 align:middle line:90%
from me at the end of my life.

00:22:32.600 --> 00:22:37.550 align:middle line:84%
In that moment, the woman
beside me became my sister.

00:22:37.550 --> 00:22:40.790 align:middle line:84%
Her hand cupping her
mouth, the blood that

00:22:40.790 --> 00:22:43.250 align:middle line:84%
would later spill from her
face if what we believed

00:22:43.250 --> 00:22:44.970 align:middle line:90%
were the truth.

00:22:44.970 --> 00:22:47.330 align:middle line:84%
Her blood would crawl
black and belly down

00:22:47.330 --> 00:22:51.620 align:middle line:84%
onto a balcony of hems and
flashlights, cameras, flowers,

00:22:51.620 --> 00:22:52.730 align:middle line:90%
propaganda.

00:22:52.730 --> 00:22:54.830 align:middle line:90%
Her name was Renée.

00:22:54.830 --> 00:22:56.750 align:middle line:84%
And without knowing
her, you wrote

00:22:56.750 --> 00:22:59.180 align:middle line:90%
all things human take time.

00:22:59.180 --> 00:23:03.870 align:middle line:84%
Time, which the
damned never have.

00:23:03.870 --> 00:23:08.370 align:middle line:84%
Time for life to repair at
least the worst of its wounds.

00:23:08.370 --> 00:23:10.500 align:middle line:90%
It took time to wake.

00:23:10.500 --> 00:23:14.850 align:middle line:84%
Time for horror to incite
revolt. Time for the recovery

00:23:14.850 --> 00:23:16.245 align:middle line:90%
of lucidity and will.

00:23:16.245 --> 00:23:19.150 align:middle line:90%


00:23:19.150 --> 00:23:23.110 align:middle line:84%
In the late afternoons, you
returned, the long teeth

00:23:23.110 --> 00:23:25.390 align:middle line:90%
shining from the eaves.

00:23:25.390 --> 00:23:27.700 align:middle line:90%
A clink in the wood half burnt.

00:23:27.700 --> 00:23:33.860 align:middle line:84%
And as you touched it alive,
ici repose un déporté inconnu.

00:23:33.860 --> 00:23:36.170 align:middle line:84%
In the mass graves,
a woman's hand

00:23:36.170 --> 00:23:40.400 align:middle line:90%
caged in the ribs of her child.

00:23:40.400 --> 00:23:43.580 align:middle line:84%
A single stone in
Spain beneath olives.

00:23:43.580 --> 00:23:46.520 align:middle line:84%
In Germany, the
silent, windy fields.

00:23:46.520 --> 00:23:49.670 align:middle line:84%
In the Soviet Union, where
the snow is scarred with wire.

00:23:49.670 --> 00:23:51.530 align:middle line:84%
In Salvador, where
the blood will never

00:23:51.530 --> 00:23:53.180 align:middle line:90%
soak into the ground.

00:23:53.180 --> 00:24:00.400 align:middle line:84%
Everywhere and always, go
after that which is lost.

00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:06.220 align:middle line:84%
There is a cyclone fence between
ourselves and the slaughter,

00:24:06.220 --> 00:24:11.890 align:middle line:84%
and behind it we hover in
a calm, protected world

00:24:11.890 --> 00:24:14.320 align:middle line:90%
like netted fish.

00:24:14.320 --> 00:24:19.070 align:middle line:90%
Exactly like netted fish.

00:24:19.070 --> 00:24:22.550 align:middle line:84%
It is either the beginning
or the end of the world,

00:24:22.550 --> 00:24:25.655 align:middle line:84%
and the choice is
ourselves or nothing."

00:24:25.655 --> 00:24:28.320 align:middle line:90%


00:24:28.320 --> 00:24:31.750 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:24:31.750 --> 00:24:41.375 align:middle line:90%


00:24:41.375 --> 00:24:44.410 align:middle line:84%
When I was going to Europe
for the first time-- and I

00:24:44.410 --> 00:24:48.340 align:middle line:84%
didn't go until I was 27
because I grew up in a community

00:24:48.340 --> 00:24:49.720 align:middle line:90%
where people come from Europe.

00:24:49.720 --> 00:24:50.530 align:middle line:90%
Don't go there.

00:24:50.530 --> 00:24:53.200 align:middle line:90%
Maybe they don't go back there.

00:24:53.200 --> 00:24:56.080 align:middle line:84%
We weren't junior year
abroad people, you know?

00:24:56.080 --> 00:24:59.140 align:middle line:90%


00:24:59.140 --> 00:25:02.770 align:middle line:84%
But I finally got
to go when I was 27

00:25:02.770 --> 00:25:04.900 align:middle line:84%
because the NEA gave
me an NEA grant,

00:25:04.900 --> 00:25:08.230 align:middle line:84%
not knowing very
much about me yet.

00:25:08.230 --> 00:25:11.440 align:middle line:84%
And so I went to stay with
Claribel Alegría for a couple

00:25:11.440 --> 00:25:13.240 align:middle line:84%
of months and
translate her poetry.

00:25:13.240 --> 00:25:16.240 align:middle line:84%
And just before I left,
Terrence said to me, well,

00:25:16.240 --> 00:25:17.950 align:middle line:84%
you're going to
go to Paris first,

00:25:17.950 --> 00:25:20.440 align:middle line:84%
so you'll probably go
to Notre Dame Cathedral.

00:25:20.440 --> 00:25:22.750 align:middle line:84%
Everybody does, so
you'll go there too.

00:25:22.750 --> 00:25:24.610 align:middle line:84%
But he said, don't
just go to Notre Dame.

00:25:24.610 --> 00:25:27.100 align:middle line:84%
When you're at Notre Dame,
go around the cathedral

00:25:27.100 --> 00:25:30.490 align:middle line:84%
and cross over the key,
and you'll see a black iron

00:25:30.490 --> 00:25:32.200 align:middle line:90%
gate and some white steps.

00:25:32.200 --> 00:25:35.380 align:middle line:84%
Try to go by yourself, he
said, and open the gate

00:25:35.380 --> 00:25:36.453 align:middle line:90%
and go down the steps.

00:25:36.453 --> 00:25:38.620 align:middle line:84%
I'm not going to tell you
what you're going to find.

00:25:38.620 --> 00:25:41.260 align:middle line:90%


00:25:41.260 --> 00:25:42.940 align:middle line:90%
So I hate that.

00:25:42.940 --> 00:25:44.590 align:middle line:84%
I have to know
everything right away.

00:25:44.590 --> 00:25:46.450 align:middle line:90%
So I landed at the airport.

00:25:46.450 --> 00:25:48.190 align:middle line:84%
I didn't know how
to travel yet, so I

00:25:48.190 --> 00:25:51.130 align:middle line:84%
had everything I owned in a
big suitcase with no wheels.

00:25:51.130 --> 00:25:53.260 align:middle line:84%
And I got out of
the plane, and I

00:25:53.260 --> 00:25:55.870 align:middle line:84%
asked, how is it cheapest
to go into Paris.

00:25:55.870 --> 00:25:59.290 align:middle line:84%
And the man pointed to a bus
that said "invalid" on it.

00:25:59.290 --> 00:26:00.940 align:middle line:90%
So he said [? va là-bas ?].

00:26:00.940 --> 00:26:03.130 align:middle line:84%
So I thought, OK, I'll
get on the invalid bus.

00:26:03.130 --> 00:26:05.800 align:middle line:84%
And it took me to
Invalides, this place

00:26:05.800 --> 00:26:07.070 align:middle line:90%
in the middle of Paris.

00:26:07.070 --> 00:26:09.255 align:middle line:84%
And I had this big
suitcase, and so I

00:26:09.255 --> 00:26:11.380 align:middle line:84%
knew that I wasn't going
to get anywhere very fast.

00:26:11.380 --> 00:26:15.430 align:middle line:84%
So I got a taxi, and I
paid him the equivalent

00:26:15.430 --> 00:26:22.360 align:middle line:84%
of $150 in pretty money to take
me about a mile to Notre Dame.

00:26:22.360 --> 00:26:28.360 align:middle line:84%
He liked me a lot and was very
happy to have had me as a fare.

00:26:28.360 --> 00:26:31.210 align:middle line:84%
And I got out and
dragged the suitcase

00:26:31.210 --> 00:26:32.500 align:middle line:90%
behind Notre Dame Cathedral.

00:26:32.500 --> 00:26:35.860 align:middle line:84%
It's far, going behind the
cathedral with a suitcase.

00:26:35.860 --> 00:26:39.385 align:middle line:84%
And I got down there,
and this is what I saw.

00:26:39.385 --> 00:26:42.027 align:middle line:90%


00:26:42.027 --> 00:26:43.860 align:middle line:84%
And I would like to
share a little bit of it

00:26:43.860 --> 00:26:47.400 align:middle line:84%
with you because it's
kind of a magical story.

00:26:47.400 --> 00:26:49.470 align:middle line:90%
The magical part is that--

00:26:49.470 --> 00:26:51.660 align:middle line:84%
I'm going to describe
what was down

00:26:51.660 --> 00:26:55.440 align:middle line:84%
there so you won't have to drag
suitcases or worry about it.

00:26:55.440 --> 00:26:59.370 align:middle line:84%
And I'm going to read you one
little piece of translation out

00:26:59.370 --> 00:27:04.990 align:middle line:84%
of this book of Desnos, and tell
you that when I got down there,

00:27:04.990 --> 00:27:10.130 align:middle line:84%
there was a poem scratched
in the wall of this place.

00:27:10.130 --> 00:27:12.110 align:middle line:84%
And one, I didn't
have any French then.

00:27:12.110 --> 00:27:14.600 align:middle line:84%
All I could do was eat
and go to the bathroom.

00:27:14.600 --> 00:27:16.965 align:middle line:84%
But I thought-- I looked
at this French on the wall,

00:27:16.965 --> 00:27:19.340 align:middle line:84%
and I thought that sounds like
it would be really pretty.

00:27:19.340 --> 00:27:21.440 align:middle line:84%
Well so would a grocery
list to me then.

00:27:21.440 --> 00:27:22.928 align:middle line:90%
But I thought it was pretty.

00:27:22.928 --> 00:27:24.470 align:middle line:84%
And you'll see, it
is sort of pretty.

00:27:24.470 --> 00:27:26.150 align:middle line:84%
So I copied it
down, and I thought,

00:27:26.150 --> 00:27:28.250 align:middle line:84%
one day I'll learn
French, and I'll

00:27:28.250 --> 00:27:29.990 align:middle line:84%
know how to say
this pretty thing.

00:27:29.990 --> 00:27:33.800 align:middle line:84%
And maybe I'll even know
what it means someday.

