WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.800 align:middle line:90% 00:00:04.800 --> 00:00:07.830 align:middle line:84% I'd like to apologize to anyone who was inconvenienced 00:00:07.830 --> 00:00:10.020 align:middle line:90% by last week's cancellation. 00:00:10.020 --> 00:00:12.900 align:middle line:84% Howard Moss was ill and we tried to get the word out 00:00:12.900 --> 00:00:14.190 align:middle line:90% to as many people as possible. 00:00:14.190 --> 00:00:17.700 align:middle line:84% But if you came out in that cold rain not knowing, 00:00:17.700 --> 00:00:18.435 align:middle line:90% I'm very sorry. 00:00:18.435 --> 00:00:22.002 align:middle line:90% 00:00:22.002 --> 00:00:23.460 align:middle line:84% We're getting ready to put together 00:00:23.460 --> 00:00:26.250 align:middle line:84% the next issue of the creative writing newsletter. 00:00:26.250 --> 00:00:29.340 align:middle line:84% And Friday is the deadline to turn in news. 00:00:29.340 --> 00:00:32.520 align:middle line:84% If you like you can give me items tonight. 00:00:32.520 --> 00:00:34.410 align:middle line:84% I would prefer that you write out 00:00:34.410 --> 00:00:36.960 align:middle line:84% your news because I make mistakes 00:00:36.960 --> 00:00:40.830 align:middle line:90% if you dictate it to me. 00:00:40.830 --> 00:00:43.350 align:middle line:84% Our next reading is one week from tonight, 00:00:43.350 --> 00:00:46.650 align:middle line:84% visiting poet Ellen Bryant Voigt --Auditorium, 00:00:46.650 --> 00:00:50.680 align:middle line:90% the same time, 8 o'clock. 00:00:50.680 --> 00:00:53.085 align:middle line:90% That's the 20th. 00:00:53.085 --> 00:00:57.800 align:middle line:90% 00:00:57.800 --> 00:01:01.790 align:middle line:84% Copies of Sonora Review will be available for purchase tonight. 00:01:01.790 --> 00:01:08.870 align:middle line:84% And as a Centennial celebration, the Poetry Center has 00:01:08.870 --> 00:01:15.080 align:middle line:84% had fabricated a set of four poster poems, 00:01:15.080 --> 00:01:19.430 align:middle line:84% poems by the four poets who teach on the faculty: that's 00:01:19.430 --> 00:01:23.450 align:middle line:84% Jon Anderson, Steve Orlen, Richard Shelton, Peter Wild, 00:01:23.450 --> 00:01:25.490 align:middle line:90% they're on display in the Hall. 00:01:25.490 --> 00:01:26.780 align:middle line:90% And they're for sale tonight. 00:01:26.780 --> 00:01:29.540 align:middle line:84% Let me show you, Steve, if you didn't see it on the way in. 00:01:29.540 --> 00:01:33.820 align:middle line:90% 00:01:33.820 --> 00:01:35.980 align:middle line:84% Well, the price to the general public 00:01:35.980 --> 00:01:41.950 align:middle line:84% is $5 each or $18 for a set of four. 00:01:41.950 --> 00:01:46.540 align:middle line:84% The price for university students and personnel 00:01:46.540 --> 00:01:50.830 align:middle line:84% is $4 each and $14 for the set of four. 00:01:50.830 --> 00:01:53.590 align:middle line:84% As far as I'm concerned, everyone in the room tonight 00:01:53.590 --> 00:01:56.270 align:middle line:84% is university students and personnel. 00:01:56.270 --> 00:02:01.120 align:middle line:84% So for tonight, it's $4 each or $14 for the set. 00:02:01.120 --> 00:02:05.380 align:middle line:90% 00:02:05.380 --> 00:02:06.280 align:middle line:90% I'm not really nice. 00:02:06.280 --> 00:02:07.750 align:middle line:90% It makes the bookkeeping easier. 