WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.260 align:middle line:90% 00:00:04.260 --> 00:00:06.660 align:middle line:84% Thank you all for being here and thank 00:00:06.660 --> 00:00:10.140 align:middle line:84% you Rick, for that introduction, and Demetria, for your reading. 00:00:10.140 --> 00:00:14.220 align:middle line:84% And to Gail and the Poetry Center 00:00:14.220 --> 00:00:17.550 align:middle line:84% for putting together this wonderful event. 00:00:17.550 --> 00:00:20.115 align:middle line:84% It's amazing amount of people out there in the mall. 00:00:20.115 --> 00:00:22.770 align:middle line:90% 00:00:22.770 --> 00:00:24.000 align:middle line:90% Well, it's interesting. 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:28.230 align:middle line:84% I always like to leave my readings open to the accident. 00:00:28.230 --> 00:00:33.000 align:middle line:84% And so since Rick caught me in my own words, 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:35.670 align:middle line:84% I'm actually going to read a long sequence 00:00:35.670 --> 00:00:38.670 align:middle line:84% from this book, which I haven't really 00:00:38.670 --> 00:00:42.030 align:middle line:84% read before because usually there's 00:00:42.030 --> 00:00:44.610 align:middle line:84% something about the attention of the audience that 00:00:44.610 --> 00:00:47.820 align:middle line:90% seems to preclude it. 00:00:47.820 --> 00:00:52.035 align:middle line:84% But I'm going to read this line sequence from "Wild Tongue." 00:00:52.035 --> 00:01:03.930 align:middle line:90% 00:01:03.930 --> 00:01:07.080 align:middle line:90% On the Island of Bones. 00:01:07.080 --> 00:01:11.790 align:middle line:84% Predictably, for the wound did not begin with us: 00:01:11.790 --> 00:01:14.370 align:middle line:90% my left temple throbs. 00:01:14.370 --> 00:01:19.410 align:middle line:84% The first Europeans found this island scattered with bones 00:01:19.410 --> 00:01:25.230 align:middle line:84% as if a scavenger bird had sat on my shoulder all night, 00:01:25.230 --> 00:01:28.350 align:middle line:84% cayo de hueso, trying to eat its way 00:01:28.350 --> 00:01:31.530 align:middle line:90% into the most intimate spaces. 00:01:31.530 --> 00:01:37.050 align:middle line:84% Connected to the continent by a ligature of reef, of myself, 00:01:37.050 --> 00:01:39.600 align:middle line:90% its claws so grasping. 00:01:39.600 --> 00:01:44.100 align:middle line:84% A siren shore to those explorers, their desire, 00:01:44.100 --> 00:01:46.020 align:middle line:90% and their fear-- 00:01:46.020 --> 00:01:49.920 align:middle line:84% (though I could call it my harpy husband), 00:01:49.920 --> 00:01:53.760 align:middle line:84% into the interstices of my muscles 00:01:53.760 --> 00:01:57.600 align:middle line:84% full of the enchantments of erasure, 00:01:57.600 --> 00:02:01.830 align:middle line:84% that I seem the bruise of his insistence, 00:02:01.830 --> 00:02:05.790 align:middle line:84% so many shreds and wounds of meaning 00:02:05.790 --> 00:02:09.840 align:middle line:84% that I can barely look through the white sheer panel 00:02:09.840 --> 00:02:12.960 align:middle line:90% that veils the sea. 00:02:12.960 --> 00:02:18.180 align:middle line:84% The poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman. 00:02:18.180 --> 00:02:21.300 align:middle line:90% Round eye, round island. 00:02:21.300 --> 00:02:25.410 align:middle line:84% And so they found the shining mirror of the sea. 00:02:25.410 --> 00:02:29.460 align:middle line:84% But I am not a man so I have to look at the ocean 00:02:29.460 --> 00:02:36.060 align:middle line:84% as if I, by following the lines they memorized as if I, 00:02:36.060 --> 00:02:40.950 align:middle line:90% as if I existed, as if I am. 00:02:40.950 --> 00:02:45.030 align:middle line:84% The word cayo altering on many lips. 00:02:45.030 --> 00:02:49.860 align:middle line:84% And so my fingers are as gentle and as hesitant 00:02:49.860 --> 00:02:53.460 align:middle line:84% into a word that in another language 00:02:53.460 --> 00:02:58.500 align:middle line:84% as if I touched the wound in you sounded like the word 00:02:58.500 --> 00:03:00.180 align:middle line:90% for a key. 00:03:00.180 --> 00:03:06.240 align:middle line:84% Swimming into the blue of the water, the body of the world. 00:03:06.240 --> 00:03:07.770 align:middle line:90% Oh mastery. 00:03:07.770 --> 00:03:13.350 align:middle line:84% Of signs, of doors, of maps, and made the world and something 00:03:13.350 --> 00:03:19.140 align:middle line:84% within me into a graveyard rising from the dead where 00:03:19.140 --> 00:03:21.900 align:middle line:90% once was paradise. 00:03:21.900 --> 00:03:24.990 align:middle line:90% Oh yes it's paradise. 00:03:24.990 --> 00:03:30.330 align:middle line:84% For yes, I think that form inflicts a kind of violence. 00:03:30.330 --> 00:03:34.290 align:middle line:84% Perhaps the repetitive step of the iamb, 00:03:34.290 --> 00:03:41.250 align:middle line:84% that girl I am for whom it was named in every Greek tragedy. 00:03:41.250 --> 00:03:48.210 align:middle line:84% The one whose cry interrupts everything enchanted or in pain 00:03:48.210 --> 00:03:53.340 align:middle line:84% was caused by shackles upon her shins. 00:03:53.340 --> 00:03:55.500 align:middle line:84% Oh I remember those women waiting 00:03:55.500 --> 00:03:58.950 align:middle line:84% outside the gate of the Alhambra always 00:03:58.950 --> 00:04:03.120 align:middle line:84% waiting outside the gates to capture me 00:04:03.120 --> 00:04:06.300 align:middle line:84% with a weight of sprig of rosemary 00:04:06.300 --> 00:04:10.080 align:middle line:90% they placed upon my open palm. 00:04:10.080 --> 00:04:13.410 align:middle line:84% Though perhaps the apologists are right. 00:04:13.410 --> 00:04:16.019 align:middle line:90% I don't think so. 00:04:16.019 --> 00:04:21.779 align:middle line:84% And she wore nothing but the finest gold chain of privilege. 