WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.610 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.610 --> 00:00:04.700 align:middle line:84% Welcome to our new series of readings. 00:00:04.700 --> 00:00:08.330 align:middle line:84% I brought a stack of the semester announcements. 00:00:08.330 --> 00:00:11.060 align:middle line:84% If you didn't receive them there's 00:00:11.060 --> 00:00:14.700 align:middle line:84% a stack out on the refreshment table in the hall. 00:00:14.700 --> 00:00:19.820 align:middle line:84% Now I know you can read but I fear 00:00:19.820 --> 00:00:22.130 align:middle line:84% that you may look at the announcement 00:00:22.130 --> 00:00:26.690 align:middle line:84% and see what you expect instead of what's on there. 00:00:26.690 --> 00:00:29.510 align:middle line:84% Howard Moss is reading for us next week 00:00:29.510 --> 00:00:32.420 align:middle line:84% and his reading will be on Monday night instead 00:00:32.420 --> 00:00:35.330 align:middle line:90% of our usual Wednesday night. 00:00:35.330 --> 00:00:37.220 align:middle line:84% And instead of being here it will 00:00:37.220 --> 00:00:39.500 align:middle line:90% be in the Harvill auditorium. 00:00:39.500 --> 00:00:42.110 align:middle line:90% So that's next Monday the 4th. 00:00:42.110 --> 00:00:44.655 align:middle line:84% Harvill auditorium is at the corner of Olive 00:00:44.655 --> 00:00:47.870 align:middle line:84% and 2nd, that big blue classroom building. 00:00:47.870 --> 00:00:55.580 align:middle line:84% And the auditorium is on the western side of the building. 00:00:55.580 --> 00:00:58.310 align:middle line:84% You have to go down a dark long tunnel to get to it. 00:00:58.310 --> 00:01:01.680 align:middle line:90% 00:01:01.680 --> 00:01:07.190 align:middle line:84% Also Mr. Moss will be meeting with all interested individuals 00:01:07.190 --> 00:01:13.460 align:middle line:84% the following day Tuesday the 5th in the Student Union, room 00:01:13.460 --> 00:01:15.620 align:middle line:90% 256 at 3:00 in the afternoon. 00:01:15.620 --> 00:01:20.350 align:middle line:90% 00:01:20.350 --> 00:01:23.230 align:middle line:84% There's another reading next week on Wednesday night 00:01:23.230 --> 00:01:24.790 align:middle line:90% in this auditorium. 00:01:24.790 --> 00:01:27.700 align:middle line:84% No, on Wednesday night in the Terrace Lounge in the Student 00:01:27.700 --> 00:01:28.330 align:middle line:90% Union. 00:01:28.330 --> 00:01:30.497 align:middle line:84% It's is the first reading in the series that will be 00:01:30.497 --> 00:01:32.830 align:middle line:90% sponsored by Writers At Work. 00:01:32.830 --> 00:01:34.720 align:middle line:84% And readers are Alison Hicks who's 00:01:34.720 --> 00:01:38.110 align:middle line:84% a Master of Fine Arts candidate at the University and Steven 00:01:38.110 --> 00:01:40.912 align:middle line:84% Schwartz, who's a former University student, 00:01:40.912 --> 00:01:42.370 align:middle line:84% and that will be a fiction reading. 00:01:42.370 --> 00:01:44.908 align:middle line:90% 00:01:44.908 --> 00:01:46.450 align:middle line:84% I hope you can stay after the reading 00:01:46.450 --> 00:01:47.950 align:middle line:84% tonight and have some refreshments 00:01:47.950 --> 00:01:51.370 align:middle line:84% and then Silkin will be brought out in the hall. 00:01:51.370 --> 00:01:53.980 align:middle line:84% Also we will have some Mr. Silkin's books 00:01:53.980 --> 00:01:55.030 align:middle line:90% available for sale too. 00:01:55.030 --> 00:02:02.380 align:middle line:90% 00:02:02.380 --> 00:02:04.630 align:middle line:84% I'm very happy that Jon Silkin could finally come. 00:02:04.630 --> 00:02:07.330 align:middle line:84% Our correspondence dates back to 1971. 00:02:07.330 --> 00:02:09.310 align:middle line:84% So it's taken us a long time to get him here. 00:02:09.310 --> 00:02:12.310 align:middle line:90% 00:02:12.310 --> 00:02:17.410 align:middle line:84% His most recent book from Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1980 00:02:17.410 --> 00:02:20.920 align:middle line:90% is his Selected Poems. 00:02:20.920 --> 00:02:24.100 align:middle line:84% In addition to poetry, he's written Out 00:02:24.100 --> 00:02:28.450 align:middle line:84% of Battle, a critical study of First World War poets. 00:02:28.450 --> 00:02:33.460 align:middle line:84% He edited the Penguin Book of First World War Poetry. 00:02:33.460 --> 00:02:36.580 align:middle line:84% For the last 20 years he's lived in Newcastle upon Tyne 00:02:36.580 --> 00:02:40.360 align:middle line:90% where he edits magazine Stand. 00:02:40.360 --> 00:02:44.650 align:middle line:84% Stand was founded by Mr. Silkin in 1952. 00:02:44.650 --> 00:02:49.840 align:middle line:84% And as you know in the American literary world 00:02:49.840 --> 00:02:52.428 align:middle line:84% so many really fine poetry magazines come and go 00:02:52.428 --> 00:02:54.220 align:middle line:84% before you can ever get your subscriptions. 00:02:54.220 --> 00:02:58.510 align:middle line:84% And the magazine which has been continuous publication for 32 00:02:58.510 --> 00:03:01.880 align:middle line:84% years is a wonderful, wonderful thing. 00:03:01.880 --> 00:03:04.483 align:middle line:84% I'm very happy to introduce you to Jon Silkin. 00:03:04.483 --> 00:03:17.060 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:03:17.060 --> 00:03:20.870 align:middle line:84% The first book was a book called The Peaceable Kingdom, which 00:03:20.870 --> 00:03:24.980 align:middle line:84% is a title that doesn't mean much to English readers 00:03:24.980 --> 00:03:29.780 align:middle line:84% but I think perhaps means something to you. 00:03:29.780 --> 00:03:34.070 align:middle line:84% It's the title of something like 60 versions of a painting 00:03:34.070 --> 00:03:37.940 align:middle line:84% that the American so-called primitive Quaker 00:03:37.940 --> 00:03:43.100 align:middle line:84% artist Edward Hicks did in his adult lifetime. 00:03:43.100 --> 00:03:49.070 align:middle line:84% And what Hicks is depicting is that part of Isaiah 00:03:49.070 --> 00:03:52.700 align:middle line:84% where the wolf and the lamb and the lion will lie down together 00:03:52.700 --> 00:03:54.680 align:middle line:90% and a little child will lead it. 00:03:54.680 --> 00:04:00.350 align:middle line:84% And it's an image of an ideal harmonious society 00:04:00.350 --> 00:04:01.940 align:middle line:90% such as some-- 00:04:01.940 --> 00:04:03.550 align:middle line:90% except he didn't have. 00:04:03.550 --> 00:04:07.730 align:middle line:84% He died 11 years before your Civil War. 00:04:07.730 --> 00:04:10.700 align:middle line:84% And clearly such as we don't have now 00:04:10.700 --> 00:04:13.820 align:middle line:84% or perhaps I could put it in a different way 00:04:13.820 --> 00:04:17.810 align:middle line:84% and say such as Isaiah didn't enjoy either. 00:04:17.810 --> 00:04:22.700 align:middle line:84% That brings me to in a way the nature of the kind of ideology 00:04:22.700 --> 00:04:24.920 align:middle line:84% that I think that first book pursued in which I 00:04:24.920 --> 00:04:28.630 align:middle line:90% think I've continued to pursue. 00:04:28.630 --> 00:04:31.910 align:middle line:84% I'm a Jew and we have a joke about the meaning of the word 00:04:31.910 --> 00:04:33.170 align:middle line:90% Messiah. 00:04:33.170 --> 00:04:36.380 align:middle line:84% You've had yours but we're still waiting for ours. 00:04:36.380 --> 00:04:39.470 align:middle line:84% But the meaning of the word Messiah according to the Jews 00:04:39.470 --> 00:04:42.890 align:middle line:84% is never, it's not much of a joke I realize that. 00:04:42.890 --> 00:04:49.940 align:middle line:90% But your spirit, yes. 00:04:49.940 --> 00:04:53.840 align:middle line:84% The spirit is willing, but the flesh is very unwilling. 00:04:53.840 --> 00:04:56.420 align:middle line:90% 00:04:56.420 --> 00:04:59.900 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] I cribbed the title from Mr. 00:04:59.900 --> 00:05:02.150 align:middle line:84% Hicks because nearly all animals-- 00:05:02.150 --> 00:05:03.800 align:middle line:84% nearly all the poems in my first book 00:05:03.800 --> 00:05:07.640 align:middle line:84% have animals as their central figures. 00:05:07.640 --> 00:05:10.280 align:middle line:90% In the position not of victims-- 00:05:10.280 --> 00:05:11.690 align:middle line:90% not of martyrs but of victims. 00:05:11.690 --> 00:05:14.510 align:middle line:90% 00:05:14.510 --> 00:05:18.200 align:middle line:84% I think what I'm trying to say is that the martyr chooses 00:05:18.200 --> 00:05:20.930 align:middle line:84% his or her suffering but the victim does not choose. 00:05:20.930 --> 00:05:25.070 align:middle line:90% The victim is handed out. 00:05:25.070 --> 00:05:26.900 align:middle line:84% That's more or less the condition 00:05:26.900 --> 00:05:31.790 align:middle line:84% of the animals in my poems in this first book certainly. 00:05:31.790 --> 00:05:36.890 align:middle line:84% Well, I'll read one or two from that collection. 00:05:36.890 --> 00:05:40.520 align:middle line:84% When I was in-- when I came out of the Army in 1950, 00:05:40.520 --> 00:05:44.150 align:middle line:84% I decided that I would become a laborer because being brought 00:05:44.150 --> 00:05:49.190 align:middle line:84% up as a middle class gentleman I realized after serving 00:05:49.190 --> 00:05:51.860 align:middle line:84% in the army as a national serviceman 00:05:51.860 --> 00:05:54.920 align:middle line:84% that I knew nothing whatsoever about the way in which most 00:05:54.920 --> 00:05:59.270 align:middle line:84% people subsisted and earned their livings, 00:05:59.270 --> 00:06:03.530 align:middle line:84% about the urban working class in Britain. 00:06:03.530 --> 00:06:06.800 align:middle line:84% And so I decided that there was one way to educate myself 00:06:06.800 --> 00:06:10.310 align:middle line:84% and that was to actually become a laborer, which I did. 00:06:10.310 --> 00:06:14.870 align:middle line:84% And in those days as now in England 00:06:14.870 --> 00:06:17.570 align:middle line:84% under the kingdom of the Thatch, as a laborer 00:06:17.570 --> 00:06:22.430 align:middle line:84% you can be hired and sacked very easily indeed, especially 00:06:22.430 --> 00:06:24.320 align:middle line:90% the sacking. 00:06:24.320 --> 00:06:27.830 align:middle line:84% And I was on my way to collect my dole money. 00:06:27.830 --> 00:06:30.530 align:middle line:84% And as I was leaving the apartments, 00:06:30.530 --> 00:06:33.650 align:middle line:84% the flat that I was living in London in an area 00:06:33.650 --> 00:06:36.112 align:middle line:84% called Blackheath there were two dogs outside. 00:06:36.112 --> 00:06:38.570 align:middle line:84% And I noticed that there were sort of lunging at something. 00:06:38.570 --> 00:06:41.127 align:middle line:84% One was our dog, one was the landlord's dog. 00:06:41.127 --> 00:06:43.460 align:middle line:84% They were little dogs and they were lunging at something 00:06:43.460 --> 00:06:44.512 align:middle line:90% and then recoiling. 00:06:44.512 --> 00:06:46.720 align:middle line:84% And when I looked down there was this dead blackbird. 00:06:46.720 --> 00:06:48.387 align:middle line:84% And they wanted to take a lump out of it 00:06:48.387 --> 00:06:50.900 align:middle line:84% but they didn't have the courage to do so maybe 00:06:50.900 --> 00:06:52.880 align:middle line:90% because the bird was dead. 00:06:52.880 --> 00:06:53.750 align:middle line:90% Who knows. 00:06:53.750 --> 00:06:58.280 align:middle line:84% Anyhow that was an interesting tableau on the night on my way 00:06:58.280 --> 00:07:00.260 align:middle line:84% to the labor exchange to collect my dole money. 00:07:00.260 --> 00:07:02.460 align:middle line:84% I wrote this poem on top of a [INAUDIBLE].. 00:07:02.460 --> 00:07:06.620 align:middle line:90% 00:07:06.620 --> 00:07:10.010 align:middle line:84% Two small dogs stood by a dead blackbird 00:07:10.010 --> 00:07:12.860 align:middle line:90% and the blackbird was very dead. 00:07:12.860 --> 00:07:16.370 align:middle line:84% The two dogs stood by the bird like large lions 00:07:16.370 --> 00:07:19.850 align:middle line:84% but they never touched the dead thing once. 00:07:19.850 --> 00:07:22.070 align:middle line:84% They would like to have eaten the black thing 00:07:22.070 --> 00:07:25.100 align:middle line:84% but it was very dead with red ants sawing 00:07:25.100 --> 00:07:27.800 align:middle line:90% its neck like stone masons. 