00:02:07.750 --> 00:02:10.418 align:middle line:90% 00:02:10.418 --> 00:02:11.960 align:middle line:84% I hope you'll stay after the reading, 00:02:11.960 --> 00:02:14.050 align:middle line:84% and have some punch and cookies with us. 00:02:14.050 --> 00:02:17.050 align:middle line:90% 00:02:17.050 --> 00:02:22.810 align:middle line:84% Steve's been on campus now since 1967, doesn't seem possible 00:02:22.810 --> 00:02:24.370 align:middle line:90% at all. 00:02:24.370 --> 00:02:27.850 align:middle line:84% But he was only eight when he came. 00:02:27.850 --> 00:02:30.820 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:02:30.820 --> 00:02:34.730 align:middle line:90% 00:02:34.730 --> 00:02:35.315 align:middle line:90% I was 12. 00:02:35.315 --> 00:02:38.468 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:02:38.468 --> 00:02:39.440 align:middle line:90% 00:02:39.440 --> 00:02:42.650 align:middle line:84% Steve Orlen's published four collections of poetry-- 00:02:42.650 --> 00:02:48.800 align:middle line:84% Sleeping on Doors, Separate Creatures, Permission to Speak, 00:02:48.800 --> 00:02:52.010 align:middle line:84% and most recently from Reinhardt & Winston, A Place 00:02:52.010 --> 00:02:55.170 align:middle line:90% at the Table. 00:02:55.170 --> 00:02:59.990 align:middle line:84% He's just been awarded his third National Endowment grant, 00:02:59.990 --> 00:03:02.150 align:middle line:84% and I think that's enough for me to announce. 00:03:02.150 --> 00:03:05.148 align:middle line:84% I'm happy to give you Steve Orlen. 00:03:05.148 --> 00:03:08.606 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:03:08.606 --> 00:03:21.950 align:middle line:90% 00:03:21.950 --> 00:03:27.470 align:middle line:84% "Dear anyone, I write this from Provence 00:03:27.470 --> 00:03:30.080 align:middle line:84% where there's a bird who sings incessantly 00:03:30.080 --> 00:03:32.420 align:middle line:90% no matter the time of day. 00:03:32.420 --> 00:03:34.640 align:middle line:90% You'll play, he sings. 00:03:34.640 --> 00:03:38.670 align:middle line:84% Sometimes I don't know where I am until I go away. 00:03:38.670 --> 00:03:42.530 align:middle line:84% So off to Avignon I go to buy a secondhand hat 00:03:42.530 --> 00:03:44.750 align:middle line:84% and strutting in the square, anyone 00:03:44.750 --> 00:03:46.800 align:middle line:90% can see what a fool I am. 00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:48.200 align:middle line:90% You'll play. 00:03:48.200 --> 00:03:52.790 align:middle line:84% I saw you in a dream last night, heartless in the falling rain. 00:03:52.790 --> 00:03:54.260 align:middle line:90% How did it feel? 00:03:54.260 --> 00:03:56.180 align:middle line:90% Thinking, were you lost? 00:03:56.180 --> 00:03:57.560 align:middle line:90% Did it matter? 00:03:57.560 --> 00:04:01.370 align:middle line:84% Over Provence the hat flute singing." 00:04:01.370 --> 00:04:03.620 align:middle line:84% Only in your own hometown can you ask all your friends 00:04:03.620 --> 00:04:05.100 align:middle line:90% to wear a hat and they do. 00:04:05.100 --> 00:04:07.130 align:middle line:90% It's wonderful. 00:04:07.130 --> 00:04:08.600 align:middle line:90% Can I keep mine off for now? 00:04:08.600 --> 00:04:09.500 align:middle line:90% It's hot. 00:04:09.500 --> 00:04:10.800 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:04:10.800 --> 00:04:12.260 align:middle line:90% I wish I could award prizes. 00:04:12.260 --> 00:04:15.320 align:middle line:84% We've got-- Kim has a wonderful banana hat, 00:04:15.320 --> 00:04:19.790 align:middle line:84% Mary Cuddihy has a lady pope's hat. 00:04:19.790 --> 00:04:23.630 align:middle line:84% Mike Mahar of Oriental Studies provided his international hat 00:04:23.630 --> 00:04:24.500 align:middle line:90% collection. 00:04:24.500 --> 00:04:27.330 align:middle line:90% We've got the four paper hats. 00:04:27.330 --> 00:04:28.460 align:middle line:90% This is wonderful. 