00:04:21.779 --> 00:04:24.802 align:middle line:84% As if to captivate with intricate o 00:04:24.802 --> 00:04:27.780 align:middle line:90% verde te quiero verde, 00:04:27.780 --> 00:04:32.520 align:middle line:84% my walking through the world a drowsy somnabulist, 00:04:32.520 --> 00:04:36.270 align:middle line:84% full of the almond dust of Granada. 00:04:36.270 --> 00:04:40.560 align:middle line:84% Perhaps there was no other way for her to move 00:04:40.560 --> 00:04:44.220 align:middle line:84% and what we call order is a wounding 00:04:44.220 --> 00:04:50.910 align:middle line:84% like hobbled horses in a meadow, a dragonfly tied upon a string. 00:04:50.910 --> 00:04:56.200 align:middle line:84% For I am thinking, the body of the ocean. 00:04:56.200 --> 00:04:58.690 align:middle line:84% Yet you could not know when you sent me 00:04:58.690 --> 00:05:03.070 align:middle line:84% this charm of the Gypsies how I would cast it. 00:05:03.070 --> 00:05:10.474 align:middle line:84% I would stand in the aureole of any candle and say to any you-- 00:05:10.474 --> 00:05:14.980 align:middle line:84% Outside my room is so fluidly and chaotically beautiful. 00:05:14.980 --> 00:05:18.820 align:middle line:84% The light so random and impending. 00:05:18.820 --> 00:05:22.210 align:middle line:84% Warmth of heart and passion fire, 00:05:22.210 --> 00:05:26.950 align:middle line:84% to be blessed by the heavens is our desire, 00:05:26.950 --> 00:05:29.590 align:middle line:84% that I feel nothing can correspond 00:05:29.590 --> 00:05:37.180 align:middle line:84% to it except my feeling for you though it would always be I, 00:05:37.180 --> 00:05:41.290 align:middle line:84% full of the crushed petals of that flower Eros gave 00:05:41.290 --> 00:05:45.070 align:middle line:84% the god of silence, like drops of blood 00:05:45.070 --> 00:05:49.720 align:middle line:84% my slightly cut finger left upon the floor. 00:05:49.720 --> 00:05:53.410 align:middle line:84% For depth and subtlety of feeling, 00:05:53.410 --> 00:05:58.930 align:middle line:84% and how can one ever write the idea of order? 00:05:58.930 --> 00:06:03.040 align:middle line:84% Oh, they wanted me to cross their palms with silver 00:06:03.040 --> 00:06:05.800 align:middle line:90% and have my fortune read. 00:06:05.800 --> 00:06:09.550 align:middle line:84% It's like thinking of the anchorite's penance 00:06:09.550 --> 00:06:13.330 align:middle line:84% or the flagellant's whip while daydreaming 00:06:13.330 --> 00:06:16.180 align:middle line:90% in the arms of the beloved. 00:06:16.180 --> 00:06:19.930 align:middle line:84% A clay heart, a spell of fire, a feather, 00:06:19.930 --> 00:06:26.130 align:middle line:84% and a taste of the magick potion like salt upon the tongue. 00:06:26.130 --> 00:06:31.500 align:middle line:84% Oh beloved, I keep thinking some other idea is needed. 00:06:31.500 --> 00:06:35.200 align:middle line:90% I keep waking to the impossible. 00:06:35.200 --> 00:06:40.030 align:middle line:84% A talisman of terracotta, a child's toy, a game 00:06:40.030 --> 00:06:44.950 align:middle line:84% incised with a symbol that is one shape or is two. 00:06:44.950 --> 00:06:50.080 align:middle line:84% Hour, at the very moment, the obscure body of the night 00:06:50.080 --> 00:06:54.400 align:middle line:84% begins to fill with impending light, inverted 00:06:54.400 --> 00:07:00.100 align:middle line:84% cross that rises out of an x but viewed if framed by the heart 00:07:00.100 --> 00:07:04.240 align:middle line:90% shape, an x rooted in the Earth. 00:07:04.240 --> 00:07:07.030 align:middle line:84% When the depths are no longer mistaken 00:07:07.030 --> 00:07:12.280 align:middle line:84% for the cold compression, the vacuity that we have made them, 00:07:12.280 --> 00:07:17.650 align:middle line:84% and the I, having adjusted to the shades of its absence, 00:07:17.650 --> 00:07:20.920 align:middle line:84% and flaring out of the rising stem 00:07:20.920 --> 00:07:24.790 align:middle line:84% could be a child's depiction of a flower, 00:07:24.790 --> 00:07:29.110 align:middle line:84% as the eye adjusts to perceive the phosphorescent and 00:07:29.110 --> 00:07:34.570 align:middle line:84% transparent forms of the fish that thrive within the depths, 00:07:34.570 --> 00:07:39.910 align:middle line:84% for the spell you sent me is a spell already cast. 00:07:39.910 --> 00:07:43.930 align:middle line:84% Underwater, vents of volcanic steam surrounded 00:07:43.930 --> 00:07:46.480 align:middle line:84% by the waving meadow of sea worms, 00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:50.740 align:middle line:84% the brain coral in its aquamarine electric halo 00:07:50.740 --> 00:07:53.950 align:middle line:84% that seems to think in bodily terms, 00:07:53.950 --> 00:07:58.960 align:middle line:84% so that its many creatures form one green continuous thread, 00:07:58.960 --> 00:08:02.710 align:middle line:84% a kind of unraveling nimbus, and each creature 00:08:02.710 --> 00:08:07.270 align:middle line:84% is so rarely formed that I marvel at it as if it were 00:08:07.270 --> 00:08:10.180 align:middle line:90% the unique body of the beloved. 00:08:10.180 --> 00:08:11.950 align:middle line:90% Oh you, it's only you. 00:08:11.950 --> 00:08:16.030 align:middle line:84% That freckle on your arm, each creature bearing 00:08:16.030 --> 00:08:18.610 align:middle line:90% its own radiance upon its head. 00:08:18.610 --> 00:08:23.460 align:middle line:84% A hook, a lantern, a shimmering veil. 00:08:23.460 --> 00:08:27.900 align:middle line:84% With the innocence of sharks resting together in the waters, 00:08:27.900 --> 00:08:32.340 align:middle line:84% if I sat in midnight and watched the water move, 00:08:32.340 --> 00:08:36.510 align:middle line:84% I could not write these words, which abide in the dark 00:08:36.510 --> 00:08:39.270 align:middle line:90% and watch the water move. 00:08:39.270 --> 00:08:42.870 align:middle line:84% You who are evening, you who are dusk, 00:08:42.870 --> 00:08:47.850 align:middle line:84% you who are every hour singing to me in some constant 00:08:47.850 --> 00:08:50.520 align:middle line:90% or in constant tone. 00:08:50.520 --> 00:08:53.730 align:middle line:84% For in this world I want nothing but you, 00:08:53.730 --> 00:08:57.390 align:middle line:84% and the round eye of the moon looks to me 00:08:57.390 --> 00:09:00.540 align:middle line:84% as if it were sick of all the stories 00:09:00.540 --> 00:09:02.760 align:middle line:90% it has been made to bear. 00:09:02.760 --> 00:09:07.350 align:middle line:84% And the seabirds that dive and arc over the water each morning 00:09:07.350 --> 00:09:11.730 align:middle line:84% are silent, though they make of themselves a weaving. 