00:07:27.800 --> 00:07:31.280 align:middle line:84% And the red ants were very much alive. 00:07:31.280 --> 00:07:33.470 align:middle line:90% So all the time the dogs stood. 00:07:33.470 --> 00:07:38.630 align:middle line:84% They barked there because they couldn't eat the black thing. 00:07:38.630 --> 00:07:41.240 align:middle line:84% Something large about that black bird. 00:07:41.240 --> 00:07:45.350 align:middle line:84% It was being eaten by red death while the two large lions-- 00:07:45.350 --> 00:07:48.110 align:middle line:90% small dogs-- just stood barking. 00:07:48.110 --> 00:07:51.260 align:middle line:84% They never touched the black thing and the black thing 00:07:51.260 --> 00:07:53.150 align:middle line:90% never looked at them once. 00:07:53.150 --> 00:07:57.710 align:middle line:84% It was indifferent to two small dogs. 00:07:57.710 --> 00:08:01.880 align:middle line:84% Maybe it did not hear those large lions or maybe 00:08:01.880 --> 00:08:05.720 align:middle line:84% the black bird felt sorry for the small dogs. 00:08:05.720 --> 00:08:10.660 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile, the dead went on being dead and the living, 00:08:10.660 --> 00:08:11.160 align:middle line:90% living. 00:08:11.160 --> 00:08:21.830 align:middle line:90% 00:08:21.830 --> 00:08:26.150 align:middle line:84% This is a poem that the Royal Society 00:08:26.150 --> 00:08:27.890 align:middle line:84% for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 00:08:27.890 --> 00:08:33.380 align:middle line:84% was going to use as one of their poems for a Flag Day. 00:08:33.380 --> 00:08:37.490 align:middle line:84% But I guess they decided that poetry was not 00:08:37.490 --> 00:08:39.780 align:middle line:84% the best way to earn money or to raise money. 00:08:39.780 --> 00:08:46.760 align:middle line:90% So they didn't do it in the end. 00:08:46.760 --> 00:08:49.070 align:middle line:84% It's a poem called "Caring for Animals." 00:08:49.070 --> 00:08:55.250 align:middle line:84% I mean the argument and is not quite as naive, perhaps, 00:08:55.250 --> 00:08:57.380 align:middle line:90% as it looks. 00:08:57.380 --> 00:09:00.350 align:middle line:84% My argument is based on the sort of notion 00:09:00.350 --> 00:09:05.630 align:middle line:84% that if we could care for animals just moderately 00:09:05.630 --> 00:09:07.760 align:middle line:84% we might come to care just a little 00:09:07.760 --> 00:09:10.980 align:middle line:84% more than moderately for the human animal. 00:09:10.980 --> 00:09:17.300 align:middle line:84% And that may be wrong but that was the supposition 00:09:17.300 --> 00:09:20.600 align:middle line:90% the poem worked upon. 00:09:20.600 --> 00:09:25.550 align:middle line:84% I ask sometimes why these small animals with bitter eyes, why 00:09:25.550 --> 00:09:27.800 align:middle line:90% we should care for them. 00:09:27.800 --> 00:09:33.680 align:middle line:84% I question the sky, the serene blue water, but it cannot say. 00:09:33.680 --> 00:09:36.620 align:middle line:90% It gives no answer. 00:09:36.620 --> 00:09:39.410 align:middle line:84% And no answer releases in my head 00:09:39.410 --> 00:09:44.420 align:middle line:84% a procession of gray shades patched and whimpering. 00:09:44.420 --> 00:09:49.010 align:middle line:84% Dogs with clipped ears, wheezing cart horses, 00:09:49.010 --> 00:09:54.080 align:middle line:84% a fly without shadow and without thought. 00:09:54.080 --> 00:09:57.200 align:middle line:84% Is it with these menaces to our vision, 00:09:57.200 --> 00:10:01.160 align:middle line:84% with this procession led by a man carrying wood, 00:10:01.160 --> 00:10:03.350 align:middle line:90% we must be concerned? 00:10:03.350 --> 00:10:07.150 align:middle line:84% The holy land, the really green island 00:10:07.150 --> 00:10:10.660 align:middle line:90% should be kindlier than this. 00:10:10.660 --> 00:10:15.940 align:middle line:84% The animals, our ghosts, need tending to. 00:10:15.940 --> 00:10:20.680 align:middle line:84% Take in the whipped cat and the blinded owl. 00:10:20.680 --> 00:10:24.760 align:middle line:84% Take up the man trapped squirrel upon your shoulder, 00:10:24.760 --> 00:10:30.070 align:middle line:84% attend to the unnecessary beasts. 00:10:30.070 --> 00:10:34.450 align:middle line:84% From growing mercy and a moderate love, 00:10:34.450 --> 00:10:38.590 align:middle line:84% great love for the human animal occurs. 00:10:38.590 --> 00:10:45.736 align:middle line:84% And your love grows, your great love grows and grows. 00:10:45.736 --> 00:10:55.793 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:10:55.793 --> 00:10:57.210 align:middle line:84% So much for the Peaceable Kingdom. 00:10:57.210 --> 00:11:00.730 align:middle line:90% 00:11:00.730 --> 00:11:04.780 align:middle line:84% In 1958, I was lucky enough to get 00:11:04.780 --> 00:11:10.660 align:middle line:84% offered a fellowship, a non-academic fellowship 00:11:10.660 --> 00:11:13.630 align:middle line:84% that was given to practicing poets 00:11:13.630 --> 00:11:15.190 align:middle line:90% at the University of Leeds. 00:11:15.190 --> 00:11:19.450 align:middle line:84% And that's some-- it was a marvelous thing because I 00:11:19.450 --> 00:11:24.460 align:middle line:84% was for the first time in my life free of my adult life free 00:11:24.460 --> 00:11:26.230 align:middle line:90% of worrying about money. 00:11:26.230 --> 00:11:29.230 align:middle line:90% 00:11:29.230 --> 00:11:31.520 align:middle line:84% And that was a fairly rare thing in England, 00:11:31.520 --> 00:11:32.740 align:middle line:90% which still is fairly rare. 00:11:32.740 --> 00:11:36.100 align:middle line:84% They're not all that number of fellowships going for people 00:11:36.100 --> 00:11:38.900 align:middle line:90% with no strings attached. 00:11:38.900 --> 00:11:42.630 align:middle line:84% Anyhow, I went to Leeds and Leeds 00:11:42.630 --> 00:11:49.210 align:middle line:84% is a city that I came to like very much. 00:11:49.210 --> 00:11:53.680 align:middle line:84% It's got actually a 10% Jewish population, which I also liked. 00:11:53.680 --> 00:11:56.620 align:middle line:84% Those people who don't like that refer to Leeds 00:11:56.620 --> 00:11:58.510 align:middle line:90% as the new Jerusalem. 00:11:58.510 --> 00:12:01.870 align:middle line:90% That's their problem I think. 00:12:01.870 --> 00:12:05.200 align:middle line:84% But close to the City of Leeds is a very different city, 00:12:05.200 --> 00:12:07.810 align:middle line:84% the city of York, which is of course 00:12:07.810 --> 00:12:11.710 align:middle line:84% the capital of Yorkshire, the largest-- or what was 00:12:11.710 --> 00:12:15.190 align:middle line:90% the largest County in Britain. 00:12:15.190 --> 00:12:18.940 align:middle line:84% And it's one of the ecclesiastical centers 00:12:18.940 --> 00:12:20.350 align:middle line:90% of the North of England. 00:12:20.350 --> 00:12:22.630 align:middle line:84% And that's important to the next poem 00:12:22.630 --> 00:12:26.440 align:middle line:84% I'd like to read because in 1190 there 00:12:26.440 --> 00:12:28.960 align:middle line:84% was a massacre of the Jews in the City of York, 00:12:28.960 --> 00:12:30.370 align:middle line:90% quite a number of them. 00:12:30.370 --> 00:12:33.400 align:middle line:84% Richard the First was out trying to recover 00:12:33.400 --> 00:12:36.820 align:middle line:90% the Holy Land for Christendom. 00:12:36.820 --> 00:12:41.560 align:middle line:84% A number of cities used the absence of the King 00:12:41.560 --> 00:12:44.530 align:middle line:90% to destroy the Jews in Britain. 00:12:44.530 --> 00:12:49.240 align:middle line:84% 100 years later the Jews were expelled from England 00:12:49.240 --> 00:12:52.840 align:middle line:84% because their resources as moneylenders had run out. 00:12:52.840 --> 00:12:59.500 align:middle line:84% The King borrowed but did not return, neither the interest 00:12:59.500 --> 00:13:01.090 align:middle line:90% nor the capital. 00:13:01.090 --> 00:13:02.860 align:middle line:84% Well, some people don't like the interest 00:13:02.860 --> 00:13:05.770 align:middle line:90% but the capital well, I mean. 00:13:05.770 --> 00:13:08.500 align:middle line:84% Anyhow they must have had very little money 00:13:08.500 --> 00:13:11.320 align:middle line:84% because quite a number of the Jews were dumped overboard 00:13:11.320 --> 00:13:12.505 align:middle line:90% mid channel by the boatmen. 00:13:12.505 --> 00:13:16.170 align:middle line:90% 00:13:16.170 --> 00:13:20.520 align:middle line:84% Anyhow, well that's a bit passé, either because the City of York 00:13:20.520 --> 00:13:22.510 align:middle line:84% appears to be a bit touchy about this. 00:13:22.510 --> 00:13:25.200 align:middle line:84% The City of York has two industries. 00:13:25.200 --> 00:13:27.960 align:middle line:84% One is chocolates and the other is tourism. 00:13:27.960 --> 00:13:31.930 align:middle line:84% And the city it issues a guidebook to its historic-- 00:13:31.930 --> 00:13:34.740 align:middle line:90% 00:13:34.740 --> 00:13:36.660 align:middle line:84% I was going to say remains but the remains 00:13:36.660 --> 00:13:40.170 align:middle line:84% are very substantial actually, they are hardly ruins. 00:13:40.170 --> 00:13:43.230 align:middle line:84% And what they say is they make a very coy reference. 00:13:43.230 --> 00:13:46.710 align:middle line:84% They say that the Jews of York perished in 1190 00:13:46.710 --> 00:13:48.665 align:middle line:90% through anti-Jewish riotings. 00:13:48.665 --> 00:13:50.790 align:middle line:84% When you think that's a very tautological statement 00:13:50.790 --> 00:13:51.900 align:middle line:90% and it is coy. 00:13:51.900 --> 00:13:54.293 align:middle line:84% It doesn't say very much except that the Jews died 00:13:54.293 --> 00:13:55.335 align:middle line:90% because they were killed. 00:13:55.335 --> 00:13:59.678 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:13:59.678 --> 00:14:01.470 align:middle line:84% Well it's one of way of dying, that's true. 00:14:01.470 --> 00:14:04.320 align:middle line:90% 00:14:04.320 --> 00:14:08.520 align:middle line:84% So incensed by the reticence of the city fathers, 00:14:08.520 --> 00:14:11.790 align:middle line:84% I wrote this poem as a kind of Jewish Baedeker, I suppose. 00:14:11.790 --> 00:14:15.850 align:middle line:84% The poem was called "The Coldness." 00:14:15.850 --> 00:14:18.070 align:middle line:84% Where the printing works buttress 00:14:18.070 --> 00:14:21.930 align:middle line:84% the church and the Northern river like moss 00:14:21.930 --> 00:14:26.610 align:middle line:84% robes herself slowly through the cold Township of York 00:14:26.610 --> 00:14:30.480 align:middle line:84% more slowly than usual for a cold Northern river. 00:14:30.480 --> 00:14:36.300 align:middle line:84% You see the citizens indulging stately pleasures like swans, 00:14:36.300 --> 00:14:39.210 align:middle line:90% but they seem cold. 00:14:39.210 --> 00:14:41.460 align:middle line:90% Why have they been so punished? 00:14:41.460 --> 00:14:45.600 align:middle line:84% In what do their sins consist now? 00:14:45.600 --> 00:14:50.010 align:middle line:84% An assertion persistent as a gross tumor and the sense 00:14:50.010 --> 00:14:54.030 align:middle line:84% of such growth haunting the flesh of York 00:14:54.030 --> 00:14:58.590 align:middle line:84% is that there has been no synagogue since 1190, 00:14:58.590 --> 00:15:02.670 align:middle line:84% when 800 Jews took each other's lives 00:15:02.670 --> 00:15:06.990 align:middle line:84% to escape Christian death by Christian hand. 00:15:06.990 --> 00:15:10.410 align:middle line:90% And the last took his own. 00:15:10.410 --> 00:15:13.050 align:middle line:84% The event has the frigid persistence 00:15:13.050 --> 00:15:15.310 align:middle line:90% of a growth in the flesh. 