00:04:28.460 --> 00:04:32.090 align:middle line:90% 00:04:32.090 --> 00:04:35.030 align:middle line:90% I don't know yet. 00:04:35.030 --> 00:04:36.465 align:middle line:90% A poster, should I say. 00:04:36.465 --> 00:04:40.350 align:middle line:90% 00:04:40.350 --> 00:04:44.900 align:middle line:84% Well, I keep disrobing, it is warm. 00:04:44.900 --> 00:04:52.640 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read several poems from my last two books 00:04:52.640 --> 00:04:54.500 align:middle line:84% and then the rest of the reading will 00:04:54.500 --> 00:04:57.600 align:middle line:84% be poems since the last book over the last two or three 00:04:57.600 --> 00:04:58.100 align:middle line:90% years. 00:04:58.100 --> 00:05:16.040 align:middle line:90% 00:05:16.040 --> 00:05:18.628 align:middle line:84% This one's called the "Mad Man's Wife," 00:05:18.628 --> 00:05:20.045 align:middle line:84% and it's for my old friend George. 00:05:20.045 --> 00:05:22.970 align:middle line:90% 00:05:22.970 --> 00:05:26.120 align:middle line:84% "The unleashed dog walks back and forth. 00:05:26.120 --> 00:05:28.940 align:middle line:84% The cat leaps over the backyard fence. 00:05:28.940 --> 00:05:31.190 align:middle line:90% The owl shifts. 00:05:31.190 --> 00:05:34.220 align:middle line:84% Down this street, the madman threads his way 00:05:34.220 --> 00:05:38.360 align:middle line:84% over curb and cobblestone, and does not fall. 00:05:38.360 --> 00:05:41.060 align:middle line:90% At dawn, everyone smiles. 00:05:41.060 --> 00:05:44.900 align:middle line:84% The butcher has saved the plumpest hand for him. 00:05:44.900 --> 00:05:47.090 align:middle line:90% The barber trims his hair. 00:05:47.090 --> 00:05:49.820 align:middle line:84% The children tease him because he is there 00:05:49.820 --> 00:05:53.420 align:middle line:84% less than a child more than a lump. 00:05:53.420 --> 00:05:58.490 align:middle line:84% Later, he sits across from me at breakfast talking of suicide. 00:05:58.490 --> 00:06:00.920 align:middle line:84% His plate becomes the tin plate prisoners 00:06:00.920 --> 00:06:03.770 align:middle line:90% use to rattle their complaints. 00:06:03.770 --> 00:06:06.290 align:middle line:84% Last night in a bar, he says a woman 00:06:06.290 --> 00:06:11.060 align:middle line:84% disguised as a wife told him lie after lie. 00:06:11.060 --> 00:06:12.440 align:middle line:90% There's no way to answer. 00:06:12.440 --> 00:06:14.690 align:middle line:90% So I put him to sleep. 00:06:14.690 --> 00:06:17.660 align:middle line:84% What does he dream with his eyes open? 00:06:17.660 --> 00:06:21.950 align:middle line:84% I might as well ask what a child dreams before speech gives him 00:06:21.950 --> 00:06:24.170 align:middle line:90% the power to lie. 00:06:24.170 --> 00:06:28.070 align:middle line:84% Out the window, the dog sees the shadow of the cat. 00:06:28.070 --> 00:06:30.230 align:middle line:90% The cat looks after the owl. 00:06:30.230 --> 00:06:32.990 align:middle line:90% The owl keeps the moon in place. 00:06:32.990 --> 00:06:35.960 align:middle line:84% To be mad, I know is to be out of touch 00:06:35.960 --> 00:06:41.330 align:middle line:84% with life, to touch a stranger in a bar and say my wife. 00:06:41.330 --> 00:06:44.180 align:middle line:84% But even the truth would be a betrayal. 00:06:44.180 --> 00:06:49.760 align:middle line:84% He wakes, read me a story, he begs, tell me the names. 00:06:49.760 --> 00:06:53.930 align:middle line:84% I gaze into his white eyes, into the blue gas 00:06:53.930 --> 00:06:56.030 align:middle line:90% swirling in his heart. 00:06:56.030 --> 00:06:58.205 align:middle line:90% Oh, poor us, I begin." 