WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.580 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read a section from a long poem called The Book 00:00:05.580 --> 00:00:11.580 align:middle line:84% of Nightmares, a section which itself is called "Little 00:00:11.580 --> 00:00:14.940 align:middle line:84% Sleep's-head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight," 00:00:14.940 --> 00:00:23.130 align:middle line:84% about going into a child, a little child who has waked up 00:00:23.130 --> 00:00:27.180 align:middle line:84% in the middle of the night for whatever reasons little 00:00:27.180 --> 00:00:34.450 align:middle line:84% children wake up and then sitting there until she falls 00:00:34.450 --> 00:00:35.140 align:middle line:90% asleep again. 00:00:35.140 --> 00:00:41.430 align:middle line:90% 00:00:41.430 --> 00:00:46.170 align:middle line:84% There's a word in here, a phrase, ci-gît, 00:00:46.170 --> 00:00:50.460 align:middle line:84% old French meaning here lies used on tombstones. 00:00:50.460 --> 00:00:53.470 align:middle line:90% 00:00:53.470 --> 00:00:56.950 align:middle line:84% "Little Sleep's-head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight." 00:00:56.950 --> 00:01:00.200 align:middle line:90% 00:01:00.200 --> 00:01:05.120 align:middle line:84% "When I sleepwalk into your room and pick you up and hold you up 00:01:05.120 --> 00:01:07.550 align:middle line:84% in the moonlight, you cling to me 00:01:07.550 --> 00:01:11.930 align:middle line:84% hard as though clinging could save us. 00:01:11.930 --> 00:01:15.380 align:middle line:84% I think you think I will never die. 00:01:15.380 --> 00:01:19.730 align:middle line:84% I think I exude to you the permanence of smoke 00:01:19.730 --> 00:01:26.930 align:middle line:84% or stars even as my broken arms heal themselves around you. 00:01:26.930 --> 00:01:32.030 align:middle line:84% I have heard you tell the sun don't go down 00:01:32.030 --> 00:01:36.200 align:middle line:84% and I have stood by as you told the flower don't grow old, 00:01:36.200 --> 00:01:38.270 align:middle line:90% don't die. 00:01:38.270 --> 00:01:39.500 align:middle line:90% Little Maude. 00:01:39.500 --> 00:01:42.410 align:middle line:84% I would blow the flame out of your silver cup. 00:01:42.410 --> 00:01:45.320 align:middle line:84% I would suck the rot from your fingernail. 00:01:45.320 --> 00:01:49.730 align:middle line:84% I would brush your sprouting hair of the dying light. 00:01:49.730 --> 00:01:53.120 align:middle line:84% I would scrape the rust off your ivory bones. 00:01:53.120 --> 00:01:56.180 align:middle line:84% I would help death escape through the little ribs 00:01:56.180 --> 00:01:57.050 align:middle line:90% of your body. 00:01:57.050 --> 00:02:04.340 align:middle line:84% I would let nothing of you go ever until the clothes fall 00:02:04.340 --> 00:02:08.150 align:middle line:84% asleep in the washer woman's hands 00:02:08.150 --> 00:02:12.080 align:middle line:84% and hence scratch their spell across hatchet blades 00:02:12.080 --> 00:02:16.790 align:middle line:84% and grease refuses to slide in the machinery of progress 00:02:16.790 --> 00:02:19.790 align:middle line:84% and iron twists weapons toward the true north. 00:02:19.790 --> 00:02:22.550 align:middle line:90% 00:02:22.550 --> 00:02:26.390 align:middle line:84% Except perhaps this is the reason you cry. 00:02:26.390 --> 00:02:31.100 align:middle line:84% This is the nightmare you wake crying from, being 00:02:31.100 --> 00:02:37.340 align:middle line:84% forever in the pre-trembling of a house that falls. 00:02:37.340 --> 00:02:40.970 align:middle line:84% In a restaurant, once everyone quietly eating, 00:02:40.970 --> 00:02:45.080 align:middle line:84% you clambered up on my lap to all the mouthfuls 00:02:45.080 --> 00:02:47.600 align:middle line:90% rising toward all the mouths. 