00:15:15.310 --> 00:15:17.940 align:middle line:84% It is a fact no other fact can be 00:15:17.940 --> 00:15:21.810 align:middle line:84% added to, save that it was Easter, the time when 00:15:21.810 --> 00:15:26.130 align:middle line:90% the dead Christian God rose. 00:15:26.130 --> 00:15:30.690 align:middle line:84% It is in this perhaps they are haunted. 00:15:30.690 --> 00:15:36.090 align:middle line:84% For the cold blood of victims is colder, more staining, 00:15:36.090 --> 00:15:41.730 align:middle line:84% more corrosive in the soul than the blood of martyrs. 00:15:41.730 --> 00:15:45.000 align:middle line:84% What consciousness is there of the cold heart, 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:46.290 align:middle line:90% with its spaces? 00:15:46.290 --> 00:15:49.620 align:middle line:84% For nothing penetrates more than admitted absence. 00:15:49.620 --> 00:15:54.600 align:middle line:84% The heart in warmth, even, cannot close its gaps. 00:15:54.600 --> 00:15:59.760 align:middle line:84% Absence of Jews through hatred or indifference, 00:15:59.760 --> 00:16:02.250 align:middle line:84% a gap they slip through, a conscience 00:16:02.250 --> 00:16:06.240 align:middle line:84% that corrodes more deeply since it is forgotten. 00:16:06.240 --> 00:16:09.690 align:middle line:90% This deadens York. 00:16:09.690 --> 00:16:13.530 align:middle line:84% Where are the stone masons, the builders skilled in glass, 00:16:13.530 --> 00:16:17.880 align:middle line:84% strong first in wood; taut, flaxen plumbers with lengths 00:16:17.880 --> 00:16:21.480 align:middle line:84% of pipe, steel rules coiled in their palms? 00:16:21.480 --> 00:16:23.550 align:middle line:90% The printers; canopy makers-- 00:16:23.550 --> 00:16:27.370 align:middle line:84% makers in the institution of marriage? 00:16:27.370 --> 00:16:30.450 align:middle line:84% The absence is endless, a socket where 00:16:30.450 --> 00:16:35.220 align:middle line:84% the jaw is protected neither through its tolerance for tooth 00:16:35.220 --> 00:16:37.680 align:middle line:90% nor for blood. 00:16:37.680 --> 00:16:41.250 align:middle line:90% Either there is pain or no pain. 00:16:41.250 --> 00:16:45.090 align:middle line:84% If they could feel; were there one among them 00:16:45.090 --> 00:16:47.670 align:middle line:84% with this kind of sensitivity that 00:16:47.670 --> 00:16:53.160 align:middle line:84% could touch the dignity, masonry of the cold northern face that 00:16:53.160 --> 00:16:55.980 align:middle line:84% falls as you touch it, there might 00:16:55.980 --> 00:17:00.780 align:middle line:84% be some moving to a northern expurgation. 00:17:00.780 --> 00:17:05.819 align:middle line:84% All Europe is touched with some of frigid York, 00:17:05.819 --> 00:17:09.842 align:middle line:90% as York is now by Europe. 00:17:09.842 --> 00:17:18.140 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:17:18.140 --> 00:17:19.790 align:middle line:84% I've written a poem about the bomb. 00:17:19.790 --> 00:17:24.650 align:middle line:84% It was obligatory for poems to be written by poets 00:17:24.650 --> 00:17:27.920 align:middle line:90% about the bomb at that time. 00:17:27.920 --> 00:17:32.255 align:middle line:84% And it sounds unhappy about writing it that's not true. 00:17:32.255 --> 00:17:35.000 align:middle line:90% 00:17:35.000 --> 00:17:38.000 align:middle line:84% In the '60s the government, it was then 00:17:38.000 --> 00:17:40.760 align:middle line:84% a conservative government, very different government 00:17:40.760 --> 00:17:43.520 align:middle line:84% from the conservative or perhaps I 00:17:43.520 --> 00:17:46.760 align:middle line:84% should say Tory government we have now in Britain. 00:17:46.760 --> 00:17:48.530 align:middle line:90% Not unlike-- 00:17:48.530 --> 00:17:51.380 align:middle line:84% There are certainly similarities between the government that you 00:17:51.380 --> 00:17:53.990 align:middle line:84% have in the United States now and the government 00:17:53.990 --> 00:17:55.640 align:middle line:90% that we have in Britain now. 00:17:55.640 --> 00:17:58.820 align:middle line:84% I mean, I don't want to get political, 00:17:58.820 --> 00:18:00.254 align:middle line:90% I'm only a poet but-- 00:18:00.254 --> 00:18:01.910 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:18:01.910 --> 00:18:05.010 align:middle line:84% I'd just like to note that there are resemblances. 00:18:05.010 --> 00:18:09.020 align:middle line:90% 00:18:09.020 --> 00:18:09.963 align:middle line:90% Yes, that's right. 00:18:09.963 --> 00:18:11.255 align:middle line:90% Well, that's unlikely actually. 00:18:11.255 --> 00:18:14.360 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:18:14.360 --> 00:18:18.140 align:middle line:90% 00:18:18.140 --> 00:18:19.670 align:middle line:84% Anyhow, the government at that time 00:18:19.670 --> 00:18:22.710 align:middle line:84% was sending out ladies from the home office whose patriotism 00:18:22.710 --> 00:18:25.010 align:middle line:84% had somehow inexplicably survived the Second World 00:18:25.010 --> 00:18:28.700 align:middle line:84% War to tell the women of England what they should do not if 00:18:28.700 --> 00:18:30.470 align:middle line:90% but when the bomb was dropped. 00:18:30.470 --> 00:18:34.190 align:middle line:84% And leaves that little equivocation if-- 00:18:34.190 --> 00:18:36.620 align:middle line:84% the assumption was that it would be dropped. 00:18:36.620 --> 00:18:39.068 align:middle line:84% And that of course, since that was 00:18:39.068 --> 00:18:41.360 align:middle line:84% the assumption it was all right for us to have the bomb 00:18:41.360 --> 00:18:43.670 align:middle line:84% and drop it on them too, whoever "them" would be, 00:18:43.670 --> 00:18:46.910 align:middle line:90% turn out to be I should say. 00:18:46.910 --> 00:18:53.540 align:middle line:84% And what these ladies did was to go around the country lecturing 00:18:53.540 --> 00:18:56.870 align:middle line:84% as I say, to the women of England telling them 00:18:56.870 --> 00:19:00.770 align:middle line:84% what they should do, as it were, the prophylactics of defense. 00:19:00.770 --> 00:19:03.530 align:middle line:84% And I had at that time a friend who 00:19:03.530 --> 00:19:06.290 align:middle line:84% was a nurse who attended one of these lectures, 00:19:06.290 --> 00:19:08.450 align:middle line:90% compulsory I must say. 00:19:08.450 --> 00:19:12.440 align:middle line:84% And she told me the gist of what this lady said in her lecture 00:19:12.440 --> 00:19:15.230 align:middle line:84% and I've incorporated it into the first half of my poem. 00:19:15.230 --> 00:19:18.020 align:middle line:90% 00:19:18.020 --> 00:19:19.340 align:middle line:90% The poem is called "Defence." 00:19:19.340 --> 00:19:21.170 align:middle line:90% It is dedicated to Ann. 00:19:21.170 --> 00:19:25.010 align:middle line:84% And it is prefaced with a little couplet, a sort of Lysistrata 00:19:25.010 --> 00:19:28.340 align:middle line:84% like couplet, which runs: what one in five 00:19:28.340 --> 00:19:30.800 align:middle line:90% can do no man can quite do. 00:19:30.800 --> 00:19:32.930 align:middle line:84% Because the lectures were aimed at reaching one 00:19:32.930 --> 00:19:35.090 align:middle line:84% in five women throughout the country, 00:19:35.090 --> 00:19:37.460 align:middle line:84% the lectures became only known as One in Five. 00:19:37.460 --> 00:19:42.320 align:middle line:84% As for Lysistrata, you remember that this lady 00:19:42.320 --> 00:19:47.775 align:middle line:84% was a woman of Athens who along with most 00:19:47.775 --> 00:19:49.400 align:middle line:84% of the other women of Athens apparently 00:19:49.400 --> 00:19:55.280 align:middle line:84% was a bit irritated with their men going off to war 00:19:55.280 --> 00:20:00.200 align:middle line:84% and either not coming back or as coming back mutilated 00:20:00.200 --> 00:20:04.790 align:middle line:84% so they held a strike, which was apparently 00:20:04.790 --> 00:20:10.815 align:middle line:84% 100% successful which said that the women would not sleep 00:20:10.815 --> 00:20:12.440 align:middle line:84% with their men folk until they promised 00:20:12.440 --> 00:20:16.130 align:middle line:90% not to go to war again. 00:20:16.130 --> 00:20:19.130 align:middle line:84% And the she in the poem, my poem, 00:20:19.130 --> 00:20:20.840 align:middle line:90% is removed from the home office. 00:20:20.840 --> 00:20:23.720 align:middle line:84% She arrived late with this motto: 00:20:23.720 --> 00:20:27.980 align:middle line:84% time used in reconnaissance is not time lost. 00:20:27.980 --> 00:20:31.910 align:middle line:84% Useful hint on how efficient our defences would be. 00:20:31.910 --> 00:20:36.770 align:middle line:84% Sent from the home office on work of some importance. 00:20:36.770 --> 00:20:38.690 align:middle line:84% And the first thing she said is that there 00:20:38.690 --> 00:20:42.380 align:middle line:84% will be some preparation before the thing is dropped. 00:20:42.380 --> 00:20:44.870 align:middle line:84% You should instruct persons to stand 00:20:44.870 --> 00:20:48.500 align:middle line:84% in the center of that room they like, for the blast, 00:20:48.500 --> 00:20:53.540 align:middle line:84% unlike the bombs of the previous war, will draw the walls out. 00:20:53.540 --> 00:20:55.820 align:middle line:84% There will be no crushing of flesh. 00:20:55.820 --> 00:21:01.070 align:middle line:84% Instead on all sides walls will reveal the citizen unharmed. 00:21:01.070 --> 00:21:03.350 align:middle line:90% Here, a question. 00:21:03.350 --> 00:21:05.480 align:middle line:90% But no, she said. 00:21:05.480 --> 00:21:10.220 align:middle line:84% We have from our intelligence absolute assurance 00:21:10.220 --> 00:21:13.760 align:middle line:90% our capital is not targeted. 00:21:13.760 --> 00:21:16.850 align:middle line:90% Total warfare, by arrangement. 00:21:16.850 --> 00:21:19.730 align:middle line:90% And she was sure when pressed. 00:21:19.730 --> 00:21:22.460 align:middle line:84% But there will be devastation, as we now suspect, 00:21:22.460 --> 00:21:24.800 align:middle line:90% in radius of 44 miles. 00:21:24.800 --> 00:21:26.930 align:middle line:90% The water will be infected. 00:21:26.930 --> 00:21:29.000 align:middle line:84% The light from the thing, astonishing. 00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:31.550 align:middle line:84% Which though surprised by, we should not look at. 00:21:31.550 --> 00:21:34.790 align:middle line:84% But shelter behind some object to reduce damage 00:21:34.790 --> 00:21:39.500 align:middle line:84% to the tissue from radiation or shelter under brown paper. 00:21:39.500 --> 00:21:44.390 align:middle line:84% Or if you can, sheets soaked in urine. 00:21:44.390 --> 00:21:48.140 align:middle line:90% So women who crochet, stop that. 00:21:48.140 --> 00:21:51.830 align:middle line:84% Men laboring whose issue is the two-handed house, 00:21:51.830 --> 00:21:54.350 align:middle line:90% set that aside. 00:21:54.350 --> 00:22:00.470 align:middle line:84% Girls big and delicate with child, turn on your side. 00:22:00.470 --> 00:22:03.020 align:middle line:90% You will melt. 00:22:03.020 --> 00:22:07.850 align:middle line:84% The raveling spider and the scorpion whose prongs itch 00:22:07.850 --> 00:22:13.810 align:middle line:84% will fuse in a viscoid tar, black as a huge fly. 00:22:13.810 --> 00:22:17.320 align:middle line:84% The whole of nature is a preying upon. 00:22:17.320 --> 00:22:21.520 align:middle line:84% Let man, whose mind is large, legislate 00:22:21.520 --> 00:22:25.630 align:middle line:84% for all passionate things, all sensate things. 00:22:25.630 --> 00:22:30.640 align:middle line:84% The sensuous grass whose speech is all in its sharp, bending 00:22:30.640 --> 00:22:32.620 align:middle line:90% blade. 00:22:32.620 --> 00:22:37.780 align:middle line:84% Leave not a leaf, a stone that rested on the dead 00:22:37.780 --> 00:22:39.580 align:middle line:90% to its own dissolution. 00:22:39.580 --> 00:22:42.320 align:middle line:90% 00:22:42.320 --> 00:22:44.180 align:middle line:90% She left then. 00:22:44.180 --> 00:22:46.710 align:middle line:84% As if she were with her feet turning 00:22:46.710 --> 00:22:52.730 align:middle line:84% an enormous, if man-made, pearl as means of locomotion. 