00:09:11.730 --> 00:09:15.210 align:middle line:84% Whatever sound they make is the sound of wind, 00:09:15.210 --> 00:09:21.990 align:middle line:84% the sound of wave we try to cast a spell upon. 00:09:21.990 --> 00:09:25.050 align:middle line:84% Who could sail these waters, so hanged 00:09:25.050 --> 00:09:29.760 align:middle line:84% with sun and blue, the delicacies of these breezes, 00:09:29.760 --> 00:09:34.620 align:middle line:84% and land upon this shore of serrated leaf and black ringed 00:09:34.620 --> 00:09:38.490 align:middle line:84% dove and plant a cross and a gallows. 00:09:38.490 --> 00:09:41.910 align:middle line:84% Two shapes of order and inquisition. 00:09:41.910 --> 00:09:46.950 align:middle line:84% And architect the shadow of what we mistake for passion 00:09:46.950 --> 00:09:51.600 align:middle line:84% upon the living mangrove islands where the nurse sharks lie 00:09:51.600 --> 00:09:55.740 align:middle line:84% in basking herds, their brown and blond coiled 00:09:55.740 --> 00:10:00.900 align:middle line:84% ease in the blue shallows, a nestling of shape and length. 00:10:00.900 --> 00:10:04.530 align:middle line:84% Where the trees themselves are so rooted, 00:10:04.530 --> 00:10:06.910 align:middle line:90% extending into coral. 00:10:06.910 --> 00:10:11.460 align:middle line:84% Each rootlet finding their way in and so entwined 00:10:11.460 --> 00:10:16.230 align:middle line:84% that in their knotted hands the Earth itself is caught. 00:10:16.230 --> 00:10:19.980 align:middle line:84% All the dust blown by the wind, debris 00:10:19.980 --> 00:10:23.730 align:middle line:84% of leaves and scattered shell, and so the land 00:10:23.730 --> 00:10:26.370 align:middle line:90% takes form in that embrace. 00:10:26.370 --> 00:10:29.970 align:middle line:84% So multi celled and polyformed that the coral 00:10:29.970 --> 00:10:33.450 align:middle line:84% glows with the electricity of its own being 00:10:33.450 --> 00:10:37.740 align:middle line:84% and wears the veils once attributed to the divine body 00:10:37.740 --> 00:10:39.240 align:middle line:90% of the goddess. 00:10:39.240 --> 00:10:43.380 align:middle line:84% The veil that draped the rioting hair of the woman saint 00:10:43.380 --> 00:10:45.690 align:middle line:84% so she could enter a church and not 00:10:45.690 --> 00:10:50.670 align:middle line:84% disturb those praying with the protean quality of her hair 00:10:50.670 --> 00:10:56.010 align:middle line:84% or thought, and the anemones in their long and jointly swaying 00:10:56.010 --> 00:11:00.030 align:middle line:84% seem part grass, part wind, and mostly finger. 00:11:00.030 --> 00:11:03.390 align:middle line:84% So swaying back and forth through the currents, 00:11:03.390 --> 00:11:07.380 align:middle line:84% so that being in seems to caress itself 00:11:07.380 --> 00:11:11.220 align:middle line:84% while outside the most expensive window 00:11:11.220 --> 00:11:16.230 align:middle line:84% a plastic heron with its open crook of neck planted 00:11:16.230 --> 00:11:19.680 align:middle line:84% on the top of some beach house has replaced 00:11:19.680 --> 00:11:22.770 align:middle line:84% the gallows and the Pontifical sceptre 00:11:22.770 --> 00:11:26.520 align:middle line:84% at the top of the beach umbrella. 00:11:26.520 --> 00:11:30.010 align:middle line:84% Its toothed crown above the collappased-- 00:11:30.010 --> 00:11:34.290 align:middle line:84% Yes, I've misspelled that but leave it. 00:11:34.290 --> 00:11:37.050 align:middle line:90% Let language bear its own ruin-- 00:11:37.050 --> 00:11:40.140 align:middle line:84% glaucous width of the parasol that 00:11:40.140 --> 00:11:43.080 align:middle line:84% has replaced the shadow of the cross. 00:11:43.080 --> 00:11:47.310 align:middle line:84% Its implication of miter and the gunship 00:11:47.310 --> 00:11:51.060 align:middle line:84% that goes by full of tourists, full of blanks. 00:11:51.060 --> 00:11:53.610 align:middle line:84% Though out there beyond our sight 00:11:53.610 --> 00:11:57.270 align:middle line:84% we know the actual vessel of war carries 00:11:57.270 --> 00:12:05.300 align:middle line:84% its red crosses and guns full of live death dealing ammunition. 00:12:05.300 --> 00:12:07.640 align:middle line:84% He said that he thought his poem was 00:12:07.640 --> 00:12:11.940 align:middle line:84% about another kind of colonization of the mind. 00:12:11.940 --> 00:12:16.250 align:middle line:84% But when he went past and cast his look like a net 00:12:16.250 --> 00:12:20.180 align:middle line:84% upon the tall blond woman I was talking to, 00:12:20.180 --> 00:12:24.260 align:middle line:84% someone else's wife who looked like his wife, 00:12:24.260 --> 00:12:28.310 align:middle line:84% I understood that he did not mind the other forms 00:12:28.310 --> 00:12:30.530 align:middle line:90% of colonization. 00:12:30.530 --> 00:12:33.980 align:middle line:84% That even speaking as a man who had been deprived 00:12:33.980 --> 00:12:39.470 align:middle line:84% of the prerogatives of men, all that European pride 00:12:39.470 --> 00:12:44.120 align:middle line:84% in a history that pained him, how he'd gone back again 00:12:44.120 --> 00:12:49.280 align:middle line:84% and again to Italy trying to resist its seducation, 00:12:49.280 --> 00:12:51.980 align:middle line:84% it was really sort of laborious, someone 00:12:51.980 --> 00:12:55.430 align:middle line:84% had said earlier that writing poetry was 00:12:55.430 --> 00:12:58.520 align:middle line:84% like flying through concrete but I 00:12:58.520 --> 00:13:01.640 align:middle line:84% had the feeling I was watching a man turn 00:13:01.640 --> 00:13:04.340 align:middle line:90% into a monument of himself. 