00:27:33.800 --> 00:27:36.890 align:middle line:84%
And then my book got
wet, and the poet's name

00:27:36.890 --> 00:27:39.020 align:middle line:90%
was erased by water.

00:27:39.020 --> 00:27:41.090 align:middle line:90%
And I spent about--

00:27:41.090 --> 00:27:43.160 align:middle line:90%
well, let's see, exactly--

00:27:43.160 --> 00:27:47.480 align:middle line:84%
about exactly nine years looking
for this poet's work again.

00:27:47.480 --> 00:27:50.360 align:middle line:84%
I didn't remember his name,
so I couldn't find it.

00:27:50.360 --> 00:28:00.160 align:middle line:84%
In 1986, I went to Paris
to have this boy, Sean,

00:28:00.160 --> 00:28:03.867 align:middle line:84%
and I had to spend a month
waiting for him to be born.

00:28:03.867 --> 00:28:05.950 align:middle line:84%
And I was big as a house
and couldn't walk around,

00:28:05.950 --> 00:28:08.050 align:middle line:84%
so I had to stay in
this little atelier.

00:28:08.050 --> 00:28:09.880 align:middle line:84%
And I found one
poetry book there,

00:28:09.880 --> 00:28:13.750 align:middle line:84%
so I decided to translate
it to try to learn French.

00:28:13.750 --> 00:28:18.880 align:middle line:84%
And on the last day and on the
last page were these lines.

00:28:18.880 --> 00:28:24.360 align:middle line:84%
And the man that I had been
translating was this poet.

00:28:24.360 --> 00:28:28.200 align:middle line:84%
"Behind the cathedral of
Notre Dame and across the key,

00:28:28.200 --> 00:28:30.240 align:middle line:84%
there is a black
iron gate opening

00:28:30.240 --> 00:28:34.970 align:middle line:84%
to a white stairwell that leads
into the bank of the Seine.

00:28:34.970 --> 00:28:38.060 align:middle line:84%
Descending one enters rooms
hallowed from the Earth,

00:28:38.060 --> 00:28:41.660 align:middle line:84%
rounded, austere, and as
white as the palpable silence

00:28:41.660 --> 00:28:43.880 align:middle line:90%
of this place.

00:28:43.880 --> 00:28:45.560 align:middle line:84%
The windows of the
rooms are barred

00:28:45.560 --> 00:28:49.160 align:middle line:84%
against the flow of the river,
whose waters seem invisibly

00:28:49.160 --> 00:28:50.840 align:middle line:90%
held back.

00:28:50.840 --> 00:28:54.950 align:middle line:84%
To the right, there is a
tunnel, and at its entrance,

00:28:54.950 --> 00:29:00.710 align:middle line:84%
a black grave marker inscribed,
ici repose déporté inconnu.

00:29:00.710 --> 00:29:04.030 align:middle line:90%
Here lies the unknown deported.

00:29:04.030 --> 00:29:09.400 align:middle line:84%
Along the tunnel walls,
200,000 tiny lights flicker.

00:29:09.400 --> 00:29:12.550 align:middle line:84%
At the end, a single light burns
like a star in the surrounding

00:29:12.550 --> 00:29:14.020 align:middle line:90%
darkness.

00:29:14.020 --> 00:29:17.680 align:middle line:84%
This is the memorial
to the deportees.

00:29:17.680 --> 00:29:21.550 align:middle line:84%
The 200,000 Jews deported
from France to the camps

00:29:21.550 --> 00:29:23.790 align:middle line:90%
during the Shoah.

00:29:23.790 --> 00:29:25.890 align:middle line:84%
It was here that I
first encountered

00:29:25.890 --> 00:29:30.090 align:middle line:84%
the poetry of Robert Desnos
chiseled into a wall.

00:29:30.090 --> 00:29:33.000 align:middle line:84%
Desnos, a member
of the resistance,

00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:36.090 align:middle line:90%
had been among those deportees.

00:29:36.090 --> 00:29:39.030 align:middle line:84%
I was young and in Paris
for the first time.

00:29:39.030 --> 00:29:41.940 align:middle line:84%
I opened my notebook and
copied the lines out.

00:29:41.940 --> 00:29:44.300 align:middle line:84%
J'ai rêvé tellement fort de
tol, j'ai tellement marché,

00:29:44.300 --> 00:29:46.050 align:middle line:84%
tellement parlé,
tellement aimé ton ombre,

00:29:46.050 --> 00:29:48.870 align:middle line:84%
Qu'il ne me reste
plus rien de toi.

00:29:48.870 --> 00:29:51.300 align:middle line:84%
Il me reste d'être
parmi les ombres,

00:29:51.300 --> 00:29:54.540 align:middle line:84%
d'être cent fois plus ombre
que l'ombre, d'être l'ombre qui

00:29:54.540 --> 00:29:56.690 align:middle line:84%
viendra et reviendra
dans ta vie ensoleillée.

00:29:56.690 --> 00:30:05.670 align:middle line:90%


00:30:05.670 --> 00:30:08.460 align:middle line:84%
The name Robert
Desnos was obliterated

00:30:08.460 --> 00:30:12.290 align:middle line:84%
when the notebook was left
carelessly open to the rain.

00:30:12.290 --> 00:30:13.820 align:middle line:84%
I knew only that
I had been moved

00:30:13.820 --> 00:30:17.360 align:middle line:84%
by the poem, which remained
for years mysterious to me.

00:30:17.360 --> 00:30:22.340 align:middle line:84%
Poignant and moving, lyrical and
elegiac, when read as a message

00:30:22.340 --> 00:30:24.470 align:middle line:90%
to the deported.

00:30:24.470 --> 00:30:27.950 align:middle line:84%
In 1986, I returned to
Paris again, this time

00:30:27.950 --> 00:30:30.740 align:middle line:90%
to await the birth of my son.

00:30:30.740 --> 00:30:33.350 align:middle line:84%
My husband and I were
living at 11 rue Schoelcher

00:30:33.350 --> 00:30:36.920 align:middle line:84%
in an atelier, overlooking
the cemetery of Montparnasse.

00:30:36.920 --> 00:30:40.730 align:middle line:84%
In an armoire, I found a
small collection of books.

00:30:40.730 --> 00:30:44.750 align:middle line:84%
Among them, the Seghers
edition of Robert Desnos.

00:30:44.750 --> 00:30:47.090 align:middle line:84%
During that rainy March,
I sat at a bread table

00:30:47.090 --> 00:30:50.330 align:middle line:84%
pulled to the window and passed
the last days of my pregnancy

00:30:50.330 --> 00:30:52.520 align:middle line:90%
translating this poet.

00:30:52.520 --> 00:30:54.890 align:middle line:84%
Toward the end of the
book and my confinement,

00:30:54.890 --> 00:30:58.220 align:middle line:84%
I was startled to recognize
the lines from the wall.

00:30:58.220 --> 00:31:01.430 align:middle line:90%
I had found Robert Desnos.

00:31:01.430 --> 00:31:05.870 align:middle line:84%
And these lines, under the
title Le Dernier Poème,

00:31:05.870 --> 00:31:08.600 align:middle line:84%
were thought to have been with
him when he died of typhoid

00:31:08.600 --> 00:31:10.550 align:middle line:90%
fever in Terezín.

00:31:10.550 --> 00:31:16.550 align:middle line:84%
I translated them, 'I have
dreamed so strongly of you.

00:31:16.550 --> 00:31:19.550 align:middle line:84%
I have walked so much,
talked so much, so

00:31:19.550 --> 00:31:23.790 align:middle line:84%
much I have loved your
shadow, that there now remains

00:31:23.790 --> 00:31:27.280 align:middle line:90%
for me nothing more of you.

00:31:27.280 --> 00:31:31.850 align:middle line:84%
It remains with me to be
a shadow among shadows,

00:31:31.850 --> 00:31:35.680 align:middle line:84%
to be a hundred times
darker than the darkness.

00:31:35.680 --> 00:31:41.060 align:middle line:84%
To be the shadow that
will come and come again

00:31:41.060 --> 00:31:42.965 align:middle line:90%
into your sun-blessed life.'

00:31:42.965 --> 00:31:46.930 align:middle line:90%


00:31:46.930 --> 00:31:49.510 align:middle line:84%
For his participation in
the French resistance,

00:31:49.510 --> 00:31:51.460 align:middle line:84%
Desnos was arrested
by the Gestapo

00:31:51.460 --> 00:31:53.800 align:middle line:90%
and interrogated under torture.

00:31:53.800 --> 00:31:57.430 align:middle line:84%
He was sent to the camp at
Compiègne, then to Auschwitz,

00:31:57.430 --> 00:31:59.440 align:middle line:90%
Buchenwald, and Floha.

00:31:59.440 --> 00:32:03.220 align:middle line:84%
In April of 1945, he was
force-marched to Terezín,

00:32:03.220 --> 00:32:06.430 align:middle line:84%
Czechoslovakia, where he died
shortly after the camp was

00:32:06.430 --> 00:32:09.500 align:middle line:90%
liberated by Russian troops.

00:32:09.500 --> 00:32:12.530 align:middle line:84%
This past May, I
visited Terezín.

00:32:12.530 --> 00:32:15.800 align:middle line:84%
We drove the black Teplice
road under a white sky

00:32:15.800 --> 00:32:18.770 align:middle line:84%
past the cut fields, the
tarpaulin-covered hay

00:32:18.770 --> 00:32:23.520 align:middle line:84%
ricks, the petrochemical
plant spewing black smoke.

00:32:23.520 --> 00:32:28.370 align:middle line:84%
Poppies afflicted the hay
fields with wounding brilliance.

00:32:28.370 --> 00:32:31.100 align:middle line:84%
The people were harvesting
cauliflower then from

00:32:31.100 --> 00:32:33.530 align:middle line:90%
the gardens near Terezín.

00:32:33.530 --> 00:32:36.050 align:middle line:84%
As we neared the town
in its fortress prison,

00:32:36.050 --> 00:32:38.180 align:middle line:84%
the silence of the
deportees memorial

00:32:38.180 --> 00:32:42.320 align:middle line:84%
returned, infinite
and impenetrable.

00:32:42.320 --> 00:32:44.200 align:middle line:90%
It was Sunday.

00:32:44.200 --> 00:32:49.870 align:middle line:84%
The town, once a ghetto for
160,000, is inhabited again.

00:32:49.870 --> 00:32:53.520 align:middle line:90%
But the streets are oddly empty.

00:32:53.520 --> 00:32:56.460 align:middle line:84%
We watched a boy blank-eyed,
pedaling a bicycle

00:32:56.460 --> 00:33:01.000 align:middle line:84%
back and forth with a naked,
broken doll in its basket.

