WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.200 align:middle line:90%


00:00:01.200 --> 00:00:06.750 align:middle line:84%
And then the last of the short
one is called "Night Journal."

00:00:06.750 --> 00:00:16.200 align:middle line:84%
In the last poem I'll read,
its a little anaphora.

00:00:16.200 --> 00:00:19.950 align:middle line:84%
The word words, it's
about words; and therefore

00:00:19.950 --> 00:00:24.490 align:middle line:90%
as a repeating motif.

00:00:24.490 --> 00:00:27.490 align:middle line:90%
Night Journal.

00:00:27.490 --> 00:00:31.030 align:middle line:84%
I think of Issa, a
man of few words.

00:00:31.030 --> 00:00:34.142 align:middle line:84%
The world of dew is
the world of dew.

00:00:34.142 --> 00:00:36.620 align:middle line:90%
And yet.

00:00:36.620 --> 00:00:37.120 align:middle line:90%
And yet.

00:00:37.120 --> 00:00:40.320 align:middle line:90%


00:00:40.320 --> 00:00:43.740 align:middle line:84%
Three words contain all that we
know for sure of the next life

00:00:43.740 --> 00:00:45.450 align:middle line:90%
or the last one.

00:00:45.450 --> 00:00:48.030 align:middle line:90%
Close your eyes.

00:00:48.030 --> 00:00:51.870 align:middle line:84%
Everything else is gossip,
false mirrors, trick windows,

00:00:51.870 --> 00:00:55.035 align:middle line:84%
flashing light, Dutch glass
in the undiminishable sun.

00:00:55.035 --> 00:00:58.380 align:middle line:90%


00:00:58.380 --> 00:01:01.950 align:middle line:84%
I write it down in visible
ink, black words that disappear

00:01:01.950 --> 00:01:04.230 align:middle line:90%
when held up to the light.

00:01:04.230 --> 00:01:07.950 align:middle line:84%
I write it down not to
remember, but to forget,

00:01:07.950 --> 00:01:11.250 align:middle line:84%
words like thousands of
pieces of shot film exposed

00:01:11.250 --> 00:01:13.230 align:middle line:90%
to the sun.

00:01:13.230 --> 00:01:14.760 align:middle line:84%
I never see anything
but the ground.

00:01:14.760 --> 00:01:17.700 align:middle line:90%


00:01:17.700 --> 00:01:21.180 align:middle line:84%
Everyone wants to
tell his story.

00:01:21.180 --> 00:01:24.990 align:middle line:84%
The Chinese say we live in the
world of the 10,000 things,

00:01:24.990 --> 00:01:31.410 align:middle line:84%
each of the 10,000 things crying
out to us precisely nothing.

00:01:31.410 --> 00:01:34.950 align:middle line:84%
A silence whose tune
we've come to understand,

00:01:34.950 --> 00:01:38.190 align:middle line:84%
words like birthmarks,
embolic sunsets drying

00:01:38.190 --> 00:01:40.800 align:middle line:90%
behind the tongue.

00:01:40.800 --> 00:01:43.350 align:middle line:84%
If we were as
eloquent, if what we

00:01:43.350 --> 00:01:46.350 align:middle line:84%
say could spread the good
news the way the dogwood does,

00:01:46.350 --> 00:01:49.350 align:middle line:84%
its votive candles
phosphorous and articulate

00:01:49.350 --> 00:01:53.520 align:middle line:84%
in the green haze of spring,
surely something would hear us.

00:01:53.520 --> 00:01:57.250 align:middle line:90%


00:01:57.250 --> 00:02:00.970 align:middle line:84%
Even a chip of beauty is
beauty intractable in the mind.

00:02:00.970 --> 00:02:04.900 align:middle line:84%
Words the color of wind moving
across the fields there,

00:02:04.900 --> 00:02:09.639 align:middle line:84%
wind addled and wind sprung,
abstracted as water glints.

00:02:09.639 --> 00:02:12.010 align:middle line:84%
The fields lion-colored
and rope-colored

00:02:12.010 --> 00:02:14.980 align:middle line:84%
as in a picture of paradise,
the bodies languishing

00:02:14.980 --> 00:02:18.610 align:middle line:84%
over the sky trailing
their dark identities that

00:02:18.610 --> 00:02:21.970 align:middle line:84%
drift off and sieve
away to the nothingness

00:02:21.970 --> 00:02:25.360 align:middle line:84%
behind them moving
across the fields there

00:02:25.360 --> 00:02:31.540 align:middle line:84%
as words move, slowly,
trailing their dark identities.

00:02:31.540 --> 00:02:34.090 align:middle line:84%
Our words, like
blown kisses, are

00:02:34.090 --> 00:02:37.000 align:middle line:84%
swallowed by ghosts
along the way,

00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:43.090 align:middle line:84%
their destinations bereft in
a rub of brightness unending.

00:02:43.090 --> 00:02:47.440 align:middle line:84%
How distant everything
always is, and yet how close.

00:02:47.440 --> 00:02:54.120 align:middle line:84%
Music starting to rise like
smoke from under the trees,

00:02:54.120 --> 00:02:57.710 align:middle line:84%
birds sing an atonal row
unsyncopated from tree

00:02:57.710 --> 00:03:00.560 align:middle line:84%
to tree, dew chants
whose songs have

00:03:00.560 --> 00:03:03.050 align:middle line:90%
no words from tree to tree.

00:03:03.050 --> 00:03:05.810 align:middle line:84%
When night puts
her dark lens in,

00:03:05.810 --> 00:03:10.940 align:middle line:84%
one on this limb, two
others back there.

00:03:10.940 --> 00:03:16.730 align:middle line:84%
Words, like all things, are
caught in their finitude.

00:03:16.730 --> 00:03:19.130 align:middle line:84%
They start here,
they finish here.

00:03:19.130 --> 00:03:22.640 align:middle line:84%
No matter how high
they rise, my judgment

00:03:22.640 --> 00:03:25.850 align:middle line:84%
is that I know this
and never love anything

00:03:25.850 --> 00:03:30.350 align:middle line:84%
hard enough that would stamp
me and sink me suddenly

00:03:30.350 --> 00:03:32.727 align:middle line:90%
into bliss.

00:03:32.727 --> 00:03:33.560 align:middle line:90%
Thank you very much.

00:03:33.560 --> 00:03:36.910 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:03:36.910 --> 00:03:54.084 align:middle line:90%