00:13:04.340 --> 00:13:10.370 align:middle line:84% Cell by self the aggregation of authority and celebrity 00:13:10.370 --> 00:13:14.360 align:middle line:84% until there would be a sun basted statue with his name 00:13:14.360 --> 00:13:19.100 align:middle line:84% upon it in some square, ponderous with the details 00:13:19.100 --> 00:13:23.000 align:middle line:84% of the tourist, which came alive when it stirred 00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:26.990 align:middle line:84% for a moment with something like anger, remembering 00:13:26.990 --> 00:13:34.420 align:middle line:84% how quote, "with his prodigious ambition one begins" unquote. 00:13:34.420 --> 00:13:38.890 align:middle line:84% They were so lovely, so generous arriving in their canoes 00:13:38.890 --> 00:13:43.660 align:middle line:84% to weigh us down with fruits and flowers and the sweet warmth 00:13:43.660 --> 00:13:45.470 align:middle line:90% of themselves. 00:13:45.470 --> 00:13:49.510 align:middle line:84% And I knew by this they would be fit for servitude, 00:13:49.510 --> 00:13:53.680 align:middle line:84% so sweetly obedient they already were, even 00:13:53.680 --> 00:13:56.530 align:middle line:84% to the gentlest breezes of their paradise 00:13:56.530 --> 00:14:00.250 align:middle line:84% that they did bend and sway like the anemones 00:14:00.250 --> 00:14:03.940 align:middle line:84% who in those shallow depths do swirl and move, 00:14:03.940 --> 00:14:07.300 align:middle line:84% opening and closing like the hands of women 00:14:07.300 --> 00:14:09.940 align:middle line:90% caught in another's tide. 00:14:09.940 --> 00:14:14.110 align:middle line:84% Angels they seemed in kindness, but bodily enough, 00:14:14.110 --> 00:14:16.420 align:middle line:90% being no more than human. 00:14:16.420 --> 00:14:22.420 align:middle line:84% Their qualities of being angelic so marked them out as slaves 00:14:22.420 --> 00:14:25.990 align:middle line:84% that it seemed to me those first manacles were 00:14:25.990 --> 00:14:31.360 align:middle line:84% but the bracelets to anchor them to this Earth, which we must 00:14:31.360 --> 00:14:35.590 align:middle line:84% make groan with our labor and our discipline of gold 00:14:35.590 --> 00:14:40.420 align:middle line:84% and emeralds and all the salts and spices that alone 00:14:40.420 --> 00:14:44.170 align:middle line:90% can make life palatable to us. 00:14:44.170 --> 00:14:47.650 align:middle line:84% Its penance become many piercing flavors 00:14:47.650 --> 00:14:51.370 align:middle line:90% expiring on an exhausted tongue. 00:14:51.370 --> 00:14:53.260 align:middle line:90% And so I leashed them. 00:14:53.260 --> 00:14:57.130 align:middle line:84% As once in my native country when I was a boy 00:14:57.130 --> 00:15:01.540 align:middle line:84% I tied great eyed iridescent dragonflies 00:15:01.540 --> 00:15:04.480 align:middle line:84% to filaments of string and watched 00:15:04.480 --> 00:15:07.750 align:middle line:84% them fly back and forth all morning 00:15:07.750 --> 00:15:11.080 align:middle line:84% while my mother's laundry dried on the line 00:15:11.080 --> 00:15:14.725 align:middle line:84% until their wings tore off as their hearts failed. 00:15:14.725 --> 00:15:17.820 align:middle line:90% 00:15:17.820 --> 00:15:20.760 align:middle line:84% I thought the heron, its neck crooked so 00:15:20.760 --> 00:15:22.320 align:middle line:90% that the beak angeled-- 00:15:22.320 --> 00:15:24.270 align:middle line:90% I meant to say angled-- 00:15:24.270 --> 00:15:28.950 align:middle line:84% at 45 degrees into the air as if the air were water, 00:15:28.950 --> 00:15:32.580 align:middle line:84% as if all being were an ocean where the heron fished, 00:15:32.580 --> 00:15:33.510 align:middle line:90% was real. 00:15:33.510 --> 00:15:35.550 align:middle line:90% But it was not. 00:15:35.550 --> 00:15:39.420 align:middle line:84% As I saw only when I drew nearer to the world that 00:15:39.420 --> 00:15:43.050 align:middle line:84% seemed so framed by my expensive view-- 00:15:43.050 --> 00:15:47.130 align:middle line:84% the sheer drapes, the plastic solar blocking panels, 00:15:47.130 --> 00:15:50.550 align:middle line:84% the frame of window, the frame of doors, 00:15:50.550 --> 00:15:55.710 align:middle line:84% opening onto the balcony with its frame of wrought iron, 00:15:55.710 --> 00:16:00.510 align:middle line:84% for when I drew nearer, I saw the heron was equally fixed. 00:16:00.510 --> 00:16:05.700 align:middle line:84% It too was part of the frame, architecture of the I, 00:16:05.700 --> 00:16:08.610 align:middle line:84% so that the Atlantic blued by the sun 00:16:08.610 --> 00:16:12.630 align:middle line:84% would be caught in the angle of its motionless neck. 00:16:12.630 --> 00:16:16.430 align:middle line:84% So do we try to still the world, to make 00:16:16.430 --> 00:16:20.340 align:middle line:84% it rest in lyrick and obey, thinking 00:16:20.340 --> 00:16:24.450 align:middle line:84% that it floats like water upon the eye of God, 00:16:24.450 --> 00:16:27.900 align:middle line:84% and try to find in ourselves some equivalent 00:16:27.900 --> 00:16:31.830 align:middle line:84% moment of dazzling and fixed stillness, 00:16:31.830 --> 00:16:36.040 align:middle line:84% and mistake it for what we call peace. 00:16:36.040 --> 00:16:40.960 align:middle line:84% Yet we make a corpse of world and self, banish real herons 00:16:40.960 --> 00:16:46.030 align:middle line:84% and bring in their disposable replicas and posited signs, 00:16:46.030 --> 00:16:50.860 align:middle line:84% then try to benedict the corpse back into breathing. 