00:33:01.000 --> 00:33:03.040 align:middle line:84%
The windows of Terezín
were lace curtained,

00:33:03.040 --> 00:33:06.640 align:middle line:84%
but the walls were rotting away,
and many buildings were boarded

00:33:06.640 --> 00:33:08.110 align:middle line:90%
and vacant.

00:33:08.110 --> 00:33:10.720 align:middle line:84%
We drove the streets
under flowering chestnuts

00:33:10.720 --> 00:33:13.060 align:middle line:90%
and circled the empty park.

00:33:13.060 --> 00:33:14.890 align:middle line:84%
At the entrance to
the prison, a woman

00:33:14.890 --> 00:33:18.460 align:middle line:84%
stood holding a bouquet
of leeks wrapped in paper.

00:33:18.460 --> 00:33:21.130 align:middle line:84%
Two Czech soldiers strolled
through what had once

00:33:21.130 --> 00:33:23.560 align:middle line:90%
been the women's compound.

00:33:23.560 --> 00:33:25.060 align:middle line:90%
Doors swung in the wind.

00:33:25.060 --> 00:33:27.850 align:middle line:84%
Swallows dipped into the
prison yard and rose,

00:33:27.850 --> 00:33:32.380 align:middle line:84%
their cries slicing into the
silence without leaving a mark.

00:33:32.380 --> 00:33:35.260 align:middle line:84%
We walked the cold,
swept-clean barracks,

00:33:35.260 --> 00:33:37.120 align:middle line:84%
ran our fingers
over the gray wash

00:33:37.120 --> 00:33:41.770 align:middle line:84%
basins, the long trestle
tables, the tiered bunks.

00:33:41.770 --> 00:33:46.600 align:middle line:84%
We found the sign,
our bite-marked fry.

00:33:46.600 --> 00:33:49.570 align:middle line:84%
We found little drawings and
paintings made by the children

00:33:49.570 --> 00:33:51.350 align:middle line:90%
of Terezín.

00:33:51.350 --> 00:33:55.850 align:middle line:84%
Colorful houses and trees,
children and animals, birds,

00:33:55.850 --> 00:33:58.430 align:middle line:90%
flowers, butterflies.

00:33:58.430 --> 00:34:00.800 align:middle line:84%
We picked forget-me-nots
and left them

00:34:00.800 --> 00:34:03.380 align:middle line:90%
near a symbolic gravestone.

00:34:03.380 --> 00:34:05.210 align:middle line:90%
This is where Desnos died.

00:34:05.210 --> 00:34:08.540 align:middle line:84%
Somewhere here,
carved into a wall,

00:34:08.540 --> 00:34:12.630 align:middle line:84%
are the words Ici mourut Le
Poète et Résistant Francais

00:34:12.630 --> 00:34:17.360 align:middle line:90%
Robert Desnos, 18 June, 1945.

00:34:17.360 --> 00:34:20.780 align:middle line:84%
As a prayer, I said the
little poem that had first

00:34:20.780 --> 00:34:23.030 align:middle line:90%
opened his life and work to me.

00:34:23.030 --> 00:34:25.010 align:middle line:84%
It is in the spirit
of this poem that I

00:34:25.010 --> 00:34:27.650 align:middle line:84%
offer my versions of
his work in English,

00:34:27.650 --> 00:34:32.630 align:middle line:84%
that he may be known by American
readers and so live again.

00:34:32.630 --> 00:34:35.449 align:middle line:90%
One among the many who perished.

00:34:35.449 --> 00:34:40.814 align:middle line:84%
The soul of a poet who gave his
heart to the world in France."

00:34:40.814 --> 00:34:43.690 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:34:43.690 --> 00:34:44.566 align:middle line:90%
[INAUDIBLE]

00:34:44.566 --> 00:34:48.920 align:middle line:90%


00:34:48.920 --> 00:34:50.510 align:middle line:90%
OK.

00:34:50.510 --> 00:34:51.500 align:middle line:90%
OK.

00:34:51.500 --> 00:34:53.880 align:middle line:84%
I want to read some new
work from my new book,

00:34:53.880 --> 00:34:55.310 align:middle line:90%
The Angel of History.

00:34:55.310 --> 00:34:59.280 align:middle line:84%
And I know this is true
because I was here once before.

00:34:59.280 --> 00:35:01.040 align:middle line:84%
But I've also been
very reassured

00:35:01.040 --> 00:35:05.170 align:middle line:84%
that it's OK to read
even weird work here.

00:35:05.170 --> 00:35:08.110 align:middle line:84%
I mean, you know that
this is a poetry audience,

00:35:08.110 --> 00:35:13.400 align:middle line:84%
and that it won't matter
if the new work is strange.

00:35:13.400 --> 00:35:16.900 align:middle line:90%
So I'm going to go ahead.

00:35:16.900 --> 00:35:21.610 align:middle line:84%
The Angel of History is a
title from the work of Walter

00:35:21.610 --> 00:35:27.130 align:middle line:84%
Benjamin, was a
German-Jewish philosopher

00:35:27.130 --> 00:35:31.420 align:middle line:84%
who died in 1940 trying
to escape the Nazis.

00:35:31.420 --> 00:35:36.572 align:middle line:84%
And the book begins with a
piece of writing from his thesis

00:35:36.572 --> 00:35:37.780 align:middle line:90%
on the philosophy of history.

00:35:37.780 --> 00:35:40.590 align:middle line:90%


00:35:40.590 --> 00:35:44.950 align:middle line:84%
"The Angel of History
must appear this way.

00:35:44.950 --> 00:35:48.190 align:middle line:84%
His face is turned
toward the past.

00:35:48.190 --> 00:35:53.790 align:middle line:84%
Where we see a chain of events,
he sees a single catastrophe,

00:35:53.790 --> 00:35:56.550 align:middle line:84%
but unremittingly
piles ruin upon ruin

00:35:56.550 --> 00:35:59.660 align:middle line:90%
and throws them at his feet.

00:35:59.660 --> 00:36:02.650 align:middle line:84%
He would like to stay
to awaken the dead

00:36:02.650 --> 00:36:06.430 align:middle line:84%
and to assemble that
which has been shattered.

00:36:06.430 --> 00:36:08.740 align:middle line:84%
But a storm is blowing
in from Paradise

00:36:08.740 --> 00:36:11.770 align:middle line:84%
that has got caught in his
wings with such a violence

00:36:11.770 --> 00:36:15.170 align:middle line:84%
that the angel can
no longer close them.

00:36:15.170 --> 00:36:18.350 align:middle line:84%
This storm drives him
relentlessly into the future,

00:36:18.350 --> 00:36:21.920 align:middle line:84%
to which his back is turned,
while the ruins grow before him

00:36:21.920 --> 00:36:24.400 align:middle line:90%
toward Heaven.

00:36:24.400 --> 00:36:27.985 align:middle line:84%
What we call progress
is this storm."

00:36:27.985 --> 00:36:32.310 align:middle line:90%


00:36:32.310 --> 00:36:34.860 align:middle line:84%
It begins with a rather
conventional poem, I suppose,

00:36:34.860 --> 00:36:39.060 align:middle line:90%
but in 1983 I went to Japan.

00:36:39.060 --> 00:36:43.770 align:middle line:84%
The Asian Writers Congress
invited 12 non-Asian poets

00:36:43.770 --> 00:36:45.870 align:middle line:84%
to come to their
meeting that year.

00:36:45.870 --> 00:36:49.020 align:middle line:84%
And they wanted two poets from
each of the six nuclear powered

00:36:49.020 --> 00:36:50.970 align:middle line:84%
nations, including,
at that time,

00:36:50.970 --> 00:36:54.240 align:middle line:84%
South Africa, nuclear powered
and recognized as such then.

00:36:54.240 --> 00:36:57.570 align:middle line:84%
But Galway Kinnell and
I went as nuclear poets

00:36:57.570 --> 00:36:59.130 align:middle line:90%
from the United States, and--

00:36:59.130 --> 00:37:00.120 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:37:00.120 --> 00:37:04.680 align:middle line:84%
They took us-- the meetings were
held in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

00:37:04.680 --> 00:37:06.900 align:middle line:84%
And so you see, they had
sort of a theme, I think,

00:37:06.900 --> 00:37:11.550 align:middle line:84%
in mind, or an idea of
what they wanted it to be.

00:37:11.550 --> 00:37:13.410 align:middle line:84%
And I was very
moved to go there.

00:37:13.410 --> 00:37:17.410 align:middle line:84%
My father had been in the
Pacific during the war,

00:37:17.410 --> 00:37:21.310 align:middle line:84%
and let's say that we agreed
to disagree during my childhood

00:37:21.310 --> 00:37:25.060 align:middle line:90%
about the bomb.

00:37:25.060 --> 00:37:28.750 align:middle line:84%
But we were taken
to the museums where

00:37:28.750 --> 00:37:31.780 align:middle line:84%
they have objects
that are on display,

00:37:31.780 --> 00:37:34.060 align:middle line:84%
and sometimes you have to
stare very hard at them

00:37:34.060 --> 00:37:35.570 align:middle line:90%
to know what they are.

00:37:35.570 --> 00:37:38.170 align:middle line:84%
And one was-- like,
you would look

00:37:38.170 --> 00:37:41.980 align:middle line:84%
at this sweep of
beautiful, blue-green glass

00:37:41.980 --> 00:37:45.110 align:middle line:84%
with little metal pieces in
the top of it scattered around.

00:37:45.110 --> 00:37:47.180 align:middle line:84%
And if you look
at it long enough,

00:37:47.180 --> 00:37:49.660 align:middle line:84%
you notice that the metal
pieces are bottle caps,

00:37:49.660 --> 00:37:52.210 align:middle line:84%
and that the glass,
which is now fused,

00:37:52.210 --> 00:37:58.900 align:middle line:84%
used to be six little bottles,
like for cola or something.

00:37:58.900 --> 00:38:00.190 align:middle line:90%
And like that.

00:38:00.190 --> 00:38:03.670 align:middle line:84%
And that's what happened
to the things in the city.

00:38:03.670 --> 00:38:06.070 align:middle line:84%
And we were also
introduced to Hibakusha,

00:38:06.070 --> 00:38:09.610 align:middle line:84%
literally "survivors
of the light."

00:38:09.610 --> 00:38:12.910 align:middle line:90%
And they told us their stories.

00:38:12.910 --> 00:38:15.580 align:middle line:84%
Their stories were peculiar
because they always

00:38:15.580 --> 00:38:19.480 align:middle line:84%
began exactly at the moment
the bomb was dropped,

00:38:19.480 --> 00:38:23.050 align:middle line:84%
and never, ever talked
about anything before that.