00:22:52.730 --> 00:23:09.230 align:middle line:90% 00:23:09.230 --> 00:23:12.530 align:middle line:84% Also from my first book is a poem 00:23:12.530 --> 00:23:16.970 align:middle line:84% about the death of my first son, my first child 00:23:16.970 --> 00:23:22.170 align:middle line:84% who died in a mental hospital when he was almost a year old. 00:23:22.170 --> 00:23:23.655 align:middle line:90% His name was Adam. 00:23:23.655 --> 00:23:25.280 align:middle line:84% And there's a lot to say about the poem 00:23:25.280 --> 00:23:30.710 align:middle line:84% but it's not that I'm being coy, I 00:23:30.710 --> 00:23:35.780 align:middle line:84% don't really want to spend the time talking too much about it. 00:23:35.780 --> 00:23:38.360 align:middle line:90% 00:23:38.360 --> 00:23:44.270 align:middle line:84% I think the thing I want to say is that the poem was written 00:23:44.270 --> 00:23:47.708 align:middle line:90% immediately after Adam's death. 00:23:47.708 --> 00:23:50.000 align:middle line:84% There are other poems which I've never really published 00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:51.625 align:middle line:84% although I published them in magazines, 00:23:51.625 --> 00:23:56.390 align:middle line:84% which were about Adam and about the nature of madness. 00:23:56.390 --> 00:24:03.750 align:middle line:84% And Adam was what they called a defective, mentally defective. 00:24:03.750 --> 00:24:09.800 align:middle line:84% And it was in as much as I can say 00:24:09.800 --> 00:24:14.480 align:middle line:84% with a poem which was written so soon after his death, that 00:24:14.480 --> 00:24:16.370 align:middle line:84% is to say immediately after his death, 00:24:16.370 --> 00:24:20.900 align:middle line:84% indeed the last line of the poem went through my head 00:24:20.900 --> 00:24:23.140 align:middle line:90% as he was dying. 00:24:23.140 --> 00:24:25.730 align:middle line:84% Though I didn't know he was dying if you see what I mean. 00:24:25.730 --> 00:24:30.500 align:middle line:84% He was doing things, these huge tears fell out of his eyes. 00:24:30.500 --> 00:24:32.285 align:middle line:90% He was doing this-- 00:24:32.285 --> 00:24:34.160 align:middle line:84% and since I've never seen anybody die before, 00:24:34.160 --> 00:24:37.858 align:middle line:84% I didn't know whether that was death or not 00:24:37.858 --> 00:24:40.400 align:middle line:84% or perhaps I didn't want to know whether it was death or not. 00:24:40.400 --> 00:24:42.230 align:middle line:90% Perhaps that's the point really. 00:24:42.230 --> 00:24:44.750 align:middle line:90% 00:24:44.750 --> 00:24:49.970 align:middle line:84% But even though the poem was written as I say immediately 00:24:49.970 --> 00:24:54.540 align:middle line:84% after when we got home from the hospital, 00:24:54.540 --> 00:24:58.140 align:middle line:84% I think what I was trying to do in the poem-- 00:24:58.140 --> 00:25:01.920 align:middle line:84% whether I succeeded is another matter-- was to try and argue 00:25:01.920 --> 00:25:06.960 align:middle line:84% with people like my mother, for instance, who because she was 00:25:06.960 --> 00:25:11.310 align:middle line:84% so shocked and hurt by the whole business 00:25:11.310 --> 00:25:14.250 align:middle line:84% said in an unguarded movement that she thought that Adam 00:25:14.250 --> 00:25:16.590 align:middle line:84% should never have been born, which 00:25:16.590 --> 00:25:18.730 align:middle line:90% implied that Adam had no value. 00:25:18.730 --> 00:25:21.030 align:middle line:84% And I think the point about this poem 00:25:21.030 --> 00:25:26.040 align:middle line:84% for me was that I was trying to put into the poem the value 00:25:26.040 --> 00:25:29.730 align:middle line:84% that I undoubtedly felt Adam undoubtedly had. 00:25:29.730 --> 00:25:32.225 align:middle line:90% 00:25:32.225 --> 00:25:33.600 align:middle line:84% Anyhow, the poem is called "Death 00:25:33.600 --> 00:25:38.400 align:middle line:84% of the son who died in a mental hospital, aged one." 00:25:38.400 --> 00:25:41.280 align:middle line:84% Something has ceased to come along with me. 00:25:41.280 --> 00:25:45.210 align:middle line:84% Something like a person, something very like one. 00:25:45.210 --> 00:25:49.080 align:middle line:84% And there is no nobility in it or anything like that. 00:25:49.080 --> 00:25:52.230 align:middle line:84% Something is there like a one-year-old house, 00:25:52.230 --> 00:25:56.220 align:middle line:84% dumb as stone, while the newer buildings sound like birds 00:25:56.220 --> 00:25:58.560 align:middle line:84% and laughed, understanding the pact 00:25:58.560 --> 00:26:00.870 align:middle line:90% they were to have with silence. 00:26:00.870 --> 00:26:03.810 align:middle line:90% But he never sang or laughed. 00:26:03.810 --> 00:26:08.220 align:middle line:84% He did not bless silence like bread, with words. 00:26:08.220 --> 00:26:14.250 align:middle line:84% He did not forsake silence but rather like a house in mourning 00:26:14.250 --> 00:26:17.220 align:middle line:84% kept the eye tuned in to watch the silence 00:26:17.220 --> 00:26:22.290 align:middle line:84% while the other houses like birds sang around him. 00:26:22.290 --> 00:26:28.320 align:middle line:84% And the breathing silence neither moved nor was still. 00:26:28.320 --> 00:26:32.310 align:middle line:84% I have seen stones, I have seen brick. 00:26:32.310 --> 00:26:36.090 align:middle line:84% But this house was made up of neither bricks nor stone 00:26:36.090 --> 00:26:41.400 align:middle line:84% but a house of flesh and blood, with flesh of stone 00:26:41.400 --> 00:26:43.650 align:middle line:90% and bricks for blood. 00:26:43.650 --> 00:26:48.270 align:middle line:84% A house of stones and blood in breathing silence 00:26:48.270 --> 00:26:52.740 align:middle line:84% with the other birds singing crazy on its chimneys. 00:26:52.740 --> 00:26:54.480 align:middle line:90% But this was silence. 00:26:54.480 --> 00:26:55.900 align:middle line:90% This was something else. 00:26:55.900 --> 00:26:58.200 align:middle line:84% This was hearing and speaking as though he 00:26:58.200 --> 00:27:00.570 align:middle line:90% was a house drawn into silence. 00:27:00.570 --> 00:27:03.390 align:middle line:84% This was something religious in his silence, 00:27:03.390 --> 00:27:06.510 align:middle line:90% something shining in his quiet. 00:27:06.510 --> 00:27:07.920 align:middle line:90% This was different. 00:27:07.920 --> 00:27:11.390 align:middle line:84% This was altogether something else. 00:27:11.390 --> 00:27:17.010 align:middle line:84% Although he never spoke, this was something to do with death. 00:27:17.010 --> 00:27:20.760 align:middle line:84% And then slowly, the eyes stopped looking inward. 00:27:20.760 --> 00:27:24.420 align:middle line:84% The silence rose and became still. 00:27:24.420 --> 00:27:27.210 align:middle line:84% The look turned to the outer place 00:27:27.210 --> 00:27:32.520 align:middle line:84% and stopped, with the birds still shrilling around him. 00:27:32.520 --> 00:27:36.960 align:middle line:84% And as if he could speak, he turned over on his side 00:27:36.960 --> 00:27:40.500 align:middle line:84% with his one year, red as a wound. 00:27:40.500 --> 00:27:45.570 align:middle line:84% He turned over as if he could be sorry for this. 00:27:45.570 --> 00:27:51.780 align:middle line:84% And out of his eyes, two great tears rolled like stones, 00:27:51.780 --> 00:27:52.530 align:middle line:90% and he died. 00:27:52.530 --> 00:27:55.375 align:middle line:90% 00:27:55.375 --> 00:28:16.290 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:28:16.290 --> 00:28:21.260 align:middle line:84% I think I've gone on writing poems about Adam. 00:28:21.260 --> 00:28:26.090 align:middle line:84% It very often suggested to me that the writing of the poem 00:28:26.090 --> 00:28:32.450 align:middle line:84% was, in some sense, a catharsis, a release and a relief 00:28:32.450 --> 00:28:36.050 align:middle line:90% from the pressure of that death. 00:28:36.050 --> 00:28:37.370 align:middle line:90% That may be true. 00:28:37.370 --> 00:28:39.650 align:middle line:90% I've no way of knowing. 00:28:39.650 --> 00:28:46.370 align:middle line:84% I certainly was not conscious of being motivated to write 00:28:46.370 --> 00:28:50.810 align:middle line:90% the poem for those reasons. 00:28:50.810 --> 00:28:55.070 align:middle line:84% And indeed I can only say that the writing of the poem 00:28:55.070 --> 00:29:04.350 align:middle line:84% etched that event sharply into my mind. 00:29:04.350 --> 00:29:09.440 align:middle line:90% It did not provide any relief. 00:29:09.440 --> 00:29:11.750 align:middle line:84% And indeed I think that's probably right. 00:29:11.750 --> 00:29:15.500 align:middle line:90% There are no shortcuts to grief. 00:29:15.500 --> 00:29:16.670 align:middle line:90% I wouldn't have thought so. 00:29:16.670 --> 00:29:19.640 align:middle line:84% And the poem in any case, as I perhaps 00:29:19.640 --> 00:29:22.580 align:middle line:84% rather heavily and painstakingly tried to suggest, 00:29:22.580 --> 00:29:24.500 align:middle line:90% is not a poem about my grief. 00:29:24.500 --> 00:29:31.610 align:middle line:84% The grief, if it is there in the poem, is incidental to it. 00:29:31.610 --> 00:29:34.520 align:middle line:84% But then I was reading that poem. 00:29:34.520 --> 00:29:37.440 align:middle line:84% I do cut a lot of readings in schools in England. 00:29:37.440 --> 00:29:42.560 align:middle line:84% And at the end of it a young girl said, that's fine. 00:29:42.560 --> 00:29:45.713 align:middle line:90% She said, what about the mother? 00:29:45.713 --> 00:29:46.880 align:middle line:90% Well, that's perfectly true. 00:29:46.880 --> 00:29:48.172 align:middle line:90% The mother is not in that poem. 00:29:48.172 --> 00:29:52.290 align:middle line:90% 00:29:52.290 --> 00:29:57.380 align:middle line:84% But I had in fact got around eventually 00:29:57.380 --> 00:29:59.840 align:middle line:84% to writing as I have several poems about Adam 00:29:59.840 --> 00:30:03.920 align:middle line:84% and this was another one of them, part of a longer poem 00:30:03.920 --> 00:30:05.840 align:middle line:90% call. 00:30:05.840 --> 00:30:08.630 align:middle line:84% And the poem opens with something 00:30:08.630 --> 00:30:11.570 align:middle line:84% that simply did happen as we were 00:30:11.570 --> 00:30:16.040 align:middle line:84% entering the grounds of this mental hospital where Adam was. 00:30:16.040 --> 00:30:19.910 align:middle line:84% The grounds were filled with the mad people. 00:30:19.910 --> 00:30:22.970 align:middle line:84% That seemed-- it was tremendously crowded. 00:30:22.970 --> 00:30:25.610 align:middle line:84% And as we were walking around, there was this woman, 00:30:25.610 --> 00:30:26.900 align:middle line:90% I don't know how old she was. 00:30:26.900 --> 00:30:32.600 align:middle line:84% She had breasts but her face was-- 00:30:32.600 --> 00:30:34.760 align:middle line:90% had no determinate age. 00:30:34.760 --> 00:30:37.850 align:middle line:84% And she came up to us and then she took her to my hand 00:30:37.850 --> 00:30:40.550 align:middle line:90% very gently and kissed it. 00:30:40.550 --> 00:30:44.060 align:middle line:84% Raised it to her lips slowly kissed it, released me 00:30:44.060 --> 00:30:45.720 align:middle line:90% courteously and left. 00:30:45.720 --> 00:30:47.990 align:middle line:84% In other words, she wanted to give love 00:30:47.990 --> 00:30:53.510 align:middle line:84% and she saw no reason for not doing so. 00:30:53.510 --> 00:30:56.240 align:middle line:84% Of course that was rather ticklish questions you know. 00:30:56.240 --> 00:31:00.080 align:middle line:84% And if that is how the mad are then perhaps 00:31:00.080 --> 00:31:02.930 align:middle line:90% we need more people like that. 00:31:02.930 --> 00:31:07.580 align:middle line:84% And which side is one, all of that division between the mad 00:31:07.580 --> 00:31:10.680 align:middle line:84% and the allegedly sane and so on and so on. 00:31:10.680 --> 00:31:13.550 align:middle line:84% All the questions that I think we probably 00:31:13.550 --> 00:31:18.510 align:middle line:84% all ask ourselves, which are not easy to answer. 00:31:18.510 --> 00:31:20.240 align:middle line:90% I don't think. 