00:16:50.860 --> 00:16:53.530 align:middle line:84% Farther on I saw that the man who 00:16:53.530 --> 00:16:57.310 align:middle line:84% had been standing on the concrete dock looking 00:16:57.310 --> 00:16:58.840 align:middle line:90% into the water 00:16:58.840 --> 00:17:03.520 align:middle line:84% (I'd mistaken him for a homeless guy) was not alone. 00:17:03.520 --> 00:17:06.859 align:middle line:84% I'd been all wrong from the beginning. 00:17:06.859 --> 00:17:10.540 align:middle line:84% Another man was in the ocean, beneath the framework 00:17:10.540 --> 00:17:13.720 align:middle line:84% of the dock, at work upon something 00:17:13.720 --> 00:17:16.869 align:middle line:90% in his t-shirt and jeans. 00:17:16.869 --> 00:17:22.000 align:middle line:84% I knew he probably floated in some raft or skiff bobbing 00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:25.030 align:middle line:84% there to reach the dock's underside. 00:17:25.030 --> 00:17:28.030 align:middle line:84% But from my vantage it seemed he had 00:17:28.030 --> 00:17:32.410 align:middle line:84% stepped into the water, his arms over his head reaching 00:17:32.410 --> 00:17:36.850 align:middle line:84% with great effort to hold up the dock, the underbelly 00:17:36.850 --> 00:17:38.140 align:middle line:90% of the world. 00:17:38.140 --> 00:17:41.200 align:middle line:84% A ceiling that pinned him in a world of waves 00:17:41.200 --> 00:17:44.665 align:middle line:84% and tossed him in the ceaselessly moving water. 00:17:44.665 --> 00:17:47.210 align:middle line:90% 00:17:47.210 --> 00:17:50.500 align:middle line:84% So the evolutionary poet is rare. 00:17:50.500 --> 00:17:54.850 align:middle line:84% In actuality, it seems to me many of my contemporaries 00:17:54.850 --> 00:17:57.070 align:middle line:90% are niche exploiters. 00:17:57.070 --> 00:18:01.060 align:middle line:84% Each one attaching itself to some crevice of the reef 00:18:01.060 --> 00:18:04.540 align:middle line:84% to make a feast of whatever predictable scrap drifts 00:18:04.540 --> 00:18:06.100 align:middle line:90% its way. 00:18:06.100 --> 00:18:10.600 align:middle line:84% At dinner thinking this, I became too feral, I think, 00:18:10.600 --> 00:18:13.120 align:middle line:90% in some conversation, 00:18:13.120 --> 00:18:16.570 align:middle line:84% I said something to the effect that no matter how 00:18:16.570 --> 00:18:20.860 align:middle line:84% complicated my view I always read a poem as if it were 00:18:20.860 --> 00:18:23.050 align:middle line:90% a matter of life and death. 00:18:23.050 --> 00:18:27.580 align:middle line:84% That I was usually disappointed, that the evolutionary poet 00:18:27.580 --> 00:18:28.780 align:middle line:90% was rare. 00:18:28.780 --> 00:18:30.970 align:middle line:84% And whatever it was I said, it made 00:18:30.970 --> 00:18:34.060 align:middle line:84% one woman go off and burst into tears 00:18:34.060 --> 00:18:36.790 align:middle line:84% and made the other attending poet disappear 00:18:36.790 --> 00:18:41.020 align:middle line:84% into another corner to begin another conversation 00:18:41.020 --> 00:18:45.370 align:middle line:84% as firefighters might ignite a backfire to try and stop 00:18:45.370 --> 00:18:49.900 align:middle line:84% the forest fire that threatens to consume a picturesque town 00:18:49.900 --> 00:18:52.280 align:middle line:90% in the mountains. 00:18:52.280 --> 00:18:57.560 align:middle line:84% Later, the same poet came back and suggested that I was drunk. 00:18:57.560 --> 00:19:00.710 align:middle line:84% So I laughed and said no, at this stage 00:19:00.710 --> 00:19:05.480 align:middle line:84% of my life I don't need to drink to be intoxicated. 00:19:05.480 --> 00:19:08.690 align:middle line:84% Doesn't anyone notice that the great poet is simply 00:19:08.690 --> 00:19:10.670 align:middle line:90% a stricken bird? 00:19:10.670 --> 00:19:12.740 align:middle line:84% Though his missing teeth, the gap 00:19:12.740 --> 00:19:15.800 align:middle line:84% of the smile that suggests a twisted beak 00:19:15.800 --> 00:19:18.500 align:middle line:90% make me feel better about him. 00:19:18.500 --> 00:19:22.220 align:middle line:84% All poets should have a touch of the monstrous. 00:19:22.220 --> 00:19:25.220 align:middle line:84% But he is only a celebrity, not that rare one 00:19:25.220 --> 00:19:29.300 align:middle line:84% who can barely breathe between the land and the sea. 00:19:29.300 --> 00:19:34.490 align:middle line:84% Who moves not knowing if fins are fins or wings are hands. 00:19:34.490 --> 00:19:38.900 align:middle line:84% Who finds these selves, who can she be who is herself 00:19:38.900 --> 00:19:41.330 align:middle line:90% and her own muse. 00:19:41.330 --> 00:19:45.590 align:middle line:84% Who can she be but you, so easily confused 00:19:45.590 --> 00:19:51.320 align:middle line:84% in all her fluid swelling with the murk and mud of being? 00:19:51.320 --> 00:19:55.640 align:middle line:84% In absolute statements poetry perishes. 00:19:55.640 --> 00:19:59.540 align:middle line:84% Empathetic imagination when required 00:19:59.540 --> 00:20:02.330 align:middle line:90% makes one fill up with the dead. 00:20:02.330 --> 00:20:05.660 align:middle line:84% The distinguished hand is frigid as 00:20:05.660 --> 00:20:09.920 align:middle line:84% if it were the hand of a corpse dreaded, dredged up 00:20:09.920 --> 00:20:11.630 align:middle line:90% from the sea. 00:20:11.630 --> 00:20:13.610 align:middle line:84% Ah, it's the feral that interests 00:20:13.610 --> 00:20:17.570 align:middle line:84% me, the animals in the room, like the feral cat, 00:20:17.570 --> 00:20:21.350 align:middle line:84% the chicken, in almost any yard: that poet, 00:20:21.350 --> 00:20:26.210 align:middle line:84% for instance, who has the eye of a living possum caught 00:20:26.210 --> 00:20:29.360 align:middle line:84% in the shine of a flashlight in the branches 00:20:29.360 --> 00:20:35.320 align:middle line:84% of a tree on the remotest hill of an Arkansas back road. 00:20:35.320 --> 00:20:40.010 align:middle line:84% Any paradise becomes too quickly swindled and expensive. 