00:06:58.205 --> 00:07:11.757 align:middle line:90% 00:07:11.757 --> 00:07:14.340 align:middle line:84% Some of these older poems I've read here several times before, 00:07:14.340 --> 00:07:17.640 align:middle line:84% and I don't know whether to couple them with a story that 00:07:17.640 --> 00:07:18.840 align:middle line:90% belongs to them or not. 00:07:18.840 --> 00:07:21.960 align:middle line:90% But this one I think I ought to. 00:07:21.960 --> 00:07:26.063 align:middle line:90% 00:07:26.063 --> 00:07:27.480 align:middle line:84% It's called "Naming the Children." 00:07:27.480 --> 00:07:35.010 align:middle line:84% And it's a short poem basically about my grandfather 00:07:35.010 --> 00:07:37.650 align:middle line:84% who had a series of strokes and was in a nursing home. 00:07:37.650 --> 00:07:40.350 align:middle line:90% This was 15 years ago or so. 00:07:40.350 --> 00:07:43.080 align:middle line:84% And my wife Gail and I were picking him up 00:07:43.080 --> 00:07:46.500 align:middle line:84% to bring him to a family party at my parents' house. 00:07:46.500 --> 00:07:52.260 align:middle line:84% And he was a quiet man of some personal dignity. 00:07:52.260 --> 00:07:55.440 align:middle line:84% And his wife who had run the family 00:07:55.440 --> 00:08:00.210 align:middle line:84% had died some years before and provided him 00:08:00.210 --> 00:08:02.250 align:middle line:90% with some order in his life. 00:08:02.250 --> 00:08:03.750 align:middle line:84% And we were about to go, he couldn't 00:08:03.750 --> 00:08:07.050 align:middle line:84% find his fresh handkerchief and he did not 00:08:07.050 --> 00:08:09.780 align:middle line:84% want to go to the party without a fresh handkerchief. 00:08:09.780 --> 00:08:12.750 align:middle line:84% And my wife gave him her fresh handkerchief 00:08:12.750 --> 00:08:16.020 align:middle line:84% and it moved him very much for some reason. 00:08:16.020 --> 00:08:22.470 align:middle line:84% But we drove the 10 or so miles to my hometown 00:08:22.470 --> 00:08:26.160 align:middle line:84% and he said that he'd been losing his memory lately, 00:08:26.160 --> 00:08:30.120 align:middle line:84% but that every morning he would wake up and recite 00:08:30.120 --> 00:08:33.510 align:middle line:84% the names of his children in the three languages he knew-- 00:08:33.510 --> 00:08:36.929 align:middle line:84% in Russian, Hebrew, in English, because those names changed 00:08:36.929 --> 00:08:40.020 align:middle line:84% as they cross the ocean, and he would count to 10 00:08:40.020 --> 00:08:41.700 align:middle line:90% in all three languages. 00:08:41.700 --> 00:08:43.080 align:middle line:84% And he did it for us and got them 00:08:43.080 --> 00:08:45.990 align:middle line:84% all wrong obviously because he was losing his memory, 00:08:45.990 --> 00:08:51.390 align:middle line:84% but it was a very moving ride, excuse the pun. 00:08:51.390 --> 00:08:53.910 align:middle line:90% "Naming the Children." 00:08:53.910 --> 00:08:57.780 align:middle line:84% "He remembers good night and good morning. 00:08:57.780 --> 00:09:00.090 align:middle line:84% He remembers my wife, Gail, which 00:09:00.090 --> 00:09:05.670 align:middle line:84% is the wind who sits beside him stroking his thin right hand. 00:09:05.670 --> 00:09:08.190 align:middle line:84% From back of the car through the neighborhoods, 00:09:08.190 --> 00:09:10.230 align:middle line:84% recites the names of his children 00:09:10.230 --> 00:09:13.530 align:middle line:90% in Russian, Hebrew, and English. 00:09:13.530 --> 00:09:16.920 align:middle line:84% The names squeeze through the damaged arteries 00:09:16.920 --> 00:09:20.970 align:middle line:84% past the house in Odessa over the remarkable ocean to New 00:09:20.970 --> 00:09:22.110 align:middle line:90% York. 00:09:22.110 --> 00:09:27.240 align:middle line:84% Mischa will be Morris, Hodya will be Ida. 00:09:27.240 --> 00:09:30.960 align:middle line:84% 10 years later, my mother, Beatrice Florence, 00:09:30.960 --> 00:09:33.840 align:middle line:90% stares into polished stone. 