00:38:23.050 --> 00:38:26.080 align:middle line:84%
And I realized one
of the reasons--

00:38:26.080 --> 00:38:27.280 align:middle line:90%
which is in this poem--

00:38:27.280 --> 00:38:30.970 align:middle line:84%
why their stories were
a little bit strange.

00:38:30.970 --> 00:38:33.130 align:middle line:84%
It was a sweet reason
and a painful reason.

00:38:33.130 --> 00:38:35.290 align:middle line:84%
But we met this
one Hibakusha who

00:38:35.290 --> 00:38:38.470 align:middle line:84%
was in an ornamental
garden called Shukkei-en.

00:38:38.470 --> 00:38:40.340 align:middle line:90%
And that's why she was saved.

00:38:40.340 --> 00:38:42.400 align:middle line:84%
Some people were saved
because their mother fell

00:38:42.400 --> 00:38:44.573 align:middle line:84%
on top of them or a bookcase
fell on top of them,

00:38:44.573 --> 00:38:46.240 align:middle line:84%
or they were behind
a hill or something.

00:38:46.240 --> 00:38:50.380 align:middle line:84%
But she was in a grove of
trees in an ornamental garden.

00:38:50.380 --> 00:38:52.720 align:middle line:84%
And the garden
finally caught fire,

00:38:52.720 --> 00:38:55.240 align:middle line:84%
and the people from the city
were running into the garden

00:38:55.240 --> 00:38:58.690 align:middle line:84%
to try to douse themselves
in the ornamental lakes.

00:38:58.690 --> 00:39:00.790 align:middle line:84%
The garden had been
restored since the war

00:39:00.790 --> 00:39:03.780 align:middle line:84%
but, she had never
gone back there.

00:39:03.780 --> 00:39:06.290 align:middle line:84%
And while we were talking to
her, she said she could go,

00:39:06.290 --> 00:39:07.400 align:middle line:90%
and we could go with her.

00:39:07.400 --> 00:39:10.130 align:middle line:84%
And s poem reflects
our conversation,

00:39:10.130 --> 00:39:15.430 align:middle line:84%
walking through the garden for
the first time for her again.

00:39:15.430 --> 00:39:18.950 align:middle line:90%
"The Garden Shukkei-en."

00:39:18.950 --> 00:39:21.260 align:middle line:84%
"By way of a vanished
bridge, we cross

00:39:21.260 --> 00:39:27.100 align:middle line:84%
this river, as a cloud of lifted
snow would ascend a mountain.

00:39:27.100 --> 00:39:30.190 align:middle line:84%
She has always been
afraid to come here.

00:39:30.190 --> 00:39:32.440 align:middle line:84%
It is the river
she most remembers,

00:39:32.440 --> 00:39:36.040 align:middle line:84%
the living and the dead
both crying for help.

00:39:36.040 --> 00:39:41.400 align:middle line:84%
A world that allowed neither
tears nor lamentation.

00:39:41.400 --> 00:39:44.760 align:middle line:84%
The matsu trees brush her hair
as she passes beneath them,

00:39:44.760 --> 00:39:49.440 align:middle line:84%
as do the shining
strands of barbed wire.

00:39:49.440 --> 00:39:54.500 align:middle line:84%
Where this lake is,
there was a lake.

00:39:54.500 --> 00:40:01.750 align:middle line:84%
Where these black pine
grow, there grew black pine.

00:40:01.750 --> 00:40:07.410 align:middle line:84%
Where there is no teahouse,
I see a wooden teahouse

00:40:07.410 --> 00:40:12.050 align:middle line:84%
and the corpses of
those who slept in it.

00:40:12.050 --> 00:40:14.720 align:middle line:84%
On the opposite bank of
the Ota, a weeping willow

00:40:14.720 --> 00:40:18.710 align:middle line:84%
etches its memory of their
faces into the water.

00:40:18.710 --> 00:40:23.540 align:middle line:84%
Where light touches the
face, the character for heart

00:40:23.540 --> 00:40:26.100 align:middle line:90%
is written.

00:40:26.100 --> 00:40:29.590 align:middle line:84%
She strokes a burnt
trunk wrapped in straw.

00:40:29.590 --> 00:40:35.610 align:middle line:84%
I was weak, and my skin hung
from my fingertips like cloth.

00:40:35.610 --> 00:40:40.830 align:middle line:84%
Do you think for a moment we
were human beings to them?

00:40:40.830 --> 00:40:44.040 align:middle line:84%
She comes to the stone
angel holding paper cranes.

00:40:44.040 --> 00:40:47.110 align:middle line:84%
Not an angel, but a woman
where she once had been,

00:40:47.110 --> 00:40:49.380 align:middle line:84%
who walks through the
garden Shukkei-en,

00:40:49.380 --> 00:40:53.450 align:middle line:84%
calling the carp to the
surface by clapping her hands.

00:40:53.450 --> 00:40:57.180 align:middle line:90%
Do Americans think of us?

00:40:57.180 --> 00:40:59.760 align:middle line:84%
So she began as we
squatted over the toilets.

00:40:59.760 --> 00:41:03.490 align:middle line:84%
If you want, I'll tell you, but
nothing I say will be enough.

00:41:03.490 --> 00:41:08.790 align:middle line:84%
We tried to dress our
burns with vegetable oil.

00:41:08.790 --> 00:41:12.660 align:middle line:84%
Her hair is the white froth of
rice, rising up kettle sides.

00:41:12.660 --> 00:41:14.880 align:middle line:90%
Her mind also.

00:41:14.880 --> 00:41:16.440 align:middle line:84%
In the post-war
years, she thought

00:41:16.440 --> 00:41:19.520 align:middle line:90%
deeply about how to live.

00:41:19.520 --> 00:41:21.830 align:middle line:84%
The common greeting
dozo-yiroshku

00:41:21.830 --> 00:41:25.280 align:middle line:90%
is please, take care of me.

00:41:25.280 --> 00:41:29.260 align:middle line:84%
All hibakusha still
alive were children then.

00:41:29.260 --> 00:41:35.780 align:middle line:84%
A cemetery seen from the
air is a child's city.

00:41:35.780 --> 00:41:37.790 align:middle line:84%
I don't like this
particular red flower

00:41:37.790 --> 00:41:41.480 align:middle line:84%
because it reminds me of
a woman's brain crushed

00:41:41.480 --> 00:41:42.770 align:middle line:90%
under a roof.

00:41:42.770 --> 00:41:46.130 align:middle line:84%
Perhaps my language is
too precise, and therefore

00:41:46.130 --> 00:41:48.920 align:middle line:90%
difficult to understand.

00:41:48.920 --> 00:41:55.100 align:middle line:84%
We have not, all these years,
felt what you call happiness.

00:41:55.100 --> 00:42:00.020 align:middle line:84%
But at times, with good fortune,
we experience something close.

00:42:00.020 --> 00:42:05.020 align:middle line:90%
As our life resembles life.

00:42:05.020 --> 00:42:09.120 align:middle line:90%
And this garden, the garden.

00:42:09.120 --> 00:42:13.200 align:middle line:84%
And in the silence, surrounding
what happened to us,

00:42:13.200 --> 00:42:19.550 align:middle line:84%
it is the bell to awaken
God that we hear ringing."

00:42:19.550 --> 00:42:21.050 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:42:21.050 --> 00:42:22.050 align:middle line:90%
Thank you.

00:42:22.050 --> 00:42:23.550 align:middle line:90%
Have time for this?

00:42:23.550 --> 00:42:24.050 align:middle line:90%
OK.

00:42:24.050 --> 00:42:29.320 align:middle line:90%


00:42:29.320 --> 00:42:29.820 align:middle line:90%
OK.

00:42:29.820 --> 00:42:33.990 align:middle line:84%
Here's the weird one, and it's
called "The Recording Angel."

00:42:33.990 --> 00:42:35.940 align:middle line:90%
You will have to float.

00:42:35.940 --> 00:42:38.940 align:middle line:84%
Just, if you get lost,
you're doing the right thing.

00:42:38.940 --> 00:42:43.040 align:middle line:90%


00:42:43.040 --> 00:42:45.080 align:middle line:84%
That's all I'll
say, except that I

00:42:45.080 --> 00:42:48.740 align:middle line:84%
do want to say one thing
because it means a lot to me.

00:42:48.740 --> 00:42:51.380 align:middle line:84%
Some of this stuff
came out of time

00:42:51.380 --> 00:42:58.490 align:middle line:84%
that I was in Beirut
in Lebanon in 1984.

00:42:58.490 --> 00:43:03.260 align:middle line:84%
And I worked there for National
Public Radio, and the man who

00:43:03.260 --> 00:43:07.880 align:middle line:84%
was my buddy and my office
mate and my comrade worked

00:43:07.880 --> 00:43:10.350 align:middle line:90%
for AP radio.

00:43:10.350 --> 00:43:13.640 align:middle line:84%
And he taught me how to use the
equipment, and he made jokes,

00:43:13.640 --> 00:43:16.250 align:middle line:84%
and he taught me how
to use the satellite,

00:43:16.250 --> 00:43:18.590 align:middle line:90%
and he got me over my nerves.

00:43:18.590 --> 00:43:22.100 align:middle line:84%
And I still, when I hear the
All Things Considered music,

00:43:22.100 --> 00:43:23.630 align:middle line:90%
get cramps.

00:43:23.630 --> 00:43:27.470 align:middle line:84%
I can't-- because I feel like,
OK, I have to be ready now.

00:43:27.470 --> 00:43:28.574 align:middle line:90%
But that was--

00:43:28.574 --> 00:43:29.378 align:middle line:90%
[LAUGHTER]

00:43:29.378 --> 00:43:33.050 align:middle line:84%
That was Terry Anderson, and
I just found out on my way

00:43:33.050 --> 00:43:34.460 align:middle line:90%
here that--

00:43:34.460 --> 00:43:37.430 align:middle line:84%
I saw in the airport, on the
headline, that they let him go,

00:43:37.430 --> 00:43:38.600 align:middle line:90%
and he's on his way home.

00:43:38.600 --> 00:43:43.790 align:middle line:84%
And so I'm really happy, and so
I want to read this for Terry.

00:43:43.790 --> 00:43:48.590 align:middle line:84%
He was in-- seven years
a hostage, as you know,

00:43:48.590 --> 00:43:49.980 align:middle line:90%
and he's the last one.

00:43:49.980 --> 00:43:53.160 align:middle line:84%
So it's called "The
Recording Angel."

00:43:53.160 --> 00:43:53.760 align:middle line:90%
It's good.

00:43:53.760 --> 00:43:56.550 align:middle line:90%
I'm really glad about it.

00:43:56.550 --> 00:43:59.130 align:middle line:90%
"The Recording Angel."

00:43:59.130 --> 00:44:04.100 align:middle line:84%
"Memory insists she stood there,
neither able to go forward

00:44:04.100 --> 00:44:05.390 align:middle line:90%
and our back.