00:20:40.010 --> 00:20:42.910 align:middle line:84% So when his charge card machine doesn't work 00:20:42.910 --> 00:20:46.810 align:middle line:84% and I have no cash with which to pay him, 00:20:46.810 --> 00:20:49.210 align:middle line:84% the British guy at the internet cafe 00:20:49.210 --> 00:20:52.570 align:middle line:84% begins to endure a kind of torment 00:20:52.570 --> 00:20:56.200 align:middle line:84% between his desire to trust me and his 00:20:56.200 --> 00:20:59.680 align:middle line:84% fear that I'll stiff him of the $17 00:20:59.680 --> 00:21:03.490 align:middle line:84% that I owe him just for talking to you. 00:21:03.490 --> 00:21:08.800 align:middle line:84% And as anxiety becomes a gray upon his face, some cement 00:21:08.800 --> 00:21:14.590 align:middle line:84% of reluctance in which his faith in another tries to rise, 00:21:14.590 --> 00:21:18.140 align:middle line:84% though there's no help for it since I have no money 00:21:18.140 --> 00:21:19.300 align:middle line:90% I can give. 00:21:19.300 --> 00:21:22.720 align:middle line:84% So it's hopelessness that he gives in to. 00:21:22.720 --> 00:21:28.450 align:middle line:84% Having no choice but to trust is not a choice to trust. 00:21:28.450 --> 00:21:31.180 align:middle line:84% Perhaps he senses in himself the way 00:21:31.180 --> 00:21:36.190 align:middle line:84% in which I'm lying, for I do have a $20 in my pocket, 00:21:36.190 --> 00:21:38.200 align:middle line:84% though it's all my son and I have 00:21:38.200 --> 00:21:42.040 align:middle line:84% to eat on for the next two days until the money I've 00:21:42.040 --> 00:21:44.800 align:middle line:90% been expecting finally arrives. 00:21:44.800 --> 00:21:48.970 align:middle line:84% And perhaps it's some deeper current between us, 00:21:48.970 --> 00:21:52.780 align:middle line:84% some way of knowing what he cannot know, 00:21:52.780 --> 00:21:56.710 align:middle line:84% that makes it more difficult for him to trust me. 00:21:56.710 --> 00:21:59.350 align:middle line:84% So when I come back in the next day, 00:21:59.350 --> 00:22:01.840 align:middle line:84% the new money having arrived, he's 00:22:01.840 --> 00:22:05.800 align:middle line:84% sitting outside on a break in the lounge chair and adrift 00:22:05.800 --> 00:22:08.230 align:middle line:90% of dreams between customers. 00:22:08.230 --> 00:22:13.030 align:middle line:84% And when he sees me coming back to pay, oh how he smiles. 00:22:13.030 --> 00:22:18.400 align:middle line:84% Oh love, he calls out to me as if this paradise, real estated 00:22:18.400 --> 00:22:23.020 align:middle line:84% and pirated into limbo, were paradise again though 00:22:23.020 --> 00:22:26.170 align:middle line:84% in a different way for being merely human, 00:22:26.170 --> 00:22:29.300 align:middle line:84% for all our faltering and our lies, 00:22:29.300 --> 00:22:32.710 align:middle line:84% some hovering shape in the air around us, 00:22:32.710 --> 00:22:38.292 align:middle line:84% our selves opening as if we were free, 00:22:38.292 --> 00:22:41.630 align:middle line:84% snaggly toothed man who plays songs requested 00:22:41.630 --> 00:22:46.760 align:middle line:84% on his violin, guy who spray paints himself in warship gray 00:22:46.760 --> 00:22:50.260 align:middle line:84% and stands motionless on a corner, 00:22:50.260 --> 00:22:53.870 align:middle line:84% young girl who paints a plate with a place name, 00:22:53.870 --> 00:22:57.920 align:middle line:84% the obligatory palm tree and wave of water, 00:22:57.920 --> 00:23:02.990 align:middle line:84% middle aged fatso who'll tell a dirty joke for $0.50, 00:23:02.990 --> 00:23:07.730 align:middle line:84% ex hippie who has a parrot ride on his dog's back while the dog 00:23:07.730 --> 00:23:09.800 align:middle line:90% wears sunglasses, 00:23:09.800 --> 00:23:12.380 align:middle line:84% young woman, her face fainted white 00:23:12.380 --> 00:23:15.050 align:middle line:84% and fluttering, dress and feathers 00:23:15.050 --> 00:23:19.280 align:middle line:84% of a Victorian angel in an elaborate pantomime, 00:23:19.280 --> 00:23:22.640 align:middle line:84% pleading to heaven, scraping gratitude, 00:23:22.640 --> 00:23:25.250 align:middle line:84% elaborate over the amount of money 00:23:25.250 --> 00:23:30.170 align:middle line:84% dropped into a tin, it's all the racket of teeth chattering 00:23:30.170 --> 00:23:31.250 align:middle line:90% together, 00:23:31.250 --> 00:23:34.070 align:middle line:84% showtime for those couples who come down 00:23:34.070 --> 00:23:36.770 align:middle line:84% the gang planks of the cruise ships 00:23:36.770 --> 00:23:42.110 align:middle line:84% like lumbering animal couples of an ark gone wrong, filled 00:23:42.110 --> 00:23:46.790 align:middle line:84% with replicas of the same species, hippopotami, 00:23:46.790 --> 00:23:51.320 align:middle line:84% shrewd weasels, so when the boy sitting on the curb 00:23:51.320 --> 00:23:54.440 align:middle line:84% shouts to the sleepwalking couples who clot up 00:23:54.440 --> 00:23:57.830 align:middle line:84% the sidewalk with the maneuvering of their rumps, 00:23:57.830 --> 00:24:02.540 align:middle line:84% those whose eyes are fixed on some invisible and distant 00:24:02.540 --> 00:24:06.680 align:middle line:84% horizon by all that they have drunk, he cries out 00:24:06.680 --> 00:24:10.580 align:middle line:84% We don't want anything, we have what we need. 00:24:10.580 --> 00:24:14.510 align:middle line:84% And he means by this the sandwich that his hands are 00:24:14.510 --> 00:24:19.160 align:middle line:84% still full of, its brown bread and overflowing lettuce 00:24:19.160 --> 00:24:24.290 align:middle line:84% and turkey as if it were the plenty of the earth itself, 00:24:24.290 --> 00:24:26.870 align:middle line:90% a kind of cornucopia. 00:24:26.870 --> 00:24:28.730 align:middle line:90% We don't want your money. 