WEBVTT

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OK.

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So I'm gonna read some new
poems, which I'm excited about.

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And there's one I haven't read
to anyone outside of my house

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before.

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[LAUGHS] So it's older, but it's
also, it feels like the newest.

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So I-- when was this, 2008--

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I went to the Met, and I saw
the German soprano Diana Damrau

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in Donizetti's
Lucia di Lammermoor.

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And I don't know if
y'all like opera.

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I wasn't a person who
thought I liked opera.

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But then there was this
singer, and I liked her.

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And I was like, oh, I want
to see her at the Met.

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And then there was
this mad scene.

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There's a mad scene in
Lucia di Lammermoor.

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And I was so angry by the end
of it because it was so good.

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And it was only 13 years
later had I calmed down enough

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to write about it.

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I was just--

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I was so upset.

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I was like, how dare she?

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So: "I grew angry, I
suffered, I resolved.

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I thought I knew what came next,
the bride and the bloody dress,

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the knife held forward,
a herald, a salvo.

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The groom opened offstage.

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The great house hushed.

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The chorus's deep
murmur and block,

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the blood neither hers
nor her beloved's--

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the mad scene.

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The bride unravels
backward in time,

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finds the fountain in the
great house of her mind.

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In the glass harmonica's
tinnitus, the bride sits.

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She is her own ghost,
past, her future ghost

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rising from the fountain.

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Her voice, the shape of
liquid, viscous and bright,

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a ringing in the ear,
her voice, round and low,

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pounds into the floorboards
of the great house,

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bounces high to close my throat.

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The white glove bright with
red, her throat a flood,

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my throat dammed,
stinging in my eyes.

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The chorus lifts the bride.

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The bride's eyes
turn to the lights.

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Her mouth opens to the ceiling.

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The flute in her mouth calls
to the flute in the pit.

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The flute in the pit calls
to the cavern in my chest.

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She is abandoned, will
pray for her beloved

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from heaven, this
bride so soon a ghost.

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The chorus shifts its
hands under her body.

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The stinging in my eyes
takes the shape of a liquid.

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They carry her up the stairs.

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Her voice, wet gold, falls as
if from a tremendous height,

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my tears as if
from a furious one.

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I tell you, I understood
nothing before the great house

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of her voice, and
everything after.

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