00:31:20.240 --> 00:31:22.310 align:middle line:90% Anyhow, here it is in this poem. 00:31:22.310 --> 00:31:24.980 align:middle line:90% 00:31:24.980 --> 00:31:28.010 align:middle line:84% Air that pricks earth with life and turns with it 00:31:28.010 --> 00:31:31.850 align:middle line:84% returns to darken in the year's midnight, thins 00:31:31.850 --> 00:31:34.580 align:middle line:90% in a chill distraction. 00:31:34.580 --> 00:31:38.660 align:middle line:84% Winter sun burns a low arc through the horizon 00:31:38.660 --> 00:31:41.300 align:middle line:90% and is absent. 00:31:41.300 --> 00:31:45.350 align:middle line:84% As we trudge the area where our child is lying, 00:31:45.350 --> 00:31:51.300 align:middle line:84% the soil is trodden by the mad who, at the next spring, 00:31:51.300 --> 00:31:58.100 align:middle line:84% but that is, at the next world, may with its flexible sense 00:31:58.100 --> 00:32:02.330 align:middle line:84% elide by that stark light, the vacancies 00:32:02.330 --> 00:32:05.060 align:middle line:90% in their main circuits. 00:32:05.060 --> 00:32:09.590 align:middle line:84% If no world unfolds these dead may rise to, 00:32:09.590 --> 00:32:13.880 align:middle line:84% Their half buds of flesh that does not know itself 00:32:13.880 --> 00:32:17.270 align:middle line:84% and does not open in a separate flowering 00:32:17.270 --> 00:32:20.780 align:middle line:84% and touch your signs which touch without a trace 00:32:20.780 --> 00:32:27.620 align:middle line:84% of human correspondence in this world, will have to do. 00:32:27.620 --> 00:32:33.410 align:middle line:84% She who drifts with her group of friends as if we beckoned, 00:32:33.410 --> 00:32:37.760 align:middle line:90% leaves, and is behind us both. 00:32:37.760 --> 00:32:42.230 align:middle line:90% Her shape bends gently down. 00:32:42.230 --> 00:32:46.880 align:middle line:84% Her large quiet hands, her breasts hardly there. 00:32:46.880 --> 00:32:50.630 align:middle line:84% An independent mildness at the mouth branch 00:32:50.630 --> 00:32:56.690 align:middle line:84% past the cheekbones, blushes to the eyes, widening in hunger. 00:32:56.690 --> 00:33:00.920 align:middle line:84% She gazes and lifts my hand up slowly to her lips. 00:33:00.920 --> 00:33:07.640 align:middle line:84% Then kissing it, releases me with care, gently, and leaves. 00:33:07.640 --> 00:33:11.180 align:middle line:84% That gentleness forming without submission 00:33:11.180 --> 00:33:13.490 align:middle line:90% as she kisses my hand bravely. 00:33:13.490 --> 00:33:15.880 align:middle line:90% Who shared in that kiss? 00:33:15.880 --> 00:33:19.810 align:middle line:84% In which instant sane or defective? 00:33:19.810 --> 00:33:23.890 align:middle line:90% Shame at my dividing question. 00:33:23.890 --> 00:33:26.290 align:middle line:90% Walk a bit onto the ward. 00:33:26.290 --> 00:33:30.640 align:middle line:84% Out of its souring brick birdlike, the mad alight, 00:33:30.640 --> 00:33:31.360 align:middle line:90% shake. 00:33:31.360 --> 00:33:35.530 align:middle line:84% and fold then their movements to their bodies, gazing clearly 00:33:35.530 --> 00:33:38.830 align:middle line:84% or quiver in recognition, timid but pressing 00:33:38.830 --> 00:33:42.100 align:middle line:84% on us to touch us over our hands or faces 00:33:42.100 --> 00:33:44.290 align:middle line:90% or touch us with their eyes. 00:33:44.290 --> 00:33:48.520 align:middle line:84% While everywhere their mild untrained gaze 00:33:48.520 --> 00:33:53.120 align:middle line:84% forms the unsure part in creaturely connection. 00:33:53.120 --> 00:33:56.230 align:middle line:84% And as I feel her hand, all the forms 00:33:56.230 --> 00:33:59.410 align:middle line:84% shed their flesh leaving this bare. 00:33:59.410 --> 00:34:04.000 align:middle line:84% 12 almost, to test my sanity, I squatted on the pavement 00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:08.230 align:middle line:84% and put a marble on my tongue, closing my mouth on it. 00:34:08.230 --> 00:34:12.080 align:middle line:84% If I could swallow this and die, I was insane 00:34:12.080 --> 00:34:14.860 align:middle line:84% or if I left it balancing on my tongue, 00:34:14.860 --> 00:34:17.530 align:middle line:90% then I'm mad to do this. 00:34:17.530 --> 00:34:21.520 align:middle line:90% Our child, for them, is mad. 00:34:21.520 --> 00:34:24.070 align:middle line:90% We reach the twilit ward. 00:34:24.070 --> 00:34:28.360 align:middle line:84% Adam lies in a bed as if an adult. 00:34:28.360 --> 00:34:33.699 align:middle line:84% Through his face his blood making the skin chill, 00:34:33.699 --> 00:34:36.460 align:middle line:90% dampening it, stirs. 00:34:36.460 --> 00:34:40.719 align:middle line:84% He breathes, yielding a change to breath. 00:34:40.719 --> 00:34:45.940 align:middle line:84% We label it and press it, the lungs that can't be relieved, 00:34:45.940 --> 00:34:48.070 align:middle line:90% letting it from them. 00:34:48.070 --> 00:34:52.510 align:middle line:84% She rises and slowly, as she brings her mouth to him, 00:34:52.510 --> 00:34:54.520 align:middle line:90% her lips widen. 00:34:54.520 --> 00:34:58.150 align:middle line:84% Lightly, and light, as if she were withdrawing, 00:34:58.150 --> 00:35:01.120 align:middle line:84% as she sinks beside his silence breathing, 00:35:01.120 --> 00:35:04.550 align:middle line:84% she lifts up his head and lightly kisses the eyelids, 00:35:04.550 --> 00:35:07.720 align:middle line:84% his mouth then as she puts her finger to his palm 00:35:07.720 --> 00:35:10.720 align:middle line:90% turning his head to us. 00:35:10.720 --> 00:35:16.990 align:middle line:84% The eyes, eyes with a firm breath in a changing form 00:35:16.990 --> 00:35:21.310 align:middle line:84% move through them flickering softness in its shape. 00:35:21.310 --> 00:35:27.220 align:middle line:84% Over and not obscuring that, the moisture of his body swelling 00:35:27.220 --> 00:35:30.670 align:middle line:84% the eyes and widening them brings the life 00:35:30.670 --> 00:35:35.110 align:middle line:84% that concentrates, searching itself to grow connections 00:35:35.110 --> 00:35:36.730 align:middle line:90% in him. 00:35:36.730 --> 00:35:40.600 align:middle line:84% Forming him, formed and held like this, 00:35:40.600 --> 00:35:46.720 align:middle line:84% it connected us to him holding us until that moisture pressed 00:35:46.720 --> 00:35:49.180 align:middle line:90% with a thick movement from him. 00:35:49.180 --> 00:35:58.108 align:middle line:90% 00:35:58.108 --> 00:36:04.480 align:middle line:84% I wrote a number of poems about flowers, wild flowers 00:36:04.480 --> 00:36:07.570 align:middle line:84% mainly when I was living in Leeds. 00:36:07.570 --> 00:36:13.030 align:middle line:84% And I'd just like to read two of them. 00:36:13.030 --> 00:36:15.130 align:middle line:84% They didn't start off as a group. 00:36:15.130 --> 00:36:18.520 align:middle line:84% What happened was that I'd let the garden that I was living in 00:36:18.520 --> 00:36:22.270 align:middle line:84% is a university flat and it was very productive, the flat. 00:36:22.270 --> 00:36:25.600 align:middle line:84% It grew well outside and grew an enormous amount of fungus 00:36:25.600 --> 00:36:28.330 align:middle line:84% inside as well but I could never get the University to clean it 00:36:28.330 --> 00:36:31.030 align:middle line:90% up. 00:36:31.030 --> 00:36:34.510 align:middle line:84% And besides which I was writing poetry 00:36:34.510 --> 00:36:37.240 align:middle line:84% I had much more important things to do of course. 00:36:37.240 --> 00:36:41.470 align:middle line:90% And so a garden grew as well. 00:36:41.470 --> 00:36:43.330 align:middle line:84% And the grass got enormously long 00:36:43.330 --> 00:36:46.620 align:middle line:84% and as I walk through a lot of frogs would leap up. 00:36:46.620 --> 00:36:48.857 align:middle line:84% And then I had a fit of bourgeois conscience 00:36:48.857 --> 00:36:51.190 align:middle line:84% and I thought I ought to try and do something about what 00:36:51.190 --> 00:36:52.090 align:middle line:90% had once been a lawn. 00:36:52.090 --> 00:36:54.610 align:middle line:84% So I started to try and pull the dandelions up. 00:36:54.610 --> 00:36:58.590 align:middle line:84% But as you know, if you don't [INAUDIBLE] around the roots 00:36:58.590 --> 00:37:01.090 align:middle line:84% you might just as well forget it because they just break off 00:37:01.090 --> 00:37:03.880 align:middle line:90% at ground level and that's it. 00:37:03.880 --> 00:37:06.380 align:middle line:90% And they just grow fine. 00:37:06.380 --> 00:37:12.310 align:middle line:84% And so what I did on this occasion afterwards 00:37:12.310 --> 00:37:15.100 align:middle line:84% unsuccessfully pulled the dandelions up, 00:37:15.100 --> 00:37:21.820 align:middle line:84% I had noticed this time that the plant exuded this thick viscous 00:37:21.820 --> 00:37:26.360 align:middle line:84% milky fluid which is like the plant's blown up after that. 00:37:26.360 --> 00:37:30.370 align:middle line:84% And I wrote a poem about dandelion shortly after that. 00:37:30.370 --> 00:37:33.370 align:middle line:84% And then I perceived that the garden 00:37:33.370 --> 00:37:38.020 align:middle line:84% was full not only of flowers but also potential poems. 00:37:38.020 --> 00:37:40.930 align:middle line:84% So I started to write poems about the flowers 00:37:40.930 --> 00:37:42.400 align:middle line:90% in the garden. 00:37:42.400 --> 00:37:48.010 align:middle line:84% And I tried to describe as accurately as I could 00:37:48.010 --> 00:37:49.240 align:middle line:90% what I saw. 00:37:49.240 --> 00:37:54.520 align:middle line:84% And then came the obvious problem of anthropomorphizing. 00:37:54.520 --> 00:38:00.220 align:middle line:84% That really you can't help but say be saying something 00:38:00.220 --> 00:38:05.440 align:middle line:84% about the human creature while ostensibly saying something 00:38:05.440 --> 00:38:06.890 align:middle line:90% about other creatures. 00:38:06.890 --> 00:38:10.120 align:middle line:84% So I decided that perhaps the best strategy 00:38:10.120 --> 00:38:13.360 align:middle line:84% would be to be frankly anthropomorphic, so 00:38:13.360 --> 00:38:16.780 align:middle line:84% that with one eye I try to describe what the flower looked 00:38:16.780 --> 00:38:23.080 align:middle line:84% like and with the other to try and visualize a human type 00:38:23.080 --> 00:38:26.020 align:middle line:84% or human situation which paralleled the creature that I 00:38:26.020 --> 00:38:27.580 align:middle line:90% was looking at. 00:38:27.580 --> 00:38:29.455 align:middle line:84% Well, I'll read a couple of these poems. 00:38:29.455 --> 00:38:33.190 align:middle line:90% 00:38:33.190 --> 00:38:36.340 align:middle line:84% This poem is called "The violet." 00:38:36.340 --> 00:38:39.100 align:middle line:84% And it's about courage which I think 00:38:39.100 --> 00:38:42.800 align:middle line:84% is a commodity that is in fairly short supply. 00:38:42.800 --> 00:38:43.390 align:middle line:90% I should know. 00:38:43.390 --> 00:38:47.350 align:middle line:90% 00:38:47.350 --> 00:38:52.030 align:middle line:84% The lobed petals receive each other's nestling shape. 00:38:52.030 --> 00:38:54.910 align:middle line:90% We share the sun's beneficence. 00:38:54.910 --> 00:38:58.960 align:middle line:90% Frost, men, snowdrops. 00:38:58.960 --> 00:39:02.920 align:middle line:84% Then the violet unfolds: not an uncasing 00:39:02.920 --> 00:39:06.310 align:middle line:84% of the corolla, each petal compliant to the purpose 00:39:06.310 --> 00:39:09.260 align:middle line:90% of survival, obedient to that. 00:39:09.260 --> 00:39:12.670 align:middle line:84% But as it feels the sun's heat, that puberty 00:39:12.670 --> 00:39:15.460 align:middle line:84% pushes out from its earlier self clasping 00:39:15.460 --> 00:39:18.790 align:middle line:90% two distinct clenched halves. 00:39:18.790 --> 00:39:20.560 align:middle line:90% Stiffens them. 00:39:20.560 --> 00:39:24.460 align:middle line:84% These fluttering portions that made the bed separately 00:39:24.460 --> 00:39:26.380 align:middle line:90% elect to be the flower. 00:39:26.380 --> 00:39:29.230 align:middle line:84% The violet halves itself, pushing apart 00:39:29.230 --> 00:39:31.270 align:middle line:90% in separate forces. 