00:44:05.390 --> 00:44:09.320 align:middle line:84%
And in that unanimous
night, time slowed.

00:44:09.320 --> 00:44:12.080 align:middle line:84%
In light, pulsing
through ash, light

00:44:12.080 --> 00:44:15.830 align:middle line:84%
of which the coat was made,
light of their brick houses.

00:44:15.830 --> 00:44:20.120 align:middle line:84%
In matters, choreography
of light, time slowed,

00:44:20.120 --> 00:44:23.990 align:middle line:84%
then reversed, until memory held
her, neither able to go forward

00:44:23.990 --> 00:44:26.280 align:middle line:90%
nor back.

00:44:26.280 --> 00:44:30.075 align:middle line:84%
They were alone where once
hundreds of thousands lived.

00:44:30.075 --> 00:44:32.590 align:middle line:90%


00:44:32.590 --> 00:44:36.430 align:middle line:84%
Doves, or rather, their
wings, heard above the roof

00:44:36.430 --> 00:44:38.140 align:middle line:90%
and the linens floating.

00:44:38.140 --> 00:44:42.700 align:middle line:84%
Above a comic wedding in
which corpses exchanged vows.

00:44:42.700 --> 00:44:45.010 align:middle line:90%
A grand funeral celebration.

00:44:45.010 --> 00:44:47.590 align:middle line:90%
Everyone has died at once.

00:44:47.590 --> 00:44:52.360 align:middle line:84%
Walking home always, always
on this same blue road,

00:44:52.360 --> 00:44:56.230 align:middle line:84%
cold through the
black and white trees.

00:44:56.230 --> 00:44:58.630 align:middle line:84%
Unless the film
were reversed, she

00:44:58.630 --> 00:45:02.020 align:middle line:84%
wouldn't reach the house as
she doesn't in her memory

00:45:02.020 --> 00:45:04.390 align:middle line:90%
or in her dream.

00:45:04.390 --> 00:45:09.040 align:middle line:84%
Often, she hears him calling
out, half her name, his own,

00:45:09.040 --> 00:45:11.620 align:middle line:84%
behind her in a room
until she turns,

00:45:11.620 --> 00:45:16.150 align:middle line:84%
standing forever where often
she hears him calling out.

00:45:16.150 --> 00:45:20.290 align:middle line:84%
He is there, hidden in the blue
winter fields and the burnt

00:45:20.290 --> 00:45:23.120 align:middle line:90%
acreage of summer.

00:45:23.120 --> 00:45:26.060 align:middle line:84%
As if in reflecting
the ruins, the river

00:45:26.060 --> 00:45:30.280 align:middle line:84%
were filming what
their city had been.

00:45:30.280 --> 00:45:34.660 align:middle line:84%
And had it not been for
this, lines up behind,

00:45:34.660 --> 00:45:37.270 align:middle line:84%
if it weren't for
that, until the past

00:45:37.270 --> 00:45:40.150 align:middle line:90%
is something of a regiment.

00:45:40.150 --> 00:45:43.180 align:middle line:84%
Yet, looking back down
the row of marching faces,

00:45:43.180 --> 00:45:46.650 align:middle line:90%
one sees one face.

00:45:46.650 --> 00:45:49.770 align:middle line:84%
Before the shelling,
these balconies

00:45:49.770 --> 00:45:52.590 align:middle line:90%
were for geraniums and children.

00:45:52.590 --> 00:45:57.220 align:middle line:90%
The slate roofs, for morning.

00:45:57.220 --> 00:45:59.680 align:middle line:84%
Market flowers in
a jar, a string of

00:45:59.680 --> 00:46:04.790 align:middle line:84%
tied garlic and a voice moving
off as if fearing itself.

00:46:04.790 --> 00:46:08.810 align:middle line:84%
Under the leopard trees, a
white siren of light searches.

00:46:08.810 --> 00:46:14.410 align:middle line:84%
Under the leopard trees,
a white siren of sun.

00:46:14.410 --> 00:46:14.910 align:middle line:90%
Two.

00:46:14.910 --> 00:46:18.530 align:middle line:90%


00:46:18.530 --> 00:46:20.300 align:middle line:84%
The child has gone
to the window,

00:46:20.300 --> 00:46:25.870 align:middle line:84%
filled with desire, the glass
light passing through its hand.

00:46:25.870 --> 00:46:30.010 align:middle line:84%
There are tide tables by which
the sea had been predictable,

00:46:30.010 --> 00:46:32.650 align:middle line:90%
as were the heavens.

00:46:32.650 --> 00:46:34.660 align:middle line:84%
But his sickness
chose from among us.

00:46:34.660 --> 00:46:37.150 align:middle line:90%
We grew fewer.

00:46:37.150 --> 00:46:41.200 align:middle line:84%
There were jetty lights
where there was no jetty.

00:46:41.200 --> 00:46:44.875 align:middle line:84%
What the rain forests had been
became our difficult breath.

00:46:44.875 --> 00:46:47.610 align:middle line:90%


00:46:47.610 --> 00:46:50.160 align:middle line:84%
At the moment when
the snow geese lifted,

00:46:50.160 --> 00:46:54.120 align:middle line:84%
thousands at once after days
of crying in the wetlands.

00:46:54.120 --> 00:46:56.820 align:middle line:84%
At once they lifted
in a single ascent,

00:46:56.820 --> 00:46:59.040 align:middle line:84%
acres of wind in
their wing bones,

00:46:59.040 --> 00:47:01.650 align:middle line:84%
wetlands of morning
light in their lift.

00:47:01.650 --> 00:47:06.180 align:middle line:84%
Moving as one over the
continent as a white front, one

00:47:06.180 --> 00:47:12.450 align:middle line:84%
in their radiance, in their
crying, a cloud of desire.

00:47:12.450 --> 00:47:15.480 align:middle line:84%
The child plays with
its dead telephone.

00:47:15.480 --> 00:47:16.860 align:middle line:90%
The father blows a kiss.

00:47:16.860 --> 00:47:18.570 align:middle line:90%
The child laughs.

00:47:18.570 --> 00:47:20.790 align:middle line:84%
The fire of his few
years is carried

00:47:20.790 --> 00:47:23.200 align:middle line:90%
toward the child on a cake.

00:47:23.200 --> 00:47:24.970 align:middle line:90%
The child can't help itself.

00:47:24.970 --> 00:47:27.100 align:middle line:90%
Would each day be like this?

00:47:27.100 --> 00:47:31.680 align:middle line:84%
Hours on film, yet only
a moment of normal life.

00:47:31.680 --> 00:47:34.290 align:middle line:84%
And the geese,
rising and falling

00:47:34.290 --> 00:47:39.120 align:middle line:84%
in the rain on a surf of black
hands, sheets of rain and geese

00:47:39.120 --> 00:47:42.580 align:middle line:90%
invisible or gone.

00:47:42.580 --> 00:47:44.620 align:middle line:84%
Someone was supposed
to have come.

00:47:44.620 --> 00:47:47.080 align:middle line:84%
Waves turning black
with the beach weed

00:47:47.080 --> 00:47:49.300 align:middle line:90%
called dead man's hands.

00:47:49.300 --> 00:47:53.760 align:middle line:84%
The sea strikes a
bottle against a rock.

00:47:53.760 --> 00:47:55.910 align:middle line:90%
Three.

00:47:55.910 --> 00:47:59.120 align:middle line:84%
The photographs were
found, at first by mistake,

00:47:59.120 --> 00:48:00.800 align:middle line:90%
in the drawer.

00:48:00.800 --> 00:48:03.410 align:middle line:84%
After that, I went
to them often.

00:48:03.410 --> 00:48:08.720 align:middle line:84%
She was standing on her toes in
a silk yukata, her arms raised,

00:48:08.720 --> 00:48:11.600 align:middle line:84%
wearing a girl's white
socks, and near her feet

00:48:11.600 --> 00:48:14.090 align:middle line:90%
a vase of calla lilies.

00:48:14.090 --> 00:48:16.130 align:middle line:90%
Otherwise, she wore nothing.

00:48:16.130 --> 00:48:20.660 align:middle line:84%
And in this one, her long hair
is gathered into a white towel

00:48:20.660 --> 00:48:23.270 align:middle line:90%
or tied back, not to interfere.

00:48:23.270 --> 00:48:27.470 align:middle line:84%
She had been wounded by so
many men, abused by them.

00:48:27.470 --> 00:48:32.030 align:middle line:84%
From behind in a silk
yukata, then like this.

00:48:32.030 --> 00:48:33.980 align:middle line:90%
One morning they were gone.

00:48:33.980 --> 00:48:37.730 align:middle line:84%
And I searched his belongings
for them like a mad woman.

00:48:37.730 --> 00:48:40.880 align:middle line:84%
In every direction,
melted railyards

00:48:40.880 --> 00:48:43.370 align:middle line:84%
fell, telegraph
poles, for two months

00:48:43.370 --> 00:48:45.200 align:middle line:90%
to find some trace of her.

00:48:45.200 --> 00:48:48.150 align:middle line:90%


00:48:48.150 --> 00:48:51.480 align:middle line:84%
And beyond the paper
walls, the red maple,

00:48:51.480 --> 00:48:55.050 align:middle line:84%
shirt in the wind of
what the past meant.

00:48:55.050 --> 00:48:58.590 align:middle line:84%
The fresh claw of a
swastika on Rue Boulard.

00:48:58.590 --> 00:49:02.040 align:middle line:84%
A man walking until he
can no longer be seen.

00:49:02.040 --> 00:49:04.200 align:middle line:90%
Don't say I was there.

00:49:04.200 --> 00:49:08.560 align:middle line:90%
Always say I was never there.

00:49:08.560 --> 00:49:10.310 align:middle line:90%
Four.

00:49:10.310 --> 00:49:13.520 align:middle line:90%
The child asks about Earth.

00:49:13.520 --> 00:49:15.650 align:middle line:90%
The Earth is a school.

00:49:15.650 --> 00:49:20.390 align:middle line:84%
It is a waiting room, a
foyer giving on to emptiness.

00:49:20.390 --> 00:49:26.190 align:middle line:84%
It is for desires, small
but beautifully done.

00:49:26.190 --> 00:49:31.410 align:middle line:84%
The Earth is wrapped in weather,
and the weather in risen words.

00:49:31.410 --> 00:49:33.600 align:middle line:84%
The child is awake,
singing to himself,

00:49:33.600 --> 00:49:38.490 align:middle line:84%
speaking in a language
ending with the word night.