00:09:33.840 --> 00:09:39.870 align:middle line:84% At last, she sees herself, nee Bryna Fagel, beautiful bird, 00:09:39.870 --> 00:09:43.890 align:middle line:84% which is how it is in America, over the graves of our parents, 00:09:43.890 --> 00:09:44.805 align:middle line:90% how we are named." 00:09:44.805 --> 00:09:50.270 align:middle line:90% 00:09:50.270 --> 00:09:52.070 align:middle line:84% I'm going to move now to this book. 00:09:52.070 --> 00:10:02.820 align:middle line:90% 00:10:02.820 --> 00:10:05.520 align:middle line:84% As most of you know, Gail and I are 00:10:05.520 --> 00:10:07.620 align:middle line:90% new parents of a little boy. 00:10:07.620 --> 00:10:12.990 align:middle line:84% And as most of you know, the new parents things 00:10:12.990 --> 00:10:15.930 align:middle line:84% don't go quite the right way during the day. 00:10:15.930 --> 00:10:18.180 align:middle line:84% So my preparation, you don't need 00:10:18.180 --> 00:10:20.730 align:middle line:84% to prepare much for a reading except for 20 00:10:20.730 --> 00:10:21.750 align:middle line:90% years of writing or so. 00:10:21.750 --> 00:10:25.680 align:middle line:84% But I've got my list here, but I'm not 00:10:25.680 --> 00:10:28.140 align:middle line:84% sure I have my state of mind which takes a little while 00:10:28.140 --> 00:10:29.520 align:middle line:90% to prepare with. 00:10:29.520 --> 00:10:40.350 align:middle line:90% 00:10:40.350 --> 00:10:42.540 align:middle line:84% This is called "Big Friend of the Stones," 00:10:42.540 --> 00:10:44.190 align:middle line:90% and it's spoken by a young boy. 00:10:44.190 --> 00:10:49.570 align:middle line:90% 00:10:49.570 --> 00:10:51.850 align:middle line:84% "The donkey doctor came covered with rain 00:10:51.850 --> 00:10:55.990 align:middle line:84% and a gift, a picture of Jesus that changed when you looked. 00:10:55.990 --> 00:10:58.360 align:middle line:90% His head seemed to wag. 00:10:58.360 --> 00:11:02.170 align:middle line:84% My father is a good man with a pine cone for his head. 00:11:02.170 --> 00:11:07.600 align:middle line:84% All summer, he chops firewood when the air is hot, not cold. 00:11:07.600 --> 00:11:09.730 align:middle line:84% I've watched him from the rubbish pit where 00:11:09.730 --> 00:11:12.100 align:middle line:90% I was playing with a snail. 00:11:12.100 --> 00:11:16.420 align:middle line:84% My father says, I will be guardian of all God's motions-- 00:11:16.420 --> 00:11:19.750 align:middle line:84% wind, and sun, and rain, the goat 00:11:19.750 --> 00:11:23.110 align:middle line:84% after the grapes, the grapes, the bees 00:11:23.110 --> 00:11:26.350 align:middle line:90% spinning the useful honey. 00:11:26.350 --> 00:11:29.090 align:middle line:90% But I could not save the donkey. 00:11:29.090 --> 00:11:32.470 align:middle line:84% The day the donkey died a strange white peace came over 00:11:32.470 --> 00:11:37.810 align:middle line:84% our land like the doctor's white hand into his vest pocket. 00:11:37.810 --> 00:11:40.540 align:middle line:84% My father said the donkey was a friendly old man, 00:11:40.540 --> 00:11:43.240 align:middle line:84% because he carried his burden over the hills 00:11:43.240 --> 00:11:47.680 align:middle line:84% with the flies in his ears and the dog at his legs. 00:11:47.680 --> 00:11:49.990 align:middle line:84% The donkey doctor yawned and muttered, 00:11:49.990 --> 00:11:53.650 align:middle line:84% and we took the graying carcass out, though it was tired 00:11:53.650 --> 00:11:55.870 align:middle line:90% and could not obey. 00:11:55.870 --> 00:12:00.040 align:middle line:84% Please me, I prayed, big friend of the stone. 