WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.810 align:middle line:90% 00:00:06.810 --> 00:00:08.640 align:middle line:84% What Jerry didn't say is that we've 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:11.370 align:middle line:84% known each other since I was four and he was six. 00:00:11.370 --> 00:00:14.100 align:middle line:90% 00:00:14.100 --> 00:00:17.040 align:middle line:84% So I'll begin a poem at which he was present. 00:00:17.040 --> 00:00:20.370 align:middle line:90% 00:00:20.370 --> 00:00:22.920 align:middle line:84% I actually have two poems at which he was present, 00:00:22.920 --> 00:00:25.570 align:middle line:84% but one of them is a sort of dirty poem. 00:00:25.570 --> 00:00:29.910 align:middle line:84% So I thought I'd read the clean one tonight. 00:00:29.910 --> 00:00:33.150 align:middle line:90% It's called "The Gaffe." 00:00:33.150 --> 00:00:35.760 align:middle line:84% If that someone who's me yet not me 00:00:35.760 --> 00:00:41.220 align:middle line:84% who judges me is always with me, as he is, shouldn't he 00:00:41.220 --> 00:00:47.270 align:middle line:84% have been there when I said so long ago that thing I said? 00:00:47.270 --> 00:00:52.410 align:middle line:84% If he who rakes me with such not trivial shame for minor sins 00:00:52.410 --> 00:00:54.890 align:middle line:84% now were there then, shouldn't he 00:00:54.890 --> 00:00:57.920 align:middle line:84% have warned me he'd even now devastate me 00:00:57.920 --> 00:01:01.410 align:middle line:90% for my unpardonable affront? 00:01:01.410 --> 00:01:04.230 align:middle line:84% I'm a child then, yet already I've 00:01:04.230 --> 00:01:08.460 align:middle line:84% composed this conscience-beast, who harries me. 00:01:08.460 --> 00:01:12.510 align:middle line:84% Is there anything else I can say with certainty about who 00:01:12.510 --> 00:01:16.380 align:middle line:84% I was, except that I, that he, could already 00:01:16.380 --> 00:01:19.380 align:middle line:84% draw from infinitesimal transgressions 00:01:19.380 --> 00:01:23.355 align:middle line:84% complex chords of remorse, and orchestrate ever 00:01:23.355 --> 00:01:29.430 align:middle line:84% undiminishing retribution from the hapless rest of myself? 00:01:29.430 --> 00:01:33.750 align:middle line:84% The son of some friends of my parents has died, 00:01:33.750 --> 00:01:37.740 align:middle line:84% and my parents, paying their call, take me along. 00:01:37.740 --> 00:01:41.700 align:middle line:84% And I'm sent out with the dead boy's brother and some others 00:01:41.700 --> 00:01:43.290 align:middle line:90% to play. 00:01:43.290 --> 00:01:47.070 align:middle line:84% We're joking around, and words come to my mind, which, 00:01:47.070 --> 00:01:50.190 align:middle line:90% to my amazement, are said. 00:01:50.190 --> 00:01:54.390 align:middle line:84% "How do you know when you can laugh when somebody dies, 00:01:54.390 --> 00:01:56.070 align:middle line:90% your brother dies?" 00:01:56.070 --> 00:01:59.310 align:middle line:84% is what's said, and the others go quiet. 00:01:59.310 --> 00:02:01.560 align:middle line:90% The backyard goes quiet. 00:02:01.560 --> 00:02:04.800 align:middle line:84% Everyone stares, and I want to know now 00:02:04.800 --> 00:02:10.050 align:middle line:84% why that someone in me who's me, yet not me, let me say it. 00:02:10.050 --> 00:02:13.590 align:middle line:84% Shouldn't he have told me the contrition cycle would 00:02:13.590 --> 00:02:15.840 align:middle line:90% from then be ever upon me? 00:02:15.840 --> 00:02:18.390 align:middle line:84% It didn't matter that I'd really only wanted 00:02:18.390 --> 00:02:23.340 align:middle line:90% to know how grief ends and when. 00:02:23.340 --> 00:02:27.810 align:middle line:84% I could hear the boy's mother sobbing inside, then stopping, 00:02:27.810 --> 00:02:30.270 align:middle line:90% sobbing, then stopping. 00:02:30.270 --> 00:02:33.300 align:middle line:84% Was the end of her grief already there? 00:02:33.300 --> 00:02:37.650 align:middle line:84% Had her someone in her told her it would end? 00:02:37.650 --> 00:02:41.010 align:middle line:84% Was her someone in her kinder to her, 00:02:41.010 --> 00:02:47.100 align:middle line:84% not tearing at her as mine did, still does, me, for guessing 00:02:47.100 --> 00:02:49.020 align:middle line:90% grief someday ends? 00:02:49.020 --> 00:02:53.160 align:middle line:84% Is that why her sobbing stopped sometimes? 00:02:53.160 --> 00:02:56.910 align:middle line:84% She didn't laugh, though, or I never heard her. 00:02:56.910 --> 00:03:00.150 align:middle line:84% How do you know when you can laugh? 00:03:00.150 --> 00:03:03.360 align:middle line:84% Why couldn't someone have been there in me, 00:03:03.360 --> 00:03:07.590 align:middle line:84% not just to accuse me, but to explain? 00:03:07.590 --> 00:03:09.750 align:middle line:90% The kids were playing again. 00:03:09.750 --> 00:03:11.070 align:middle line:90% I was playing. 00:03:11.070 --> 00:03:16.980 align:middle line:84% I didn't hear anything more from inside, the way now, sometimes, 00:03:16.980 --> 00:03:23.090 align:middle line:84% what's in me is silent, too, and sometimes, though never really, 00:03:23.090 --> 00:03:23.590 align:middle line:90% forgets. 00:03:23.590 --> 00:03:27.670 align:middle line:90% 00:03:27.670 --> 00:03:29.680 align:middle line:84% So he was actually the kid who said, 00:03:29.680 --> 00:03:31.540 align:middle line:84% you're not supposed to say things like. 00:03:31.540 --> 00:03:35.110 align:middle line:90% 00:03:35.110 --> 00:03:37.480 align:middle line:90% It's true. 00:03:37.480 --> 00:03:39.100 align:middle line:90% He was my leader in all things. 00:03:39.100 --> 00:03:45.740 align:middle line:90% 00:03:45.740 --> 00:03:50.300 align:middle line:84% I'm glad that Peggy mentioned Steve Orlen, who's 00:03:50.300 --> 00:03:51.890 align:middle line:90% a poet I admire a lot. 00:03:51.890 --> 00:03:55.100 align:middle line:84% And as I came in, he asked me to read new poems. 00:03:55.100 --> 00:03:56.690 align:middle line:90% So I will. 00:03:56.690 --> 00:03:59.530 align:middle line:84% They're different from my older poems.