00:49:38.490 --> 00:49:42.930 align:middle line:84%
Unaware of the sea entering,
of the eternal dunes burying,

00:49:42.930 --> 00:49:46.170 align:middle line:84%
wooden matchsticks in a cup,
the meaning of an object

00:49:46.170 --> 00:49:49.290 align:middle line:84%
or its lack of
preoccupation with suitcases

00:49:49.290 --> 00:49:50.700 align:middle line:90%
and their contents.

00:49:50.700 --> 00:49:54.750 align:middle line:84%
God returns to the
world from within,

00:49:54.750 --> 00:49:59.520 align:middle line:84%
and the past is circular
like consequence.

00:49:59.520 --> 00:50:04.725 align:middle line:84%
The Earth tentative, blue, a
fire wrapped in cold water.

00:50:04.725 --> 00:50:08.420 align:middle line:90%


00:50:08.420 --> 00:50:11.480 align:middle line:84%
A sudden gust of yellow
tickets, a cold, blue rail,

00:50:11.480 --> 00:50:12.950 align:middle line:90%
and some boat lights.

00:50:12.950 --> 00:50:18.440 align:middle line:84%
The barrier dunes, blue esters,
the parabolic dunes, and wind.

00:50:18.440 --> 00:50:21.560 align:middle line:84%
The children have returned
to the beach, this time a boy

00:50:21.560 --> 00:50:22.370 align:middle line:90%
and a girl.

00:50:22.370 --> 00:50:24.950 align:middle line:84%
Hurrying toward, then
away from the water.

00:50:24.950 --> 00:50:26.960 align:middle line:84%
He is wearing a red
jacket, and it is not

00:50:26.960 --> 00:50:28.490 align:middle line:90%
important, the jacket.

00:50:28.490 --> 00:50:31.400 align:middle line:84%
The child asks if
fish have tongues.

00:50:31.400 --> 00:50:34.670 align:middle line:84%
The other laughs, giving
white tissues to the dog.

00:50:34.670 --> 00:50:38.210 align:middle line:84%
A white sail tied over the
bay's mouth ruffles the sea.

00:50:38.210 --> 00:50:42.110 align:middle line:84%
On the water's map, little
Xs across stitched sampler of

00:50:42.110 --> 00:50:43.940 align:middle line:90%
cries for help.

00:50:43.940 --> 00:50:48.080 align:middle line:84%
And yet, every lost one has
been seen, mornings in winter.

00:50:48.080 --> 00:50:52.100 align:middle line:84%
And at night, when the fishermen
have cast their nets one too

00:50:52.100 --> 00:50:53.660 align:middle line:90%
many times.

00:50:53.660 --> 00:50:59.770 align:middle line:84%
They surface the lost,
drawing great helix of breath.

00:50:59.770 --> 00:51:04.030 align:middle line:84%
We on the shore no longer vanish
when the beacon strokes us.

00:51:04.030 --> 00:51:08.260 align:middle line:84%
The child's boat plies the
water in imitation of boats.

00:51:08.260 --> 00:51:10.630 align:middle line:84%
Years they sought
her, whose crew left

00:51:10.630 --> 00:51:14.840 align:middle line:90%
on the water a sad, Welsh hymn.

00:51:14.840 --> 00:51:17.600 align:middle line:84%
Voices from a catch,
lit by candles.

00:51:17.600 --> 00:51:19.940 align:middle line:90%
Days pass, and nothing occurs.

00:51:19.940 --> 00:51:21.440 align:middle line:90%
Nights pass.

00:51:21.440 --> 00:51:25.250 align:middle line:84%
Nights, and life
continues in its passing.

00:51:25.250 --> 00:51:29.070 align:middle line:84%
We must try, then, to send a
message ending with the word

00:51:29.070 --> 00:51:29.570 align:middle line:90%
night.

00:51:29.570 --> 00:51:32.140 align:middle line:90%


00:51:32.140 --> 00:51:34.920 align:middle line:90%
Five.

00:51:34.920 --> 00:51:37.710 align:middle line:90%
A river that later caught fire.

00:51:37.710 --> 00:51:40.200 align:middle line:84%
A stone with its
own list of names.

00:51:40.200 --> 00:51:43.290 align:middle line:84%
Nothing that worked
once can be tried again.

00:51:43.290 --> 00:51:44.670 align:middle line:90%
That's what he told me.

00:51:44.670 --> 00:51:45.660 align:middle line:90%
I didn't know.

00:51:45.660 --> 00:51:47.610 align:middle line:84%
I worked as a
housewife, then bound

00:51:47.610 --> 00:51:50.880 align:middle line:84%
to the passing meals, the need
for linens, a demand to return

00:51:50.880 --> 00:51:53.370 align:middle line:90%
fallen clothes to their hooks.

00:51:53.370 --> 00:51:57.990 align:middle line:84%
At night, I found myself
in a pasture of refuse.

00:51:57.990 --> 00:52:01.620 align:middle line:84%
After the city vanished, they
were carried on black mats

00:52:01.620 --> 00:52:05.550 align:middle line:84%
from one place to another,
with no one to answer them.

00:52:05.550 --> 00:52:08.640 align:middle line:84%
Vultures watching
from the white trees.

00:52:08.640 --> 00:52:12.030 align:middle line:84%
A portable safe found
stuffed with charred paper,

00:52:12.030 --> 00:52:16.650 align:middle line:84%
an incense burner fused
to its black prayer.

00:52:16.650 --> 00:52:19.410 align:middle line:84%
In the city's perfect
emanation of light,

00:52:19.410 --> 00:52:22.890 align:middle line:90%
we lost every alternate route.

00:52:22.890 --> 00:52:30.290 align:middle line:84%
We were there, ill, there, in
the new birthplace of humanity.

00:52:30.290 --> 00:52:34.130 align:middle line:84%
In the last of the world's
open cities, rain begins.

00:52:34.130 --> 00:52:37.250 align:middle line:84%
The china cups are cleared
from the chiming tables.

00:52:37.250 --> 00:52:40.910 align:middle line:90%
A garden of black silk blooms.

00:52:40.910 --> 00:52:43.850 align:middle line:84%
Forget the fish, the bottle,
the bath towels stiffening

00:52:43.850 --> 00:52:47.090 align:middle line:84%
on the great, sleeveless
pajamas, skirts of fire,

00:52:47.090 --> 00:52:48.020 align:middle line:90%
and flowers.

00:52:48.020 --> 00:52:53.470 align:middle line:84%
A girl's face turned toward
a cup of water with no mouth.

00:52:53.470 --> 00:52:55.190 align:middle line:90%
Hello, child.

00:52:55.190 --> 00:52:57.340 align:middle line:90%
Hang your coat here.

00:52:57.340 --> 00:52:59.860 align:middle line:84%
This is what she said
after so many years.

00:52:59.860 --> 00:53:01.540 align:middle line:90%
This was all she said.

00:53:01.540 --> 00:53:06.080 align:middle line:90%


00:53:06.080 --> 00:53:08.140 align:middle line:90%
Six.

00:53:08.140 --> 00:53:09.820 align:middle line:90%
Then they all got drunk.

00:53:09.820 --> 00:53:12.880 align:middle line:84%
Sylvia continued to
mourn her brother.

00:53:12.880 --> 00:53:14.890 align:middle line:84%
Madam, please, a
bit of newspaper.

00:53:14.890 --> 00:53:17.320 align:middle line:90%
I would like to relieve myself.

00:53:17.320 --> 00:53:19.900 align:middle line:84%
He sings to the
work-for-nothings,

00:53:19.900 --> 00:53:23.080 align:middle line:84%
the die laughing of
hungers, as if his voice

00:53:23.080 --> 00:53:27.110 align:middle line:84%
could grow a pumpkin
out of the white ground.

00:53:27.110 --> 00:53:31.790 align:middle line:84%
Even the sign warning us away
implied an obligation to go on.

00:53:31.790 --> 00:53:35.060 align:middle line:84%
A bottle, a red
bandanna, a yellow bucket

00:53:35.060 --> 00:53:36.710 align:middle line:90%
of bones behind the gate.

00:53:36.710 --> 00:53:38.810 align:middle line:84%
We find a shovel
near all of this,

00:53:38.810 --> 00:53:43.720 align:middle line:84%
and as these were our
final months, a radio.

00:53:43.720 --> 00:53:46.300 align:middle line:84%
It was an island
wrapped in white fog.

00:53:46.300 --> 00:53:48.430 align:middle line:90%
Angel Island.

00:53:48.430 --> 00:53:50.830 align:middle line:90%
A wingless rock, a way station.

00:53:50.830 --> 00:53:53.170 align:middle line:84%
Now it isn't possible
to go further.

00:53:53.170 --> 00:53:58.690 align:middle line:84%
Paper thin and floating, each
small act of defiance a force.

00:53:58.690 --> 00:54:01.330 align:middle line:84%
There would be blank winds
in the debris and palm

00:54:01.330 --> 00:54:04.580 align:middle line:90%
carnage in the half-life.

00:54:04.580 --> 00:54:06.410 align:middle line:90%
Our faces are there.

00:54:06.410 --> 00:54:08.570 align:middle line:84%
Mine bears the
mark of your palm,

00:54:08.570 --> 00:54:11.510 align:middle line:90%
yours the marks of gelignite.

00:54:11.510 --> 00:54:13.790 align:middle line:84%
A bar of light touches
the floor of a house

00:54:13.790 --> 00:54:16.220 align:middle line:90%
long since torn down.

00:54:16.220 --> 00:54:19.700 align:middle line:84%
Where the walls
were, silence was.

00:54:19.700 --> 00:54:22.310 align:middle line:84%
The playing cards you
clipped to a window fan

00:54:22.310 --> 00:54:24.470 align:middle line:84%
to imitate the sound
of helicopters all

00:54:24.470 --> 00:54:30.190 align:middle line:84%
those nights, so as to return to
the ruins of a wished-for life.

00:54:30.190 --> 00:54:35.830 align:middle line:84%
Their flesh like fallen snow,
leaf shadows burnt into a post,

00:54:35.830 --> 00:54:38.650 align:middle line:90%
burns of bamboo on bamboo canes.

00:54:38.650 --> 00:54:43.870 align:middle line:84%
These ruins are to the future
what the past is to us.

00:54:43.870 --> 00:54:47.760 align:middle line:90%


00:54:47.760 --> 00:54:50.010 align:middle line:84%
Someone has written
fuck with dog shit

00:54:50.010 --> 00:54:53.340 align:middle line:84%
on the walls of
Simone's atelier.

00:54:53.340 --> 00:54:56.070 align:middle line:90%
A pall of exhaust over Paris.

00:54:56.070 --> 00:54:58.620 align:middle line:84%
The woman with a
shaved head seen twice

00:54:58.620 --> 00:55:03.060 align:middle line:84%
in different arrondissements And
on the Rue Victor Considerant,

00:55:03.060 --> 00:55:06.750 align:middle line:90%
a boy with a white toy M-16.