00:12:00.040 --> 00:12:02.650 align:middle line:84% We drag him down the hill and buried him 00:12:02.650 --> 00:12:04.900 align:middle line:90% beside the poplar tree. 00:12:04.900 --> 00:12:08.920 align:middle line:84% When they left, I knelt and dug a channel to the great head 00:12:08.920 --> 00:12:10.870 align:middle line:90% and stroked his muzzle. 00:12:10.870 --> 00:12:14.230 align:middle line:84% I spoke a little poem I made up in a dream. 00:12:14.230 --> 00:12:18.520 align:middle line:84% It was cold, a leaf fell on my [AUDIO OUT] I sneezed. 00:12:18.520 --> 00:12:21.250 align:middle line:84% I pushed the dirt back over him and thought, 00:12:21.250 --> 00:12:24.130 align:middle line:84% go to heaven where you belong and get yourself 00:12:24.130 --> 00:12:26.950 align:middle line:90% cured, old favorite of Christ. 00:12:26.950 --> 00:12:30.280 align:middle line:84% Behind me, it was snowing on the stream. 00:12:30.280 --> 00:12:34.240 align:middle line:84% Up the hill I saw my father and the donkey doctor swigging 00:12:34.240 --> 00:12:36.010 align:middle line:90% whiskey from the jug. 00:12:36.010 --> 00:12:38.380 align:middle line:90% The door to our house was open. 00:12:38.380 --> 00:12:40.900 align:middle line:90% The dog slept on the hearth. 00:12:40.900 --> 00:12:43.150 align:middle line:84% I sneezed again and it was winter." 00:12:43.150 --> 00:12:53.930 align:middle line:90% 00:12:53.930 --> 00:12:58.010 align:middle line:84% My son has a mild congenital condition 00:12:58.010 --> 00:13:01.040 align:middle line:84% called stridor, which is the floppy vocal cord 00:13:01.040 --> 00:13:04.970 align:middle line:90% and he breathes like I snore. 00:13:04.970 --> 00:13:08.120 align:middle line:84% And it's helpful because you always know he's there 00:13:08.120 --> 00:13:09.140 align:middle line:90% and I don't hear him. 00:13:09.140 --> 00:13:12.510 align:middle line:84% So is Gail still here or she's out there. 00:13:12.510 --> 00:13:14.760 align:middle line:90% OK, all right. 00:13:14.760 --> 00:13:15.260 align:middle line:90% What? 00:13:15.260 --> 00:13:16.580 align:middle line:90% She's in the car. 00:13:16.580 --> 00:13:17.390 align:middle line:90% She's in the car. 00:13:17.390 --> 00:13:18.297 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:13:18.297 --> 00:13:19.275 align:middle line:90% Very [INAUDIBLE]. 00:13:19.275 --> 00:13:19.775 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:13:19.775 --> 00:13:29.950 align:middle line:90% 00:13:29.950 --> 00:13:34.737 align:middle line:84% They say it goes away in a year or so. 00:13:34.737 --> 00:13:37.195 align:middle line:84% This is a poem called "Friends" for my friend Jon Anderson. 00:13:37.195 --> 00:13:40.630 align:middle line:90% 00:13:40.630 --> 00:13:42.640 align:middle line:84% "Down by the river along the railroad 00:13:42.640 --> 00:13:45.430 align:middle line:84% tracks on a cool August day, we started 00:13:45.430 --> 00:13:49.540 align:middle line:84% our journey trying to get from one country to the next. 00:13:49.540 --> 00:13:51.700 align:middle line:84% We knew the language because we learned it 00:13:51.700 --> 00:13:54.160 align:middle line:84% outside the old mansion with the dogs 00:13:54.160 --> 00:13:56.380 align:middle line:84% and cats and the little schoolmaster who 00:13:56.380 --> 00:13:58.450 align:middle line:90% finally chased us off. 00:13:58.450 --> 00:14:00.610 align:middle line:90% But we were good big fellas. 