00:02:47.600 --> 00:02:52.310 align:middle line:84% At the top of your voice you cried your one word, caca, 00:02:52.310 --> 00:02:55.130 align:middle line:90% caca, caca. 00:02:55.130 --> 00:02:59.150 align:middle line:84% And each spoonful stopped a moment in mid-air 00:02:59.150 --> 00:03:02.420 align:middle line:90% in its withering steam. 00:03:02.420 --> 00:03:07.220 align:middle line:84% Yes, you cling because I like you 00:03:07.220 --> 00:03:09.740 align:middle line:84% only sooner than you will go down 00:03:09.740 --> 00:03:13.940 align:middle line:84% the roadlessness to the other side of the darkness. 00:03:13.940 --> 00:03:17.690 align:middle line:84% Your arms like the shoes left behind, 00:03:17.690 --> 00:03:20.360 align:middle line:84% like the adjectives in the halting 00:03:20.360 --> 00:03:23.180 align:middle line:84% speech of very old people that used 00:03:23.180 --> 00:03:27.800 align:middle line:84% to be able to call up the forgotten nouns. 00:03:27.800 --> 00:03:33.890 align:middle line:84% And you yourself some impossible Tuesday in the year 2009, 00:03:33.890 --> 00:03:38.870 align:middle line:84% will walk out among the stones of the field in the rain 00:03:38.870 --> 00:03:44.780 align:middle line:84% and the stones saying over and over their one word ci-gît, 00:03:44.780 --> 00:03:48.560 align:middle line:84% ci-gît, ci-gît, and the raindrops hitting you 00:03:48.560 --> 00:03:56.420 align:middle line:84% on the fontanel over and over and you unable to let them in. 00:03:56.420 --> 00:03:59.180 align:middle line:84% If one day it happens you find yourself 00:03:59.180 --> 00:04:04.730 align:middle line:84% with somebody you love in a cafe at one end of the Pont Mirabeau 00:04:04.730 --> 00:04:09.050 align:middle line:84% at the zinc bar where wine stands in upward opening 00:04:09.050 --> 00:04:15.560 align:middle line:84% glasses and if you commit then as we did the error of thinking 00:04:15.560 --> 00:04:19.339 align:middle line:84% one day, all this will only be memory, 00:04:19.339 --> 00:04:24.230 align:middle line:84% learn to reach deeper into the sorrows to come, 00:04:24.230 --> 00:04:28.760 align:middle line:84% to touch the almost imaginary bones under the face, 00:04:28.760 --> 00:04:35.360 align:middle line:84% to hear under the laughter the wind crying across the stones. 00:04:35.360 --> 00:04:40.250 align:middle line:84% Kiss the mouth that tells you here-- 00:04:40.250 --> 00:04:42.540 align:middle line:90% here is the world. 00:04:42.540 --> 00:04:48.500 align:middle line:84% This mouth, this laughter, these temple bones, 00:04:48.500 --> 00:04:54.110 align:middle line:84% the still condensed cadence of vanishing. 00:04:54.110 --> 00:04:59.600 align:middle line:84% In the light the moon sends back I can see in your eyes 00:04:59.600 --> 00:05:04.130 align:middle line:84% the hand that waved once in my father's eyes 00:05:04.130 --> 00:05:10.310 align:middle line:84% a tiny kite wobbling far up in the twilight of his last look. 00:05:10.310 --> 00:05:16.720 align:middle line:84% And the angel of all mortal things lets go the string. 00:05:16.720 --> 00:05:19.540 align:middle line:90% Back you go into your crib. 00:05:19.540 --> 00:05:23.620 align:middle line:84% The last blackbird lights up his gold wings. 00:05:23.620 --> 00:05:27.940 align:middle line:84% Farewell, your eyes close inside your head in sleep. 00:05:27.940 --> 00:05:33.400 align:middle line:84% Already in your dreams the hours begin to sing, 00:05:33.400 --> 00:05:37.390 align:middle line:84% little sleep's-head sprouting hair in the moonlight. 00:05:37.390 --> 00:05:40.450 align:middle line:84% When I come back, we will go out together. 00:05:40.450 --> 00:05:45.430 align:middle line:84% We will walk out together among the 10,000 things 00:05:45.430 --> 00:05:49.870 align:middle line:84% each scratched in time with such knowledge. 00:05:49.870 --> 00:05:54.000 align:middle line:90% The wages of dying is love." 00:05:54.000 --> 00:06:07.230 align:middle line:90%