00:39:31.270 --> 00:39:33.100 align:middle line:90% It divides up itself. 00:39:33.100 --> 00:39:37.060 align:middle line:90% It becomes two violet portions. 00:39:37.060 --> 00:39:39.610 align:middle line:84% That is not a confirmation of members, 00:39:39.610 --> 00:39:43.180 align:middle line:90% each petal a tooth, an eyelash. 00:39:43.180 --> 00:39:46.780 align:middle line:84% On the other hand, the violet is torn apart. 00:39:46.780 --> 00:39:49.030 align:middle line:90% It increases by dividing. 00:39:49.030 --> 00:39:52.900 align:middle line:84% Its stiffened petals push further apart. 00:39:52.900 --> 00:39:54.730 align:middle line:90% It adheres to its nature. 00:39:54.730 --> 00:39:58.390 align:middle line:84% It has no maturity other than this. 00:39:58.390 --> 00:40:03.400 align:middle line:84% It requires courage and finds that in this unclasping 00:40:03.400 --> 00:40:05.350 align:middle line:90% of its self worship. 00:40:05.350 --> 00:40:08.740 align:middle line:90% Two palms tentatively open. 00:40:08.740 --> 00:40:12.580 align:middle line:84% Going both ways, they absorb a huge circle 00:40:12.580 --> 00:40:17.500 align:middle line:84% of violated air and intent movement of embrace: 00:40:17.500 --> 00:40:22.060 align:middle line:90% created, exposed, powerful. 00:40:22.060 --> 00:40:26.170 align:middle line:84% The air is colored somewhat violet. 00:40:26.170 --> 00:40:27.940 align:middle line:90% It costs itself much. 00:40:27.940 --> 00:40:33.060 align:middle line:90% 00:40:33.060 --> 00:40:34.390 align:middle line:90% One other of these poems. 00:40:34.390 --> 00:40:38.830 align:middle line:84% This is something called Harebell which is a poet-- 00:40:38.830 --> 00:40:42.310 align:middle line:84% a flower that looks like, from an angle, a poet's lamp. 00:40:42.310 --> 00:40:44.980 align:middle line:84% I don't know whether you have it in Arizona. 00:40:44.980 --> 00:40:48.940 align:middle line:84% Looking at the vegetation in your desert 00:40:48.940 --> 00:40:52.030 align:middle line:84% I would be very surprised if the Harebell could 00:40:52.030 --> 00:40:54.290 align:middle line:90% manage to get this far South. 00:40:54.290 --> 00:40:58.180 align:middle line:84% And in Scotland it's called the Blue Bell 00:40:58.180 --> 00:40:59.620 align:middle line:90% but that shouldn't confuse you. 00:40:59.620 --> 00:41:03.070 align:middle line:90% 00:41:03.070 --> 00:41:08.430 align:middle line:84% And what I admired about this little plant was its reticence. 00:41:08.430 --> 00:41:13.000 align:middle line:84% I just had in mind you know Hazlitt, the 19th century 00:41:13.000 --> 00:41:15.880 align:middle line:84% critic, could never forgive Wordsworth 00:41:15.880 --> 00:41:19.510 align:middle line:90% for changing political sides. 00:41:19.510 --> 00:41:23.410 align:middle line:84% And in "The Spirit of the Age" he wrote of Wordsworth: 00:41:23.410 --> 00:41:29.740 align:middle line:84% "If Mr. Wordsworth is garrulous now it was not his wont." 00:41:29.740 --> 00:41:31.840 align:middle line:84% Well, fancy having that said about you 00:41:31.840 --> 00:41:36.740 align:middle line:84% when you were alive, fancy that surviving your death. 00:41:36.740 --> 00:41:40.510 align:middle line:84% And indeed I suppose if one were true to one's words one 00:41:40.510 --> 00:41:44.110 align:middle line:90% would not write more poems. 00:41:44.110 --> 00:41:49.030 align:middle line:84% But it's the spareness of this flower, its spare beauty, 00:41:49.030 --> 00:41:51.563 align:middle line:90% that I like enormously. 00:41:51.563 --> 00:41:53.980 align:middle line:84% I mean poets are permitted to write about flowers as well, 00:41:53.980 --> 00:41:56.230 align:middle line:90% aren't they? 00:41:56.230 --> 00:41:59.566 align:middle line:84% As I was leaving a restaurant there 00:41:59.566 --> 00:42:04.270 align:middle line:84% were a couple of guys, about five large guys 00:42:04.270 --> 00:42:06.550 align:middle line:84% and they'd heard that I was English 00:42:06.550 --> 00:42:09.730 align:middle line:84% because the people with us had said, when are you going back 00:42:09.730 --> 00:42:10.670 align:middle line:90% to England. 00:42:10.670 --> 00:42:16.395 align:middle line:84% And as I passed they said doesn't speak like one. 00:42:16.395 --> 00:42:17.770 align:middle line:84% And then there was a pause and he 00:42:17.770 --> 00:42:19.353 align:middle line:84% said he doesn't smell like one either. 00:42:19.353 --> 00:42:25.970 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:42:25.970 --> 00:42:29.280 align:middle line:84% The Harebell is one flower, its solitariness 00:42:29.280 --> 00:42:31.400 align:middle line:90% bespoke by its color. 00:42:31.400 --> 00:42:36.740 align:middle line:84% Not blue nor violet, hovering between, precisely. 00:42:36.740 --> 00:42:39.560 align:middle line:90% It is a spare delicate bell. 00:42:39.560 --> 00:42:44.180 align:middle line:84% Inside it are three pale sugary stigmas welded to each other 00:42:44.180 --> 00:42:48.920 align:middle line:84% at equal angles, not seen until looked for. 00:42:48.920 --> 00:42:52.280 align:middle line:90% Its stem is thin as wire. 00:42:52.280 --> 00:42:55.550 align:middle line:84% The flower looks down, and if lifted, 00:42:55.550 --> 00:42:58.700 align:middle line:90% looks fixedly at the admirer. 00:42:58.700 --> 00:43:02.360 align:middle line:84% Its silence halted between primness and beauty, 00:43:02.360 --> 00:43:05.660 align:middle line:84% its shape is wrung from the sounds of life 00:43:05.660 --> 00:43:11.540 align:middle line:84% round it as a bell sound forms the bell shape from silence 00:43:11.540 --> 00:43:15.350 align:middle line:84% and resumes its demure integrity. 00:43:15.350 --> 00:43:18.980 align:middle line:84% More precise, more shaped than the Blue Bell, 00:43:18.980 --> 00:43:25.220 align:middle line:84% more venturesome, more stirred, ungarrulous. 00:43:25.220 --> 00:43:26.855 align:middle line:90% Stern as a pin. 00:43:26.855 --> 00:43:36.380 align:middle line:90% 00:43:36.380 --> 00:43:41.210 align:middle line:84% In 1965 I moved further North again from Leeds 00:43:41.210 --> 00:43:43.640 align:middle line:90% to the City of Newcastle. 00:43:43.640 --> 00:43:48.860 align:middle line:84% And again something occurred through the auspices 00:43:48.860 --> 00:43:52.310 align:middle line:84% of a different conservative government. 00:43:52.310 --> 00:43:55.820 align:middle line:84% And that was what was called the Industrial Relations 00:43:55.820 --> 00:43:58.040 align:middle line:90% bill, which sought-- 00:43:58.040 --> 00:44:00.800 align:middle line:84% I mean you must surely have been saying something 00:44:00.800 --> 00:44:04.400 align:middle line:84% about the long miners' strike in England. 00:44:04.400 --> 00:44:08.450 align:middle line:84% Well, that conservative government sought at that time 00:44:08.450 --> 00:44:13.910 align:middle line:84% not to prohibit, but to inhibit strike action. 00:44:13.910 --> 00:44:16.550 align:middle line:84% And incidentally, what I have just 00:44:16.550 --> 00:44:19.640 align:middle line:84% said whenever I read some of the poems 00:44:19.640 --> 00:44:22.670 align:middle line:84% that I'm going to read now for example on television, 00:44:22.670 --> 00:44:26.690 align:middle line:84% my commentary was cut out because the television people 00:44:26.690 --> 00:44:31.310 align:middle line:84% feared to be actually taken to task by the government 00:44:31.310 --> 00:44:36.500 align:middle line:84% and even sued for supporting a political view which 00:44:36.500 --> 00:44:40.670 align:middle line:90% was antipathetic to their own. 00:44:40.670 --> 00:44:43.610 align:middle line:84% We do have democracy, that is we elect our leader. 00:44:43.610 --> 00:44:50.210 align:middle line:90% 00:44:50.210 --> 00:44:52.130 align:middle line:90% Here's a point. 00:44:52.130 --> 00:44:54.510 align:middle line:84% My wife and I, we went around Finland. 00:44:54.510 --> 00:44:57.032 align:middle line:90% And we came across some-- 00:44:57.032 --> 00:44:58.740 align:middle line:84% one of the many railroad tracks that have 00:44:58.740 --> 00:44:59.920 align:middle line:90% been pulled up in Britain. 00:44:59.920 --> 00:45:02.730 align:middle line:84% I mean, you are aware of this phenomenon in your own country, 00:45:02.730 --> 00:45:03.345 align:middle line:90% aren't you? 00:45:03.345 --> 00:45:07.740 align:middle line:84% The disemployment of certain ways 00:45:07.740 --> 00:45:09.360 align:middle line:90% of getting about the country. 00:45:09.360 --> 00:45:12.330 align:middle line:84% In England it matters a great deal more. 00:45:12.330 --> 00:45:15.450 align:middle line:84% And indeed I think you would be surprised to find 00:45:15.450 --> 00:45:21.240 align:middle line:84% how remote quite a number of our rural communities are. 00:45:21.240 --> 00:45:25.560 align:middle line:84% Because what then happens is that the buses are withdrawn. 00:45:25.560 --> 00:45:29.820 align:middle line:84% And then if you don't have a car you're really in difficulties. 00:45:29.820 --> 00:45:35.970 align:middle line:84% And that's basically the fate of the county north of Newcastle 00:45:35.970 --> 00:45:38.040 align:middle line:84% where we live, Northumberland which 00:45:38.040 --> 00:45:40.440 align:middle line:84% is the last county you pass through 00:45:40.440 --> 00:45:44.070 align:middle line:84% before entering Scotland on the east side of England. 00:45:44.070 --> 00:45:46.770 align:middle line:84% The city that I live in, [INAUDIBLE] 00:45:46.770 --> 00:45:50.310 align:middle line:84% is the last major city on the east side of England 00:45:50.310 --> 00:45:52.470 align:middle line:90% before you get to Scotland. 00:45:52.470 --> 00:45:58.913 align:middle line:84% So it's Newcastle, Berwick, Edinburgh, that little route. 00:45:58.913 --> 00:46:00.830 align:middle line:84% Anyhow, if you're going on them on the freeway 00:46:00.830 --> 00:46:02.640 align:middle line:84% it's from Newcastle to Edinburgh. 00:46:02.640 --> 00:46:06.510 align:middle line:84% And where we spotted a disused railway line which ends 00:46:06.510 --> 00:46:09.632 align:middle line:84% and then the little station and some [INAUDIBLE] cottages. 00:46:09.632 --> 00:46:11.340 align:middle line:84% And we were wandering around the station. 00:46:11.340 --> 00:46:13.990 align:middle line:84% Up comes this guy and he starts to talk. 00:46:13.990 --> 00:46:19.170 align:middle line:84% And he said, yes I welcome this [AUDIO OUT] 00:46:19.170 --> 00:46:25.157 align:middle line:84% it's Newcastle Edinburgh, that little route. 00:46:25.157 --> 00:46:27.240 align:middle line:84% Anyhow if you're going on them on the freeway it's 00:46:27.240 --> 00:46:29.970 align:middle line:84% from Newcastle to Edinburgh and where we spotted 00:46:29.970 --> 00:46:32.690 align:middle line:90% a disused railway line which-- 00:46:32.690 --> 00:46:35.312 align:middle line:84% and then the little station and some [INAUDIBLE] cottages. 00:46:35.312 --> 00:46:37.020 align:middle line:84% And we were wandering around the station. 00:46:37.020 --> 00:46:38.713 align:middle line:90% Up comes this guy. 00:46:38.713 --> 00:46:39.630 align:middle line:90% And he starts to talk. 00:46:39.630 --> 00:46:45.810 align:middle line:84% And he said yes, I rode on this line for 50 years. 00:46:45.810 --> 00:46:47.850 align:middle line:84% And my friend and I used to gang, 00:46:47.850 --> 00:46:50.640 align:middle line:84% that is to say to look after a section of this line about 00:46:50.640 --> 00:46:53.160 align:middle line:90% eight miles of it. 00:46:53.160 --> 00:46:56.310 align:middle line:84% And 50 years ago I helped to build this track 00:46:56.310 --> 00:46:59.490 align:middle line:84% but you can't see it anymore of course and so on and so on. 00:46:59.490 --> 00:47:01.440 align:middle line:84% And gradually what I realized was 00:47:01.440 --> 00:47:03.960 align:middle line:84% that he was talking about the destruction of his adult 00:47:03.960 --> 00:47:05.430 align:middle line:90% working life. 00:47:05.430 --> 00:47:09.790 align:middle line:84% Not complaining about it, simply talking about it. 00:47:09.790 --> 00:47:13.260 align:middle line:84% And I thought that I wanted to write about it. 00:47:13.260 --> 00:47:16.320 align:middle line:84% And there was something else that was very odd. 00:47:16.320 --> 00:47:20.760 align:middle line:84% He said my friend, his friend with whom he worked 00:47:20.760 --> 00:47:22.260 align:middle line:90% ganging the railway line. 00:47:22.260 --> 00:47:24.660 align:middle line:90% My friend's in a home now. 00:47:24.660 --> 00:47:27.090 align:middle line:84% And the way he went on to talk about it 00:47:27.090 --> 00:47:31.050 align:middle line:84% made me feel that what he was saying very delicately 00:47:31.050 --> 00:47:34.470 align:middle line:84% was that his friend was in a mental institution from which I 00:47:34.470 --> 00:47:37.830 align:middle line:84% surmised that perhaps what happened 00:47:37.830 --> 00:47:42.720 align:middle line:84% was this that faced with the destruction of your adult life 00:47:42.720 --> 00:47:45.060 align:middle line:90% you either bear or break. 