00:55:06.750 --> 00:55:09.990 align:middle line:84%
The day's march shouldering
their little events.

00:55:09.990 --> 00:55:13.440 align:middle line:84%
Tiny birds on the dining
tables flew from spoon to ball,

00:55:13.440 --> 00:55:16.410 align:middle line:84%
and as far as anyone
knew, no one drowned.

00:55:16.410 --> 00:55:18.810 align:middle line:90%
The hotel is no longer there.

00:55:18.810 --> 00:55:21.690 align:middle line:90%
We were its final guests.

00:55:21.690 --> 00:55:25.350 align:middle line:84%
A stone wall, white
roses, birds and the whine

00:55:25.350 --> 00:55:27.840 align:middle line:90%
of bright aerial antennas.

00:55:27.840 --> 00:55:30.660 align:middle line:84%
Every window casement
an empty portrait.

00:55:30.660 --> 00:55:34.170 align:middle line:84%
Radiant, formless,
ancestral in which

00:55:34.170 --> 00:55:37.050 align:middle line:84%
he longs for her,
whomever, her white bed,

00:55:37.050 --> 00:55:40.290 align:middle line:84%
the remote possibility
of another life.

00:55:40.290 --> 00:55:43.950 align:middle line:84%
To look in the windows of that
little place expecting someone,

00:55:43.950 --> 00:55:48.180 align:middle line:84%
the two of us, the child, the
two blue boats and the brown.

00:55:48.180 --> 00:55:51.960 align:middle line:84%
The child comes into the room
and leaves, comes and leaves.

00:55:51.960 --> 00:55:53.460 align:middle line:90%
I loved her, he said.

00:55:53.460 --> 00:55:56.010 align:middle line:90%
She was the woman of my life.

00:55:56.010 --> 00:56:00.480 align:middle line:84%
Her blank eyes, her--
this is what he loved.

00:56:00.480 --> 00:56:02.490 align:middle line:84%
She sliced the photographs
from the frames,

00:56:02.490 --> 00:56:03.870 align:middle line:90%
chose what to bring with us.

00:56:03.870 --> 00:56:06.900 align:middle line:84%
Said look what they've done
to the windows, to my life.

00:56:06.900 --> 00:56:08.700 align:middle line:90%
You are a child.

00:56:08.700 --> 00:56:11.550 align:middle line:84%
You think only of love,
in whose other arms

00:56:11.550 --> 00:56:12.540 align:middle line:90%
you will find refuge.

00:56:12.540 --> 00:56:15.440 align:middle line:90%


00:56:15.440 --> 00:56:18.970 align:middle line:84%
The man walks on blank
and without veering.

00:56:18.970 --> 00:56:21.490 align:middle line:84%
Where there are objects,
he walks over rather than

00:56:21.490 --> 00:56:22.960 align:middle line:90%
around them.

00:56:22.960 --> 00:56:26.930 align:middle line:84%
The knife rises in her
hand as she wipes her eyes.

00:56:26.930 --> 00:56:31.360 align:middle line:84%
Comment vivre sans
inconnu devant soi?

00:56:31.360 --> 00:56:33.790 align:middle line:84%
He departed with
great pledges of love

00:56:33.790 --> 00:56:36.550 align:middle line:84%
and went back to his life,
never to call her again.

00:56:36.550 --> 00:56:42.530 align:middle line:90%


00:56:42.530 --> 00:56:45.730 align:middle line:84%
Dear L, I thought I
knew what I was doing.

00:56:45.730 --> 00:56:48.370 align:middle line:84%
On the island of fuselage,
of wrecked plane,

00:56:48.370 --> 00:56:51.460 align:middle line:84%
a wing in sharp
vegetation, a radar dish

00:56:51.460 --> 00:56:56.360 align:middle line:84%
filled with pumpkin plants, the
blue wash of a cratered road.

00:56:56.360 --> 00:56:58.460 align:middle line:84%
His sickness chose
from among us.

00:56:58.460 --> 00:57:00.080 align:middle line:90%
We grew fewer.

00:57:00.080 --> 00:57:02.180 align:middle line:84%
And so as not to
appear in uniform,

00:57:02.180 --> 00:57:04.130 align:middle line:84%
he walked in his underwear
through the village

00:57:04.130 --> 00:57:07.820 align:middle line:84%
as if he were only strolling
the asylum grounds.

00:57:07.820 --> 00:57:10.587 align:middle line:84%
One morning slides,
aqua into the next,

00:57:10.587 --> 00:57:13.410 align:middle line:90%
the night beach lit and tired.

00:57:13.410 --> 00:57:15.150 align:middle line:90%
Grève painted on the wall.

00:57:15.150 --> 00:57:16.460 align:middle line:90%
But what grève?

00:57:16.460 --> 00:57:18.300 align:middle line:90%
Nothing to strike for here.

00:57:18.300 --> 00:57:19.140 align:middle line:90%
Better pay?

00:57:19.140 --> 00:57:20.480 align:middle line:90%
Better pay for what?

00:57:20.480 --> 00:57:24.260 align:middle line:84%
Everybody in this no-name
named village is chômeur.

00:57:24.260 --> 00:57:26.570 align:middle line:84%
It means they would
carry your shit for you

00:57:26.570 --> 00:57:29.420 align:middle line:84%
from your ass to the
pit if they were paid.

00:57:29.420 --> 00:57:32.960 align:middle line:84%
They plant flowers in cracker
cans on the porch stare.

00:57:32.960 --> 00:57:35.610 align:middle line:84%
They plant hibiscus
in their wrecked cars.

00:57:35.610 --> 00:57:37.670 align:middle line:84%
When you are talking
about stupidity,

00:57:37.670 --> 00:57:42.290 align:middle line:84%
only the military knows the
meaning of the word infinite.

00:57:42.290 --> 00:57:44.930 align:middle line:84%
Always he travels without
maps, as it is better

00:57:44.930 --> 00:57:49.750 align:middle line:84%
to become lost than spend
time thinking about the road.

00:57:49.750 --> 00:57:52.600 align:middle line:84%
He drinks holy water, then
pours some into a bottle in case

00:57:52.600 --> 00:57:53.680 align:middle line:90%
he needs it again.

00:57:53.680 --> 00:57:55.570 align:middle line:84%
Perhaps you have
seen one of them,

00:57:55.570 --> 00:57:59.920 align:middle line:84%
a familiar man or woman,
maimed, or a beggar who appears

00:57:59.920 --> 00:58:02.450 align:middle line:90%
in several places at once?

00:58:02.450 --> 00:58:05.750 align:middle line:90%
Why now, and in such numbers?

00:58:05.750 --> 00:58:08.600 align:middle line:84%
If there are two
doors, then only one

00:58:08.600 --> 00:58:14.290 align:middle line:84%
gives on to normal life
here in this open field that

00:58:14.290 --> 00:58:15.610 align:middle line:90%
can never be a field again.

00:58:15.610 --> 00:58:19.730 align:middle line:90%


00:58:19.730 --> 00:58:22.580 align:middle line:90%
It isn't necessary to explain.

00:58:22.580 --> 00:58:26.740 align:middle line:84%
The dead girl was thought
to be with child until it

00:58:26.740 --> 00:58:30.190 align:middle line:84%
was discovered that her belly
had already been cut open,

00:58:30.190 --> 00:58:34.830 align:middle line:84%
and a man's head placed where
the child would have been.

00:58:34.830 --> 00:58:36.660 align:middle line:84%
The tanks dug
ladders in the Earth.

00:58:36.660 --> 00:58:38.790 align:middle line:90%
No one was able to climb.

00:58:38.790 --> 00:58:41.040 align:middle line:84%
In every war, someone
puts a cigarette

00:58:41.040 --> 00:58:42.450 align:middle line:90%
in the corpse's mouth.

00:58:42.450 --> 00:58:43.500 align:middle line:90%
And the corpse?

00:58:43.500 --> 00:58:46.500 align:middle line:90%
The corpse is never mentioned.

00:58:46.500 --> 00:58:49.710 align:middle line:84%
In the hours before his
empty body was found,

00:58:49.710 --> 00:58:52.140 align:middle line:84%
it was this, this
life that he longed

00:58:52.140 --> 00:58:55.650 align:middle line:84%
for, this that he wrote
of desiring, yet this life

00:58:55.650 --> 00:58:59.570 align:middle line:84%
leaves out everything
for which he lived.

00:58:59.570 --> 00:59:02.330 align:middle line:84%
Hundreds of small,
clay heads discovered

00:59:02.330 --> 00:59:04.310 align:middle line:90%
while planting coffee.

00:59:04.310 --> 00:59:06.950 align:middle line:84%
A telescope through which
it was possible to watch

00:59:06.950 --> 00:59:10.820 align:middle line:84%
a fly crawling on the
neighbor's roof tiles.

00:59:10.820 --> 00:59:14.030 align:middle line:84%
The last-minute journeys to
the border for no reason.

00:59:14.030 --> 00:59:16.730 align:middle line:84%
The secret house where
sports trophies were kept

00:59:16.730 --> 00:59:19.950 align:middle line:90%
that weren't sports trophies.

00:59:19.950 --> 00:59:21.720 align:middle line:84%
Someone is trying
to kill me, he said.

00:59:21.720 --> 00:59:23.940 align:middle line:90%
He was always saying this.

00:59:23.940 --> 00:59:26.220 align:middle line:84%
Orange is turning to
glass on the trees,

00:59:26.220 --> 00:59:27.840 align:middle line:90%
a field strewn with them.

00:59:27.840 --> 00:59:30.840 align:middle line:84%
In his knapsack, a bar
of soap, a towel the size

00:59:30.840 --> 00:59:33.070 align:middle line:84%
of a dinner napkin,
a map of the world

00:59:33.070 --> 00:59:35.830 align:middle line:84%
he has not opened that will
one day correspond to the world

00:59:35.830 --> 00:59:37.800 align:middle line:90%
he has seen.

00:59:37.800 --> 00:59:41.520 align:middle line:84%
In the spring, lilacs and mud
roads, and later blossoming

00:59:41.520 --> 00:59:42.960 align:middle line:90%
wind.

00:59:42.960 --> 00:59:44.760 align:middle line:84%
Then the drone of
beetles and high

00:59:44.760 --> 00:59:46.890 align:middle line:84%
grasses if the
grass were drowning.

00:59:46.890 --> 00:59:49.140 align:middle line:84%
He said, a tongue
doesn't have bones.

00:59:49.140 --> 00:59:50.670 align:middle line:90%
He said, tit for tat.

00:59:50.670 --> 00:59:53.340 align:middle line:84%
Like a sack filled, then
emptied, then filled.