00:14:00.610 --> 00:14:03.640 align:middle line:84% People along the road wrapped themselves in wool 00:14:03.640 --> 00:14:05.860 align:middle line:90% and drank a heavy beer. 00:14:05.860 --> 00:14:06.790 align:middle line:90% Do you remember? 00:14:06.790 --> 00:14:10.720 align:middle line:84% We were so sure of ourselves that despair was short lived 00:14:10.720 --> 00:14:13.330 align:middle line:90% and a welcome change of heart. 00:14:13.330 --> 00:14:17.680 align:middle line:84% We went from city to city, every detail lodging in my memory. 00:14:17.680 --> 00:14:20.620 align:middle line:84% And walking like that, I had no desire 00:14:20.620 --> 00:14:23.140 align:middle line:84% to choose one place over another. 00:14:23.140 --> 00:14:26.120 align:middle line:84% Don't ask me how much we influenced each other, 00:14:26.120 --> 00:14:30.640 align:middle line:84% picking up accents, exchanging our nicknames and hats. 00:14:30.640 --> 00:14:34.180 align:middle line:84% And the graveyards under the oaks gave life meaning. 00:14:34.180 --> 00:14:36.790 align:middle line:84% You said that though men die, they're 00:14:36.790 --> 00:14:39.490 align:middle line:90% only proving how human we are. 00:14:39.490 --> 00:14:42.280 align:middle line:84% But then in the capital, remember 00:14:42.280 --> 00:14:46.690 align:middle line:84% how every passerby stared at us, how in the border village 00:14:46.690 --> 00:14:50.440 align:middle line:84% that woman cut open her arm and there was no blood, only 00:14:50.440 --> 00:14:52.810 align:middle line:90% flat lacquered veins. 00:14:52.810 --> 00:14:56.650 align:middle line:84% We were no longer living the life of our times. 00:14:56.650 --> 00:15:00.400 align:middle line:84% Let's go home, you said one morning, stirring the fire. 00:15:00.400 --> 00:15:02.050 align:middle line:90% But I knew better. 00:15:02.050 --> 00:15:05.350 align:middle line:84% We stood by the great ocean having slept all night 00:15:05.350 --> 00:15:07.210 align:middle line:90% on the pebbly shore. 00:15:07.210 --> 00:15:10.840 align:middle line:84% Under the froth, great depths of water slept. 00:15:10.840 --> 00:15:15.040 align:middle line:84% I said, we must start to suffer again so we may learn more. 00:15:15.040 --> 00:15:19.900 align:middle line:84% And you said, no, we must travel to the fat lands across the sea 00:15:19.900 --> 00:15:23.440 align:middle line:84% and do some research there, or did I say that? 00:15:23.440 --> 00:15:26.680 align:middle line:84% Do you remember who said good living and good weather?" 00:15:26.680 --> 00:15:51.217 align:middle line:90% 00:15:51.217 --> 00:15:53.300 align:middle line:84% The only problem with reading in your own hometown 00:15:53.300 --> 00:15:54.425 align:middle line:90% is you have to be yourself. 00:15:54.425 --> 00:15:56.300 align:middle line:90% You can't fool anybody. 00:15:56.300 --> 00:15:59.330 align:middle line:84% When you go out on the road to give a reading, you can-- 00:15:59.330 --> 00:16:02.420 align:middle line:84% I don't know, talk about moral bankruptcy 00:16:02.420 --> 00:16:07.850 align:middle line:84% and how the language is going to hell, but you know who I am. 00:16:07.850 --> 00:16:10.713 align:middle line:90% So I can't talk about that. 00:16:10.713 --> 00:16:12.755 align:middle line:84% You're just going to have to listen to the poems. 00:16:12.755 --> 00:16:15.710 align:middle line:90% 00:16:15.710 --> 00:16:17.720 align:middle line:84% This one's called "Endless Love" and the title 00:16:17.720 --> 00:16:20.570 align:middle line:84% comes from the novel by the same title 00:16:20.570 --> 00:16:23.030 align:middle line:84% from which I borrowed part of a line that 00:16:23.030 --> 00:16:25.940 align:middle line:90% moved me to write the poem. 00:16:25.940 --> 00:16:27.890 align:middle line:84% The novel by the way is a lovely lyric 00:16:27.890 --> 00:16:32.150 align:middle line:90% about an obsessive teenage love. 00:16:32.150 --> 00:16:35.390 align:middle line:84% "We read a story aloud about an endless love. 00:16:35.390 --> 00:16:37.940 align:middle line:84% From it, a little time was missing, 00:16:37.940 --> 00:16:40.280 align:middle line:90% and so I switched off the light. 