00:47:45.060 --> 00:47:51.240 align:middle line:84% And the man we were talking to, who we went to see again quite 00:47:51.240 --> 00:47:56.550 align:middle line:84% a few times, he's dead now, did survive that destruction 00:47:56.550 --> 00:47:57.482 align:middle line:90% but his friend didn't. 00:47:57.482 --> 00:47:59.190 align:middle line:84% And that accounts for the end of the poem 00:47:59.190 --> 00:48:01.440 align:middle line:90% where his friend writes to him. 00:48:01.440 --> 00:48:04.080 align:middle line:84% And he says Sam, why are you writing to me? 00:48:04.080 --> 00:48:05.610 align:middle line:90% Who are you, what do you want? 00:48:05.610 --> 00:48:08.430 align:middle line:84% I've actually cribbed this with words 00:48:08.430 --> 00:48:10.110 align:middle line:84% because in the 19th century, there 00:48:10.110 --> 00:48:16.230 align:middle line:84% was another agricultural working man who was also a poet called 00:48:16.230 --> 00:48:19.170 align:middle line:84% John Clare who went mad, yes and was 00:48:19.170 --> 00:48:22.110 align:middle line:84% incarcerated in the Northampton Mental Institution. 00:48:22.110 --> 00:48:24.870 align:middle line:84% And John Clare was intermittently mad 00:48:24.870 --> 00:48:28.950 align:middle line:84% or intermittently sane according to where you stand. 00:48:28.950 --> 00:48:34.920 align:middle line:84% And in one of the letters he writes, Dear sir, I am mad. 00:48:34.920 --> 00:48:37.020 align:middle line:84% I suppose that was when he was in bed. 00:48:37.020 --> 00:48:39.825 align:middle line:84% And then he completed-- and then he says and so I bid you, 00:48:39.825 --> 00:48:43.020 align:middle line:90% you obedient servant John Clare. 00:48:43.020 --> 00:48:44.790 align:middle line:84% Well, I've used a portion of that letter. 00:48:44.790 --> 00:48:48.570 align:middle line:84% And I'll try and with an alteration in my voice 00:48:48.570 --> 00:48:51.660 align:middle line:84% convey that it's Middlemass's friend replying 00:48:51.660 --> 00:48:55.230 align:middle line:90% to Middlemass from the asylum. 00:48:55.230 --> 00:48:59.070 align:middle line:90% The poem is called "Platelayer." 00:48:59.070 --> 00:49:02.460 align:middle line:84% And Middlemass does most of the speaking in the poem. 00:49:02.460 --> 00:49:07.140 align:middle line:84% I did not serve, but was skilled for 50 years, 00:49:07.140 --> 00:49:11.610 align:middle line:84% laying plates measured as carefully apart as seedlings. 00:49:11.610 --> 00:49:15.240 align:middle line:84% The line came West from Morpeth crossing 00:49:15.240 --> 00:49:17.640 align:middle line:90% the third road for Scotland. 00:49:17.640 --> 00:49:20.640 align:middle line:84% At Knowesgate, which is the little village he lived in, 00:49:20.640 --> 00:49:25.680 align:middle line:84% at Knowesgate, four houses group on a bank, set away. 00:49:25.680 --> 00:49:27.960 align:middle line:90% A station was built there. 00:49:27.960 --> 00:49:30.930 align:middle line:84% I laid plates for eight miles, but short of Morpeth, 00:49:30.930 --> 00:49:33.450 align:middle line:84% sledging chucks that held the rails; 00:49:33.450 --> 00:49:36.600 align:middle line:84% kept them so, although this has gone now. 00:49:36.600 --> 00:49:40.020 align:middle line:84% Yet here are four pines of the five I put in. 00:49:40.020 --> 00:49:43.890 align:middle line:84% And here I helped to concrete that that was the bay. 00:49:43.890 --> 00:49:46.170 align:middle line:90% My dog has 16 years. 00:49:46.170 --> 00:49:48.150 align:middle line:90% We both suffer the heat. 00:49:48.150 --> 00:49:51.780 align:middle line:84% And yet her owners had said that she must be put down. 00:49:51.780 --> 00:49:53.730 align:middle line:90% I did not say that. 00:49:53.730 --> 00:49:56.850 align:middle line:84% And the lupins strike through the platform; 00:49:56.850 --> 00:50:01.630 align:middle line:84% with a better chance I think they'd have not done well. 00:50:01.630 --> 00:50:04.170 align:middle line:84% But what I think is that my work was finished up. 00:50:04.170 --> 00:50:06.780 align:middle line:84% Five years past the track taken apart. 00:50:06.780 --> 00:50:08.280 align:middle line:90% No, not so. 00:50:08.280 --> 00:50:11.640 align:middle line:84% Now with cranes to hoist the lengths that we laid down, 00:50:11.640 --> 00:50:13.920 align:middle line:90% form on form. 00:50:13.920 --> 00:50:19.530 align:middle line:84% Also gone a certain friend, who finished when I was made free. 00:50:19.530 --> 00:50:22.080 align:middle line:90% I shan't work any job twice. 00:50:22.080 --> 00:50:25.420 align:middle line:84% And this is strange, having the letter from the man, 00:50:25.420 --> 00:50:27.780 align:middle line:90% although it was not him. 00:50:27.780 --> 00:50:33.960 align:middle line:84% Yet surely as like him as the bolts drove in. 00:50:33.960 --> 00:50:37.620 align:middle line:84% I can't think of your name or what you are. 00:50:37.620 --> 00:50:41.520 align:middle line:84% You must excuse me and I have nothing to tell you 00:50:41.520 --> 00:50:45.270 align:middle line:84% and why I am shut up here I can't speak of with nothing 00:50:45.270 --> 00:50:48.340 align:middle line:90% to speak about. 00:50:48.340 --> 00:50:51.510 align:middle line:84% But still, I am certain the track we built 00:50:51.510 --> 00:50:57.355 align:middle line:84% was skilled, although you can't tell that. 00:50:57.355 --> 00:51:03.670 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:51:03.670 --> 00:51:06.982 align:middle line:84% If I read two, three more would that be-- 00:51:06.982 --> 00:51:08.980 align:middle line:90% if not all right then I'll stop. 00:51:08.980 --> 00:51:15.210 align:middle line:90% 00:51:15.210 --> 00:51:20.850 align:middle line:84% I will read a poem which I think is a difficult poem. 00:51:20.850 --> 00:51:23.520 align:middle line:90% Well, maybe I don't know. 00:51:23.520 --> 00:51:28.930 align:middle line:90% 00:51:28.930 --> 00:51:33.370 align:middle line:84% And this is a permanent attempt to braid together 00:51:33.370 --> 00:51:35.230 align:middle line:90% two narratives. 00:51:35.230 --> 00:51:40.760 align:middle line:84% The narratives are very different. 00:51:40.760 --> 00:51:42.940 align:middle line:84% One is about when I came out of the army 00:51:42.940 --> 00:51:44.860 align:middle line:84% before actually getting a laboring job I 00:51:44.860 --> 00:51:45.782 align:middle line:90% was on the streets. 00:51:45.782 --> 00:51:47.740 align:middle line:84% I'd actually managed to starve very efficiently 00:51:47.740 --> 00:51:49.840 align:middle line:90% and ended up with malnutrition. 00:51:49.840 --> 00:51:52.660 align:middle line:84% I merely mention this because although we do have a welfare 00:51:52.660 --> 00:51:56.320 align:middle line:84% state in England, there are people within the welfare 00:51:56.320 --> 00:51:58.840 align:middle line:84% state, which Maggie the Thatch is busy 00:51:58.840 --> 00:52:02.290 align:middle line:84% destroying who nevertheless starve whether or not 00:52:02.290 --> 00:52:06.070 align:middle line:90% she destroys it or not. 00:52:06.070 --> 00:52:06.940 align:middle line:90% I was lucky. 00:52:06.940 --> 00:52:12.310 align:middle line:84% I always knew that I would get on my feet. 00:52:12.310 --> 00:52:14.733 align:middle line:84% But walking down Great Peter street 00:52:14.733 --> 00:52:16.900 align:middle line:84% which is where the hostel was that I was staying at, 00:52:16.900 --> 00:52:19.180 align:middle line:90% the Salvation Army hostel. 00:52:19.180 --> 00:52:20.440 align:middle line:90% And there was a dustbin there. 00:52:20.440 --> 00:52:23.470 align:middle line:84% And the guy that reached there first 00:52:23.470 --> 00:52:26.560 align:middle line:84% and decided that he didn't like the contents very 00:52:26.560 --> 00:52:29.020 align:middle line:84% much of the dustbin so he left them and I got there 00:52:29.020 --> 00:52:31.330 align:middle line:90% and I agreed with him. 00:52:31.330 --> 00:52:34.180 align:middle line:84% But the part of the story is surely 00:52:34.180 --> 00:52:35.890 align:middle line:84% that the man that I was looking at 00:52:35.890 --> 00:52:42.760 align:middle line:84% would probably never be able to quit his poverty so it seemed 00:52:42.760 --> 00:52:46.120 align:middle line:84% to me, I think that was what stood out most of all 00:52:46.120 --> 00:52:48.010 align:middle line:90% in that experience. 00:52:48.010 --> 00:52:50.110 align:middle line:84% Anyhow was one strand of the narrative that 00:52:50.110 --> 00:52:53.860 align:middle line:84% is about that and about my failure as a human being 00:52:53.860 --> 00:52:57.982 align:middle line:90% within that context. 00:52:57.982 --> 00:53:00.190 align:middle line:84% And the other is about my loving another human being. 00:53:00.190 --> 00:53:02.740 align:middle line:90% 00:53:02.740 --> 00:53:07.060 align:middle line:84% Well, the English language, British and American languages 00:53:07.060 --> 00:53:09.880 align:middle line:84% have two words which overlap, which 00:53:09.880 --> 00:53:15.070 align:middle line:84% express the disjunction of the two narratives in this poem. 00:53:15.070 --> 00:53:16.870 align:middle line:84% And one of the words is compassion; 00:53:16.870 --> 00:53:18.100 align:middle line:90% the other is passion. 00:53:18.100 --> 00:53:23.120 align:middle line:84% And they do overlap but they don't overlap a great deal. 00:53:23.120 --> 00:53:26.440 align:middle line:84% And I think what I'm trying to say 00:53:26.440 --> 00:53:29.980 align:middle line:84% is that the poem is about the impossibility of bringing 00:53:29.980 --> 00:53:33.160 align:middle line:84% those two strands of love together 00:53:33.160 --> 00:53:37.210 align:middle line:84% in any meaningful way, which doesn't mean we don't try-- 00:53:37.210 --> 00:53:39.700 align:middle line:84% what one comes back to Hebrew prophecy again, you know, 00:53:39.700 --> 00:53:43.480 align:middle line:84% Nevi'im, but that doesn't mean you don't try. 00:53:43.480 --> 00:53:47.380 align:middle line:84% And I couldn't find a title for this poem. 00:53:47.380 --> 00:53:51.620 align:middle line:84% So as you can see it's a bit difficult. 00:53:51.620 --> 00:53:53.710 align:middle line:90% So I call it "Untitled poem." 00:53:53.710 --> 00:53:56.410 align:middle line:84% I see that the narratives breathe in and out 00:53:56.410 --> 00:53:58.960 align:middle line:84% of each other so I move from one to the other. 00:53:58.960 --> 00:54:03.110 align:middle line:84% The perfume on your body and the musk of it. 00:54:03.110 --> 00:54:04.420 align:middle line:90% The second is on me. 00:54:04.420 --> 00:54:07.900 align:middle line:84% I smell the first on you as a sign. 00:54:07.900 --> 00:54:11.050 align:middle line:90% I wear the undelicate odor. 00:54:11.050 --> 00:54:15.010 align:middle line:84% Shuffling through the city, my mildness deceit. 00:54:15.010 --> 00:54:18.460 align:middle line:84% Hungry and lightheaded with venom. 00:54:18.460 --> 00:54:23.080 align:middle line:90% The adder silks to refuse bins. 00:54:23.080 --> 00:54:25.780 align:middle line:84% Fastened to the street: the working men's 00:54:25.780 --> 00:54:28.090 align:middle line:90% hostel past two bins. 00:54:28.090 --> 00:54:29.920 align:middle line:90% A man beat me to those. 