00:59:53.340 --> 00:59:56.010 align:middle line:84%
He was thin, yes, but
when he walked past,

00:59:56.010 --> 00:59:58.380 align:middle line:84%
it was not as if a
human being had passed.

00:59:58.380 --> 01:00:00.930 align:middle line:84%
And always, he
thought, this is it.

01:00:00.930 --> 01:00:02.140 align:middle line:90%
The end of the world.

01:00:02.140 --> 01:00:02.880 align:middle line:90%
God is coming.

01:00:02.880 --> 01:00:05.470 align:middle line:90%


01:00:05.470 --> 01:00:07.090 align:middle line:90%
We doubt we exist.

01:00:07.090 --> 01:00:09.400 align:middle line:90%
We doubt with certain wisdom.

01:00:09.400 --> 01:00:12.850 align:middle line:84%
The world, such
pains as you took

01:00:12.850 --> 01:00:16.240 align:middle line:84%
to convert a bedroom
into a fire base

01:00:16.240 --> 01:00:20.590 align:middle line:84%
where an angry God, spilled
blood itself, lives."

01:00:20.590 --> 01:00:23.450 align:middle line:90%


01:00:23.450 --> 01:00:25.600 align:middle line:90%
And the last--

01:00:25.600 --> 01:00:28.460 align:middle line:84%
"Having taken these
rooms for a season,

01:00:28.460 --> 01:00:32.000 align:middle line:84%
I imagine, that it might
be possible to recover.

01:00:32.000 --> 01:00:33.920 align:middle line:84%
For an hour each
afternoon, I vow

01:00:33.920 --> 01:00:36.710 align:middle line:90%
to sit in meditative expectancy.

01:00:36.710 --> 01:00:39.140 align:middle line:84%
The light far on
the rock promontory

01:00:39.140 --> 01:00:43.880 align:middle line:84%
reaches Paris where an old man's
hand reaches out of the Seine,

01:00:43.880 --> 01:00:46.370 align:middle line:84%
his wristwatch brilliant
enough to catch

01:00:46.370 --> 01:00:49.130 align:middle line:90%
the eye of a boat captain.

01:00:49.130 --> 01:00:52.220 align:middle line:84%
There are times when
the child seems not yet

01:00:52.220 --> 01:00:56.350 align:middle line:84%
to have crossed into the world,
despite having entered a body.

01:00:56.350 --> 01:01:00.900 align:middle line:84%
Memory, a wind passing through
the blood trees within us.

01:01:00.900 --> 01:01:03.180 align:middle line:84%
Someone was supposed
to have come.

01:01:03.180 --> 01:01:05.790 align:middle line:84%
He wrote, I tore
open your letter

01:01:05.790 --> 01:01:10.580 align:middle line:84%
and licked the envelope seal
for any lingering trace of you.

01:01:10.580 --> 01:01:15.200 align:middle line:84%
In the worst of centuries,
a merely difficult week.

01:01:15.200 --> 01:01:16.070 align:middle line:90%
Nothing.

01:01:16.070 --> 01:01:16.670 align:middle line:90%
Nothing.

01:01:16.670 --> 01:01:17.570 align:middle line:90%
Then from nothing.

01:01:17.570 --> 01:01:18.380 align:middle line:90%
Something.

01:01:18.380 --> 01:01:21.470 align:middle line:84%
I noticed it today while
walking to the pharmacy.

01:01:21.470 --> 01:01:24.380 align:middle line:84%
They were already
selling woolen underwear.

01:01:24.380 --> 01:01:26.300 align:middle line:90%
The market was closed.

01:01:26.300 --> 01:01:30.590 align:middle line:84%
Monday, there were dead flowers
for sale, dead marigolds,

01:01:30.590 --> 01:01:32.270 align:middle line:90%
hydrangea, peony.

01:01:32.270 --> 01:01:35.330 align:middle line:84%
Smoke rose in a perfect
line from the roof.

01:01:35.330 --> 01:01:38.630 align:middle line:84%
Then, it wasn't
possible to go further.

01:01:38.630 --> 01:01:41.120 align:middle line:84%
Everything seemed
intentionally placed

01:01:41.120 --> 01:01:43.430 align:middle line:84%
where it was, even
the garbage bins.

01:01:43.430 --> 01:01:45.980 align:middle line:84%
The children marched,
holding their booklets.

01:01:45.980 --> 01:01:47.990 align:middle line:90%
Peach leaves slipped earthward.

01:01:47.990 --> 01:01:50.090 align:middle line:90%
Wind filled the souvenir shops.

01:01:50.090 --> 01:01:54.920 align:middle line:84%
Dove, doves painted white
on the stopped wind.

01:01:54.920 --> 01:01:58.910 align:middle line:84%
Lamps in foglight fingering
the canals, and now

01:01:58.910 --> 01:02:03.010 align:middle line:84%
the defenselessness, for
which there is no cure.

01:02:03.010 --> 01:02:07.650 align:middle line:84%
But it is a matter
of shared history.

01:02:07.650 --> 01:02:11.310 align:middle line:84%
I have the memory of a child
in the southern slums lifting

01:02:11.310 --> 01:02:14.370 align:middle line:90%
the lid of an abandoned toilet.

01:02:14.370 --> 01:02:16.480 align:middle line:84%
And the child on
my back, however,

01:02:16.480 --> 01:02:19.760 align:middle line:90%
wasn't kept from singing.

01:02:19.760 --> 01:02:23.090 align:middle line:84%
And falling back toward night,
it was as if someone not alive

01:02:23.090 --> 01:02:24.410 align:middle line:90%
were watching.

01:02:24.410 --> 01:02:30.720 align:middle line:84%
Slowly, that is, over
time, itself a barrier.

01:02:30.720 --> 01:02:33.000 align:middle line:84%
And just then, the
doves rose and battered

01:02:33.000 --> 01:02:37.430 align:middle line:84%
the wind where a notebook
was kept once during a visit.

01:02:37.430 --> 01:02:39.020 align:middle line:90%
This is my cap.

01:02:39.020 --> 01:02:41.180 align:middle line:90%
This is my coat.

01:02:41.180 --> 01:02:44.615 align:middle line:84%
Here's my shaving gear
in its linen sack."

01:02:44.615 --> 01:02:48.140 align:middle line:90%


01:02:48.140 --> 01:02:50.360 align:middle line:84%
I'm going to end this
with a little elegy,

01:02:50.360 --> 01:02:53.720 align:middle line:90%
and it's for Terrence.

01:02:53.720 --> 01:02:56.870 align:middle line:90%
It's for Terrence.

01:02:56.870 --> 01:02:59.210 align:middle line:84%
I think I imagined
one night when

01:02:59.210 --> 01:03:02.720 align:middle line:84%
I was writing that he went
back to that place in Paris.

01:03:02.720 --> 01:03:05.810 align:middle line:90%
His soul went there.

01:03:05.810 --> 01:03:09.440 align:middle line:84%
"The page opens to
snow on a field.

01:03:09.440 --> 01:03:12.290 align:middle line:90%
Boot-holed month, black hour.

01:03:12.290 --> 01:03:16.940 align:middle line:84%
The bottle in your coat, half
vodka, half winter light.

01:03:16.940 --> 01:03:22.550 align:middle line:84%
To what, and to whom
does one say yes?

01:03:22.550 --> 01:03:28.990 align:middle line:84%
If God were the uncertain,
would you cling to him?

01:03:28.990 --> 01:03:33.040 align:middle line:84%
Under a tattoo of stars,
the gate open, so silent,

01:03:33.040 --> 01:03:35.410 align:middle line:90%
so like a tomb.

01:03:35.410 --> 01:03:39.190 align:middle line:84%
Descending the city you most
loved, an empty stairwell.

01:03:39.190 --> 01:03:42.280 align:middle line:84%
On your clay breath
as the next rain

01:03:42.280 --> 01:03:45.660 align:middle line:90%
lifts invisibly from the Seine.

01:03:45.660 --> 01:03:50.250 align:middle line:84%
With solitude, your coat
open, you walk steady,

01:03:50.250 --> 01:03:53.460 align:middle line:84%
as if the railings were
there, and your hands

01:03:53.460 --> 01:03:57.180 align:middle line:90%
weren't passing through them.

01:03:57.180 --> 01:03:59.280 align:middle line:84%
When things were ready,
they poured on fuel

01:03:59.280 --> 01:04:01.620 align:middle line:90%
and touched off the fire.

01:04:01.620 --> 01:04:03.840 align:middle line:90%
They waited for a high wind.

01:04:03.840 --> 01:04:06.900 align:middle line:84%
It was very fine,
that powdered bone.

01:04:06.900 --> 01:04:10.680 align:middle line:84%
It was put into sacks, and
when there were enough,

01:04:10.680 --> 01:04:15.130 align:middle line:84%
we went to a bridge
on the Narew River.

01:04:15.130 --> 01:04:19.900 align:middle line:84%
And even less explicit phrases
survived to make charcoal

01:04:19.900 --> 01:04:23.120 align:middle line:90%
for laundry irons.

01:04:23.120 --> 01:04:28.260 align:middle line:84%
And so we revolt against
silence with a bit of speaking.

01:04:28.260 --> 01:04:31.200 align:middle line:84%
The page is a charred
field where the dead would

01:04:31.200 --> 01:04:33.270 align:middle line:90%
have written, nous continuons.

01:04:33.270 --> 01:04:37.320 align:middle line:84%
We went on, and it was like
living through something again

01:04:37.320 --> 01:04:41.240 align:middle line:84%
one could not live
through again.

01:04:41.240 --> 01:04:46.010 align:middle line:84%
War will no longer be
declared, but only continued.

01:04:46.010 --> 01:04:51.730 align:middle line:84%
And the shadow of eternal
armament color the heavens.

01:04:51.730 --> 01:04:55.300 align:middle line:84%
The soul behind you no
longer inhabits your life.

01:04:55.300 --> 01:04:58.000 align:middle line:84%
The unlit house with
its breathless windows

01:04:58.000 --> 01:05:04.120 align:middle line:84%
and a chimney of ruined wings,
where wind becomes an area.

01:05:04.120 --> 01:05:07.420 align:middle line:90%
Your name, voices from a field.

01:05:07.420 --> 01:05:10.180 align:middle line:90%
And you, smoke.

01:05:10.180 --> 01:05:11.470 align:middle line:90%
Dissonance.

01:05:11.470 --> 01:05:12.430 align:middle line:90%
A psalm.

01:05:12.430 --> 01:05:15.130 align:middle line:90%
A stairwell."

01:05:15.130 --> 01:05:16.000 align:middle line:90%
Thank you.

01:05:16.000 --> 01:05:19.350 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

01:05:19.350 --> 01:05:30.000 align:middle line:90%