WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.310 align:middle line:84% The second poem I'm going to read 00:00:02.310 --> 00:00:04.440 align:middle line:90% is the second poem in the book. 00:00:04.440 --> 00:00:08.189 align:middle line:84% It is a poem on the premiere of the French avant 00:00:08.189 --> 00:00:11.850 align:middle line:84% garde composer's, Messiaen's "Quartet For the End of Time". 00:00:11.850 --> 00:00:14.250 align:middle line:84% It was actually premiered in a prisoner of war camp. 00:00:14.250 --> 00:00:18.870 align:middle line:84% It wasn't a Holocaust camp, but mostly French and Belgian 00:00:18.870 --> 00:00:24.870 align:middle line:84% prisoners in Görlitz, Silesia in 1941. 00:00:24.870 --> 00:00:28.410 align:middle line:90% Messiaen wrote the quartet. 00:00:28.410 --> 00:00:32.159 align:middle line:84% The clarinet, the cello, the violin 00:00:32.159 --> 00:00:35.430 align:middle line:84% were already somehow in the camp in the possession 00:00:35.430 --> 00:00:38.760 align:middle line:84% of the prisoners, and the guards were kind enough to truck 00:00:38.760 --> 00:00:40.800 align:middle line:90% in an old upright piano. 00:00:40.800 --> 00:00:43.830 align:middle line:90% 00:00:43.830 --> 00:00:47.550 align:middle line:84% The quartet, as many of you will know, 00:00:47.550 --> 00:00:50.850 align:middle line:84% imitates as much of Messiaen's work does, 00:00:50.850 --> 00:00:56.910 align:middle line:84% some bird calls, and refers in some of its section titles 00:00:56.910 --> 00:01:03.480 align:middle line:84% to angels, Messiaen being a devout Catholic composer 00:01:03.480 --> 00:01:06.450 align:middle line:84% as well as an avant garde composer. 00:01:06.450 --> 00:01:07.950 align:middle line:84% Now, this is called-- and there were 00:01:07.950 --> 00:01:10.740 align:middle line:90% 5,000 prisoners in the camp. 00:01:10.740 --> 00:01:14.670 align:middle line:84% The poem is called "10,000 Ears Stood Out From Shaved Heads 00:01:14.670 --> 00:01:17.080 align:middle line:90% And Listened". 00:01:17.080 --> 00:01:20.650 align:middle line:84% The premiere of Messiaen's "Quartet For The End Of Time", 00:01:20.650 --> 00:01:26.910 align:middle line:90% Görlitz, Silesia, 1941. 00:01:26.910 --> 00:01:30.600 align:middle line:84% Tearing our roots together with the branches of birds. 00:01:30.600 --> 00:01:34.290 align:middle line:84% Tearing everything, and this is love. 00:01:34.290 --> 00:01:39.240 align:middle line:84% Can we imagine God's unhappiness that we are not with him? 00:01:39.240 --> 00:01:42.750 align:middle line:84% He protects us from it with angels more naked 00:01:42.750 --> 00:01:45.960 align:middle line:84% even than this music, so this music seems 00:01:45.960 --> 00:01:50.520 align:middle line:84% to say, no, not naked, not nothing, 00:01:50.520 --> 00:01:54.300 align:middle line:84% like putting your arm into light all the way up to the shoulder. 00:01:54.300 --> 00:01:59.640 align:middle line:84% Nothing beside this clarinet giddy nest of heralding birds, 00:01:59.640 --> 00:02:03.150 align:middle line:84% as if birds didn't drop the shit of the Earth on the Earth, 00:02:03.150 --> 00:02:05.280 align:middle line:90% didn't drop dead there. 00:02:05.280 --> 00:02:09.060 align:middle line:84% Oh fowl that fly in the open firmament of heaven. 00:02:09.060 --> 00:02:11.610 align:middle line:90% First darlings of morning. 