00:24:28.730 --> 00:24:32.360 align:middle line:84% All we want is a little acknowledgment here. 00:24:32.360 --> 00:24:37.710 align:middle line:84% I look at him and smile and say hello and ask how are you. 00:24:37.710 --> 00:24:40.340 align:middle line:90% He says fine, how about you? 00:24:40.340 --> 00:24:44.480 align:middle line:84% And our eyes are equal, so fixed upon each other, 00:24:44.480 --> 00:24:48.320 align:middle line:84% until the drift bears me away, how are you? 00:24:48.320 --> 00:24:49.490 align:middle line:90% How are you? 00:24:49.490 --> 00:24:51.890 align:middle line:90% How are you? 00:24:51.890 --> 00:24:54.740 align:middle line:84% In land's end bight all the ships 00:24:54.740 --> 00:24:58.370 align:middle line:84% were tied, the replicas of sailing ships. 00:24:58.370 --> 00:25:02.300 align:middle line:84% The turtle kraal images of slaughtered turtles 00:25:02.300 --> 00:25:06.290 align:middle line:84% and only one very small living turtle, 00:25:06.290 --> 00:25:10.760 align:middle line:84% a female with an injured fin, floating in the rescue tank 00:25:10.760 --> 00:25:12.710 align:middle line:90% just inside the door. 00:25:12.710 --> 00:25:17.480 align:middle line:84% And outside the ocean too is full of junk. 00:25:17.480 --> 00:25:21.980 align:middle line:84% The scattering of seaweed like burnt straw upon the water. 00:25:21.980 --> 00:25:25.640 align:middle line:84% A dead pelican, its head folded into the water, 00:25:25.640 --> 00:25:31.730 align:middle line:84% and a small jellyfish, which at first I took for a plastic bag 00:25:31.730 --> 00:25:33.770 align:middle line:90% and then seemed dead 00:25:33.770 --> 00:25:38.510 align:middle line:84% but then my son threw a pebble into the water 00:25:38.510 --> 00:25:42.080 align:middle line:84% and at the sound of threat, the jellyfish 00:25:42.080 --> 00:25:47.360 align:middle line:84% pulsed and began filling itself up with water and contracting 00:25:47.360 --> 00:25:49.460 align:middle line:90% frantically to get away. 00:25:49.460 --> 00:25:52.970 align:middle line:84% So hard for a creature made of water 00:25:52.970 --> 00:25:58.220 align:middle line:84% to make a way through water, for its road was everywhere. 00:25:58.220 --> 00:26:02.960 align:middle line:84% And as it pulsed and quieted, letting itself relax back 00:26:02.960 --> 00:26:07.820 align:middle line:84% into its drifting, it moved with the muscular contractions 00:26:07.820 --> 00:26:12.080 align:middle line:84% of the human heart that does not move in linear ways 00:26:12.080 --> 00:26:17.000 align:middle line:84% but drifts and is taken and pauses and stops 00:26:17.000 --> 00:26:21.030 align:middle line:90% and can only open or close. 00:26:21.030 --> 00:26:23.970 align:middle line:84% As a dream that lapped, as the water does, 00:26:23.970 --> 00:26:26.430 align:middle line:90% at the labia of every form. 00:26:26.430 --> 00:26:27.720 align:middle line:90% For what is it? 00:26:27.720 --> 00:26:29.700 align:middle line:90% Should I say it's the muse? 00:26:29.700 --> 00:26:32.310 align:middle line:84% For all that it brings me is the page 00:26:32.310 --> 00:26:35.340 align:middle line:84% trembling upon that pirate chest, which 00:26:35.340 --> 00:26:39.000 align:middle line:84% has been turned into a piece of decorative furniture 00:26:39.000 --> 00:26:41.400 align:middle line:90% in this expensive room. 00:26:41.400 --> 00:26:44.310 align:middle line:84% A page torn between the wind that lifts up 00:26:44.310 --> 00:26:47.640 align:middle line:84% like a wing and the force of gravity that 00:26:47.640 --> 00:26:52.020 align:middle line:84% makes it press against the surface of whatever it rests 00:26:52.020 --> 00:26:53.190 align:middle line:90% upon. 00:26:53.190 --> 00:26:58.710 align:middle line:84% Or perhaps more realistically it is the phantom of my own desire 00:26:58.710 --> 00:27:03.090 align:middle line:84% that shapes out of nothing but its dreaming self and nerve 00:27:03.090 --> 00:27:04.110 align:middle line:90% endings. 00:27:04.110 --> 00:27:06.750 align:middle line:84% All the cells open into the night 00:27:06.750 --> 00:27:10.020 align:middle line:90% as the anemones open to water. 00:27:10.020 --> 00:27:14.700 align:middle line:84% Caught in the longing for what they are not, for in that sense 00:27:14.700 --> 00:27:19.050 align:middle line:84% every Helen is a phantom, dreaming in her Egypt. 00:27:19.050 --> 00:27:21.450 align:middle line:90% And if so, why call at you? 00:27:21.450 --> 00:27:24.270 align:middle line:84% Why not give it tthe more easily defined 00:27:24.270 --> 00:27:28.200 align:middle line:84% shape of the body dancing on that corner or the one 00:27:28.200 --> 00:27:32.070 align:middle line:84% who will show me her breasts though I do not want her to. 00:27:32.070 --> 00:27:36.690 align:middle line:84% Or the one who says laughing my eyes are like chispas, 00:27:36.690 --> 00:27:41.130 align:middle line:84% those sparks rise into the air though they are full of fire, 00:27:41.130 --> 00:27:43.420 align:middle line:90% as if they might take flight. 00:27:43.420 --> 00:27:46.890 align:middle line:84% And yet it is you and your words that wake me. 00:27:46.890 --> 00:27:50.550 align:middle line:84% Not in your voice for I don't know what your voice sounds 00:27:50.550 --> 00:27:55.050 align:middle line:84% like and so cannot hear it even in a dream. 00:27:55.050 --> 00:27:58.860 align:middle line:84% It was just the words themselves that were embodied, 00:27:58.860 --> 00:28:03.750 align:middle line:84% a kind of presence with gravity and subtlety of feeling, 00:28:03.750 --> 00:28:07.360 align:middle line:84% the wind, the weight, I don't know how. 00:28:07.360 --> 00:28:12.870 align:middle line:84% And so it's odd how I wake up as if you had just spoken to me. 00:28:12.870 --> 00:28:17.160 align:middle line:84% The dead of night beginning to fill with the impending glow, 00:28:17.160 --> 00:28:20.670 align:middle line:84% just where and how do I live, what 00:28:20.670 --> 00:28:24.450 align:middle line:84% is the location of the soul, and does it even 00:28:24.450 --> 00:28:27.390 align:middle line:90% have an ordinary address. 