00:54:29.920 --> 00:54:35.170 align:middle line:84% I was afraid, and the pulps he left stayed unfingered. 00:54:35.170 --> 00:54:37.090 align:middle line:90% I had not thought of you. 00:54:37.090 --> 00:54:39.820 align:middle line:90% Timidly I spent my pence. 00:54:39.820 --> 00:54:44.960 align:middle line:84% In a dormitory, my body covered my trousers. 00:54:44.960 --> 00:54:48.100 align:middle line:84% Along your flesh drifts your hair. 00:54:48.100 --> 00:54:50.920 align:middle line:90% A tree bearing concupiscience. 00:54:50.920 --> 00:54:53.530 align:middle line:90% And your smile shows. 00:54:53.530 --> 00:54:56.540 align:middle line:90% This is enough almost. 00:54:56.540 --> 00:55:00.460 align:middle line:84% Arms are slim, your fingers' amazing strength. 00:55:00.460 --> 00:55:04.780 align:middle line:84% The tree's whole self blurts through long hair. 00:55:04.780 --> 00:55:07.390 align:middle line:90% It's not grief, not joy. 00:55:07.390 --> 00:55:11.560 align:middle line:90% Saffron spills milk on the road. 00:55:11.560 --> 00:55:13.420 align:middle line:84% A friend working through television 00:55:13.420 --> 00:55:15.640 align:middle line:90% gave me a brass thruppence. 00:55:15.640 --> 00:55:20.260 align:middle line:84% I bought tea with it, bearing nausea. 00:55:20.260 --> 00:55:23.680 align:middle line:90% In Jerusalem, the hills bare. 00:55:23.680 --> 00:55:29.110 align:middle line:84% Soft haired goats made of teeth; all the shoots are champed. 00:55:29.110 --> 00:55:33.790 align:middle line:84% Hunger drifts through plains, over the declivities of London, 00:55:33.790 --> 00:55:37.210 align:middle line:90% delicate smoky flakes of it. 00:55:37.210 --> 00:55:40.870 align:middle line:84% On the rock splinters cold air; a coward 00:55:40.870 --> 00:55:44.740 align:middle line:84% felt another's bruises in his groin. 00:55:44.740 --> 00:55:48.790 align:middle line:84% He fears the cold air, its true match. 00:55:48.790 --> 00:55:51.610 align:middle line:90% Love, I love you. 00:55:51.610 --> 00:55:53.860 align:middle line:90% Can I mean more? 00:55:53.860 --> 00:55:56.950 align:middle line:84% You smile among four friends, three of us 00:55:56.950 --> 00:55:59.170 align:middle line:90% speak and you say nothing. 00:55:59.170 --> 00:56:04.390 align:middle line:84% It hurts; your speech is a silent woman. 00:56:04.390 --> 00:56:07.480 align:middle line:84% Each night the kicked man screams. 00:56:07.480 --> 00:56:11.080 align:middle line:84% If I help you, if I can lift you. 00:56:11.080 --> 00:56:16.960 align:middle line:84% His stain over stone is blue, feather light. 00:56:16.960 --> 00:56:20.920 align:middle line:84% The feet of police emboss the sidewalk. 00:56:20.920 --> 00:56:25.930 align:middle line:84% Linked by my penis, our child could grow. 00:56:25.930 --> 00:56:30.460 align:middle line:90% Fear synchronizes with us. 00:56:30.460 --> 00:56:33.970 align:middle line:90% I enter you, local as a root. 00:56:33.970 --> 00:56:36.950 align:middle line:84% I wait for you to get your breath. 00:56:36.950 --> 00:56:38.950 align:middle line:90% We measure each other. 00:56:38.950 --> 00:56:42.640 align:middle line:84% We are prepared, lassitude melts. 00:56:42.640 --> 00:56:44.770 align:middle line:90% The hair is naked. 00:56:44.770 --> 00:56:47.630 align:middle line:90% The piled spaces of hunger. 00:56:47.630 --> 00:56:50.290 align:middle line:90% And I touch our candor. 00:56:50.290 --> 00:56:54.350 align:middle line:84% The flesh in abandon robes gently the tenderness. 00:56:54.350 --> 00:56:57.985 align:middle line:84% The camera's flame curves around its inner light. 00:56:57.985 --> 00:57:00.520 align:middle line:90% 00:57:00.520 --> 00:57:05.110 align:middle line:84% Your hair is seaweed, smile monstrously. 00:57:05.110 --> 00:57:07.780 align:middle line:90% Memory flushes me through. 00:57:07.780 --> 00:57:10.810 align:middle line:90% Your salt skin rustles on me. 00:57:10.810 --> 00:57:15.970 align:middle line:84% Of love, this entirely is not what we were taught. 00:57:15.970 --> 00:57:20.410 align:middle line:84% Thin black coffee in a pan flicks beads of heat. 00:57:20.410 --> 00:57:26.290 align:middle line:84% The flaking city mounds stillness, and amiable sleep 00:57:26.290 --> 00:57:30.280 align:middle line:90% spreads our flesh. 00:57:30.280 --> 00:57:34.360 align:middle line:84% We will not last, love, as we are. 00:57:34.360 --> 00:57:40.290 align:middle line:84% Love, I would have us stay ever like this. 00:57:40.290 --> 00:57:45.200 align:middle line:84% My conscience, my fear, and our sex, stir. 00:57:45.200 --> 00:57:50.840 align:middle line:90% 00:57:50.840 --> 00:57:53.730 align:middle line:84% I'll read as I said just two more. 00:57:53.730 --> 00:58:08.590 align:middle line:90% 00:58:08.590 --> 00:58:12.260 align:middle line:84% This poem I wrote in 1980 when I was-- 00:58:12.260 --> 00:58:16.790 align:middle line:84% I'd done a three month stint at the University of Louisville 00:58:16.790 --> 00:58:19.550 align:middle line:84% and I was planning to go back to England 00:58:19.550 --> 00:58:22.577 align:middle line:84% and not altogether looking forward to it. 00:58:22.577 --> 00:58:24.410 align:middle line:84% And the poem is called "The ship's pasture." 00:58:24.410 --> 00:58:27.480 align:middle line:90% 00:58:27.480 --> 00:58:32.370 align:middle line:84% In the sun, the leaf, hesitant but active. 00:58:32.370 --> 00:58:35.640 align:middle line:90% This fluorescence of plain wood. 00:58:35.640 --> 00:58:39.270 align:middle line:84% With joy I saw the fields of England, 00:58:39.270 --> 00:58:45.210 align:middle line:84% as new, chartered shapes, bargained for and so snipped 00:58:45.210 --> 00:58:48.390 align:middle line:84% with standing sheep, their snowy garments 00:58:48.390 --> 00:58:51.810 align:middle line:84% by the limestone walls, bulbous fossils. 00:58:51.810 --> 00:58:55.740 align:middle line:84% Their thick inert forms braids dangling 00:58:55.740 --> 00:58:57.840 align:middle line:90% the soft wealth of England. 00:58:57.840 --> 00:58:59.520 align:middle line:90% Selah. 00:58:59.520 --> 00:59:02.940 align:middle line:84% Except some people here are brutal. 00:59:02.940 --> 00:59:06.600 align:middle line:84% The fist, because of standing in the wrong place, 00:59:06.600 --> 00:59:07.890 align:middle line:90% at the cheekbone. 00:59:07.890 --> 00:59:12.960 align:middle line:90% Fist or snide arrowy word. 00:59:12.960 --> 00:59:17.460 align:middle line:84% I rose from England much refreshed but returned 00:59:17.460 --> 00:59:22.710 align:middle line:84% at evening; much undone that was once good prior 00:59:22.710 --> 00:59:24.750 align:middle line:90% to this mean juncture. 00:59:24.750 --> 00:59:29.130 align:middle line:84% It was joy, beside myself, to see the new fields. 00:59:29.130 --> 00:59:33.390 align:middle line:84% Whose is this land that, like waiting flesh, 00:59:33.390 --> 00:59:37.560 align:middle line:84% turns with a kiss, domestic, but yet is 00:59:37.560 --> 00:59:42.000 align:middle line:84% a local habitation with no substance or name sustaining 00:59:42.000 --> 00:59:42.870 align:middle line:90% it? 00:59:42.870 --> 00:59:44.880 align:middle line:90% It is the ship's pasture. 00:59:44.880 --> 00:59:48.090 align:middle line:84% Its interlinking husk of submarine, 00:59:48.090 --> 00:59:53.220 align:middle line:84% sea-spike, the sleeted fields of destruction: for payment, 00:59:53.220 --> 00:59:56.040 align:middle line:90% for emolument. 00:59:56.040 --> 01:00:01.710 align:middle line:84% I am a part of this, the bee, cutter of wood, 01:00:01.710 --> 01:00:07.020 align:middle line:84% whose timbered house is unimaginably hospitable. 01:00:07.020 --> 01:00:09.390 align:middle line:90% This is what it is. 01:00:09.390 --> 01:00:12.810 align:middle line:84% Northwards a new Jerusalem with the lamb 01:00:12.810 --> 01:00:18.270 align:middle line:84% lies separate, its shade dense and lovely. 01:00:18.270 --> 01:00:23.130 align:middle line:84% The woman starts again as though each portion of this 01:00:23.130 --> 01:00:24.240 align:middle line:90% were knit afresh. 01:00:24.240 --> 01:00:29.140 align:middle line:90% 01:00:29.140 --> 01:00:32.860 align:middle line:84% Now, I've remembered poems I read last night to a group 01:00:32.860 --> 01:00:39.310 align:middle line:90% of Steve Orlen's writing class. 01:00:39.310 --> 01:00:42.930 align:middle line:84% It's the area that I mentioned, Jesmond, 01:00:42.930 --> 01:00:44.200 align:middle line:90% and this is the last poem. 01:00:44.200 --> 01:00:48.430 align:middle line:84% It's an area very near more or less 01:00:48.430 --> 01:00:51.130 align:middle line:84% absorbed by the center of Newcastle now. 01:00:51.130 --> 01:00:56.650 align:middle line:84% An area that is mainly composed of urban bourgeoisie 01:00:56.650 --> 01:00:57.640 align:middle line:90% of which I'm one. 01:00:57.640 --> 01:01:00.190 align:middle line:90% 01:01:00.190 --> 01:01:14.830 align:middle line:84% And it's about the caring for children really. 01:01:14.830 --> 01:01:16.510 align:middle line:90% That's what it's about I think. 01:01:16.510 --> 01:01:19.540 align:middle line:84% And I mention also a Russian writer here, 01:01:19.540 --> 01:01:24.340 align:middle line:84% a writer called Zamyatin, who, during the First World War, 01:01:24.340 --> 01:01:27.640 align:middle line:84% worked in Newcastle and lived in Jesmond. 01:01:27.640 --> 01:01:29.800 align:middle line:84% He was supervising the construction 01:01:29.800 --> 01:01:33.790 align:middle line:84% of icebreakers for the Czar, on Tyneside, 01:01:33.790 --> 01:01:37.690 align:middle line:84% which is one of the traditional industries of Newcastle, that 01:01:37.690 --> 01:01:39.490 align:middle line:90% and coal mining. 01:01:39.490 --> 01:01:45.340 align:middle line:84% Neither of which survive with much profit now. 01:01:45.340 --> 01:01:47.200 align:middle line:84% The poem is called "The Achievers." 01:01:47.200 --> 01:01:53.200 align:middle line:84% And that the story Zamyatin satirized the Jesmond folk 01:01:53.200 --> 01:01:58.240 align:middle line:84% and it's a story called The Islanders. 01:01:58.240 --> 01:02:03.880 align:middle line:84% Behind the front door stairs without turn or landing, 01:02:03.880 --> 01:02:07.570 align:middle line:84% run into a back attic in one flight. 01:02:07.570 --> 01:02:12.160 align:middle line:84% Breath, breathing go diagonally as if hand 01:02:12.160 --> 01:02:14.080 align:middle line:90% in hand through the house. 01:02:14.080 --> 01:02:18.340 align:middle line:84% Red stair carpet separating two wheels 01:02:18.340 --> 01:02:23.080 align:middle line:84% that build extensions of light into the roof. 01:02:23.080 --> 01:02:27.070 align:middle line:84% This is Jesmond, Zamyatin made in his Islanders 01:02:27.070 --> 01:02:29.200 align:middle line:90% as a Russian jest of-- 01:02:29.200 --> 01:02:32.050 align:middle line:84% shifting the tedium of yards as he 01:02:32.050 --> 01:02:37.870 align:middle line:84% oversaw the construction and constitution of Russian ships. 01:02:37.870 --> 01:02:42.040 align:middle line:90% 1916, the pole of the year. 01:02:42.040 --> 01:02:47.290 align:middle line:84% Its ice, a dithering of ocean, the Czar's icebreakers 01:02:47.290 --> 01:02:50.110 align:middle line:90% follow dark water. 01:02:50.110 --> 01:02:52.930 align:middle line:84% In a front room siding the stairs, 01:02:52.930 --> 01:02:56.080 align:middle line:84% a boy fingers a flute, and a young woman, 01:02:56.080 --> 01:02:58.720 align:middle line:84% circumscribed in a circle of light, 01:02:58.720 --> 01:03:01.210 align:middle line:84% shed from a lamp like a green bonnet, 01:03:01.210 --> 01:03:05.080 align:middle line:84% stands a little to the side, back a bit, and bends above him 01:03:05.080 --> 01:03:10.540 align:middle line:84% to read the notes, their closed dots and fins silently filling 01:03:10.540 --> 01:03:14.800 align:middle line:84% the page as stairs fill the house, climbing 01:03:14.800 --> 01:03:20.740 align:middle line:84% a magnitude of soft despair and achievement, coming on. 01:03:20.740 --> 01:03:21.340 align:middle line:90% Thanks. 01:03:21.340 --> 01:03:23.190 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 01:03:23.190 --> 01:03:27.000 align:middle line:90%