00:02:11.610 --> 00:02:14.190 align:middle line:84% This violin pulling a cloth of mist 00:02:14.190 --> 00:02:17.820 align:middle line:84% from its sanctuary of cries, giving heart to the piano 00:02:17.820 --> 00:02:20.790 align:middle line:84% that clumps like a tree learning to hop. 00:02:20.790 --> 00:02:24.540 align:middle line:84% This cello wailing high and higher, 00:02:24.540 --> 00:02:28.290 align:middle line:84% a quail choked by an angel, a castrated thing, 00:02:28.290 --> 00:02:33.150 align:middle line:84% all without show of arrangement as in a forest 00:02:33.150 --> 00:02:38.230 align:middle line:84% when whatever must sing goes ahead and does it. 00:02:38.230 --> 00:02:40.510 align:middle line:90% What was the stalag to think? 00:02:40.510 --> 00:02:45.040 align:middle line:84% Was the cesspool suddenly burnished as a lake of lions, 00:02:45.040 --> 00:02:46.690 align:middle line:90% Did diarrhea stop? 00:02:46.690 --> 00:02:51.070 align:middle line:84% Did scarlet fever snow through the branches of the music? 00:02:51.070 --> 00:02:53.620 align:middle line:84% Did the holes in the fence pass through the holes 00:02:53.620 --> 00:02:56.350 align:middle line:90% in the fence unmolested? 00:02:56.350 --> 00:02:58.870 align:middle line:84% The Belgian attache forget to remember 00:02:58.870 --> 00:03:03.310 align:middle line:84% to announce again that the Holy See had ruled out danger. 00:03:03.310 --> 00:03:04.990 align:middle line:90% This is not recorded. 00:03:04.990 --> 00:03:09.760 align:middle line:84% Nor what was changed by this unbearable blare, the clarinet 00:03:09.760 --> 00:03:13.870 align:middle line:84% crawling all the way into a single note of itself, 00:03:13.870 --> 00:03:18.250 align:middle line:84% less and more than itself, swelling at monstrously, 00:03:18.250 --> 00:03:21.280 align:middle line:84% forgetting it stops forgetting itself. 00:03:21.280 --> 00:03:25.210 align:middle line:84% A laser of sound boring through everything till history 00:03:25.210 --> 00:03:28.430 align:middle line:90% is what no one has to. 00:03:28.430 --> 00:03:31.400 align:middle line:84% As when in the forest whatever has 00:03:31.400 --> 00:03:34.010 align:middle line:84% sung at the exact moment of its need 00:03:34.010 --> 00:03:37.700 align:middle line:84% ceases, and the silence at first unawares 00:03:37.700 --> 00:03:41.300 align:middle line:84% howls like an angel who can stand no more of it. 00:03:41.300 --> 00:03:43.340 align:middle line:90% That was the show of it. 00:03:43.340 --> 00:03:46.130 align:middle line:90% It was the end of music. 00:03:46.130 --> 00:03:48.620 align:middle line:90% It was survived by music. 00:03:48.620 --> 00:03:51.560 align:middle line:84% These angels with seven trumpet throats, 00:03:51.560 --> 00:03:55.730 align:middle line:84% did you think they would be lilies, that God was a pollen? 00:03:55.730 --> 00:04:00.080 align:middle line:84% An angry gang of octaves jamming the ears with their avant garde 00:04:00.080 --> 00:04:03.140 align:middle line:84% holiness, holier than thou, holiness. 00:04:03.140 --> 00:04:07.940 align:middle line:84% Shouting in the face of women, and France shouting the Alps 00:04:07.940 --> 00:04:09.980 align:middle line:90% into grave mounds. 00:04:09.980 --> 00:04:12.890 align:middle line:90% Still the men were patient. 00:04:12.890 --> 00:04:14.630 align:middle line:90% How good they were. 00:04:14.630 --> 00:04:18.170 align:middle line:84% Never was I listened to with such rapt 00:04:18.170 --> 00:04:21.899 align:middle line:90% attention and comprehension. 00:04:21.899 --> 00:04:26.910 align:middle line:84% As if the music could take back the dropped boot of eternity. 00:04:26.910 --> 00:04:30.270 align:middle line:84% As if God would stay up all night for them. 00:04:30.270 --> 00:04:33.540 align:middle line:84% As if the music that made light of their flesh 00:04:33.540 --> 00:04:36.740 align:middle line:90% could make light of their flesh.