00:28:27.390 --> 00:28:31.050 align:middle line:84% For I am no one's if I am not yours. 00:28:31.050 --> 00:28:34.830 align:middle line:84% For it seems to me when your dreaming body 00:28:34.830 --> 00:28:38.760 align:middle line:84% lies in my dreaming arms, that I held you, 00:28:38.760 --> 00:28:43.260 align:middle line:84% most truly you, that body which the Tibetans believe 00:28:43.260 --> 00:28:45.840 align:middle line:84% walks out of the corpse after death 00:28:45.840 --> 00:28:50.040 align:middle line:84% and goes on craving cigars and candy. 00:28:50.040 --> 00:28:53.340 align:middle line:84% It seems to me so you that I could believe you 00:28:53.340 --> 00:28:58.380 align:middle line:84% dreamt your way to me as I was dreaming you. 00:28:58.380 --> 00:28:59.250 align:middle line:90% Oh, please. 00:28:59.250 --> 00:29:00.390 align:middle line:90% Give me a break. 00:29:00.390 --> 00:29:04.440 align:middle line:84% The truth is, oh phantom, form of the uncanny, 00:29:04.440 --> 00:29:06.970 align:middle line:84% the correspondence of word and tongue, 00:29:06.970 --> 00:29:09.990 align:middle line:84% the silken form in all the depths, that serpent's 00:29:09.990 --> 00:29:11.850 align:middle line:90% labyrinth of being, 00:29:11.850 --> 00:29:16.470 align:middle line:84% I'm sitting here listening to the song of how I am amazed. 00:29:16.470 --> 00:29:19.260 align:middle line:84% But the truth is if you were in the next room I'd 00:29:19.260 --> 00:29:23.520 align:middle line:84% be rushing into you, perhaps slowly as a fish snagged 00:29:23.520 --> 00:29:27.840 align:middle line:84% by the hooks of its own desire, being reeled in by myself, 00:29:27.840 --> 00:29:31.920 align:middle line:84% but rushing into you like the breath breathing from my lungs. 00:29:31.920 --> 00:29:34.950 align:middle line:84% I could not not this minute touch you. 00:29:34.950 --> 00:29:36.630 align:middle line:90% I could not not kiss you. 00:29:36.630 --> 00:29:39.450 align:middle line:84% I could not not have my fingers in you. 00:29:39.450 --> 00:29:44.040 align:middle line:84% I could not not be this vulnerability of you or me. 00:29:44.040 --> 00:29:48.690 align:middle line:84% The world itself would fall to the floor like the last article 00:29:48.690 --> 00:29:49.860 align:middle line:90% of clothing. 00:29:49.860 --> 00:29:53.730 align:middle line:84% There's no heaven I would not give up to enter you. 00:29:53.730 --> 00:29:58.200 align:middle line:84% I could not not touch the tips of my wings, my fingers, 00:29:58.200 --> 00:30:02.470 align:middle line:84% my tongue, my nose, to the tips of your tongue, your fingers, 00:30:02.470 --> 00:30:03.930 align:middle line:90% your eyes, your nose, your-- 00:30:03.930 --> 00:30:09.630 align:middle line:84% I could not not be, could not not be yours, could not not be. 00:30:09.630 --> 00:30:13.080 align:middle line:84% How can the body remember what it does not know? 00:30:13.080 --> 00:30:16.755 align:middle line:84% What phantom wakes me at night to the unknown feeling 00:30:16.755 --> 00:30:20.070 align:middle line:84% of your body, my chin tucked into your neck, 00:30:20.070 --> 00:30:22.290 align:middle line:90% my hand cupping your breast. 00:30:22.290 --> 00:30:24.930 align:middle line:84% A dove dreaming in my dreamt hand 00:30:24.930 --> 00:30:27.750 align:middle line:84% so that I wake to this real room where 00:30:27.750 --> 00:30:32.130 align:middle line:84% while I slept a drift of turning fan and rising wind 00:30:32.130 --> 00:30:35.370 align:middle line:84% has turned my notebook to a blank page 00:30:35.370 --> 00:30:40.020 align:middle line:84% that restless flutters up on its spine, vibrando, 00:30:40.020 --> 00:30:43.140 align:middle line:84% with its white space, its blue lines. 00:30:43.140 --> 00:30:46.080 align:middle line:90% As if with love, as if to rise. 00:30:46.080 --> 00:30:49.590 align:middle line:84% Trembling with the impending sense of the impending 00:30:49.590 --> 00:30:51.240 align:middle line:90% of the note there. 00:30:51.240 --> 00:30:56.400 align:middle line:84% As if in some phantom embrace (I meant to write only embrace 00:30:56.400 --> 00:30:59.250 align:middle line:84% but let the word remember) it felt 00:30:59.250 --> 00:31:01.980 align:middle line:84% the sea surging beyond the window, 00:31:01.980 --> 00:31:04.800 align:middle line:84% its black rhythm rushing around the shores 00:31:04.800 --> 00:31:09.570 align:middle line:84% to which it is bound, as if the ocean were that ancient river. 00:31:09.570 --> 00:31:12.300 align:middle line:84% A phantom nestling against the back 00:31:12.300 --> 00:31:17.010 align:middle line:84% of the Earth, a serpent of desire encircling the world. 00:31:17.010 --> 00:31:20.510 align:middle line:84% Why do these gestures inhabit us? 00:31:20.510 --> 00:31:23.720 align:middle line:84% Why did I wake up thinking of my tongue running 00:31:23.720 --> 00:31:26.900 align:middle line:84% like a quick snail along your side. 00:31:26.900 --> 00:31:30.320 align:middle line:84% That side that if you were a creature made of water 00:31:30.320 --> 00:31:32.600 align:middle line:90% would be your dorsal side. 00:31:32.600 --> 00:31:36.000 align:middle line:84% If people were fish from hip to arm 00:31:36.000 --> 00:31:40.010 align:middle line:84% so that I could taste the subtle saltiness of you 00:31:40.010 --> 00:31:44.750 align:middle line:84% as if the dream brought to me the faint flavor of all 00:31:44.750 --> 00:31:48.320 align:middle line:84% the ocean outside my window, the salt 00:31:48.320 --> 00:31:53.960 align:middle line:84% of your most distant molecule to my most distant tongue, 00:31:53.960 --> 00:31:58.650 align:middle line:84% that intimate space where paradise lost begins. 00:31:58.650 --> 00:32:00.050 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:32:00.050 --> 00:32:01.900 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:32:01.900 --> 00:32:08.000 align:middle line:90%