00:16:40.280 --> 00:16:45.470 align:middle line:84% You in your gray robe for winter helped me off with my shoes. 00:16:45.470 --> 00:16:48.320 align:middle line:84% The window shade was up, the light flat 00:16:48.320 --> 00:16:51.560 align:middle line:90% and dim in the late afternoon. 00:16:51.560 --> 00:16:55.730 align:middle line:84% This, you said is a perfect affair, nothing particularly 00:16:55.730 --> 00:16:59.630 align:middle line:84% true or untrue, just a little missing time, 00:16:59.630 --> 00:17:03.830 align:middle line:84% like the forgotten arousal of an old perfume. 00:17:03.830 --> 00:17:07.250 align:middle line:84% You got up from bed and stared out the window. 00:17:07.250 --> 00:17:10.099 align:middle line:84% You said you were watching two figures talking 00:17:10.099 --> 00:17:11.810 align:middle line:90% beneath the trees. 00:17:11.810 --> 00:17:14.960 align:middle line:84% The room was darkening and you look back at me 00:17:14.960 --> 00:17:19.730 align:middle line:84% and shivered, then looked once more at the tall white trees, 00:17:19.730 --> 00:17:20.690 align:middle line:90% leafless. 00:17:20.690 --> 00:17:24.440 align:middle line:84% The snow falling on a deja vu, remarking 00:17:24.440 --> 00:17:27.379 align:middle line:84% how endless and perfect its falling seemed." 00:17:27.379 --> 00:17:42.560 align:middle line:90% 00:17:42.560 --> 00:17:44.810 align:middle line:84% This poem is called "Recompense" and the speaker 00:17:44.810 --> 00:17:50.990 align:middle line:84% as you'll see in the first line is Pablo Picasso. 00:17:50.990 --> 00:17:57.050 align:middle line:90% And I love this poem. 00:17:57.050 --> 00:17:59.960 align:middle line:84% I don't really know quite what it means. 00:17:59.960 --> 00:18:03.830 align:middle line:84% It's just one of those poems that came to me 00:18:03.830 --> 00:18:06.590 align:middle line:90% and I accepted it gratefully. 00:18:06.590 --> 00:18:08.780 align:middle line:90% "Recompense." 00:18:08.780 --> 00:18:13.130 align:middle line:84% "My name is Pablo Picasso and my name rhymes in French, 00:18:13.130 --> 00:18:16.400 align:middle line:90% in Catalan, even in American. 00:18:16.400 --> 00:18:20.540 align:middle line:84% As I travel, stopping often to call aloud the single word, 00:18:20.540 --> 00:18:24.920 align:middle line:84% "lady," I find my ghost is still feared. 00:18:24.920 --> 00:18:29.270 align:middle line:84% I'd like to answer, this was my body, I give it to you. 00:18:29.270 --> 00:18:33.530 align:middle line:84% And this my art, which is only some plumes trailing from my 00:18:33.530 --> 00:18:36.440 align:middle line:84% [AUDIO OUT],, and all you politicos and decadents 00:18:36.440 --> 00:18:39.230 align:middle line:84% can penetrate the visible, which may someday 00:18:39.230 --> 00:18:42.890 align:middle line:90% change to include your face. 00:18:42.890 --> 00:18:44.810 align:middle line:84% From the North, for several years, 00:18:44.810 --> 00:18:47.750 align:middle line:84% I traveled through Navarre and Aragon, 00:18:47.750 --> 00:18:51.710 align:middle line:84% and what used to be León before the soldiers came. 00:18:51.710 --> 00:18:55.850 align:middle line:84% I wanted to find the wound that caused the death of art. 00:18:55.850 --> 00:18:59.150 align:middle line:84% I wanted recompense, but good naturedly, 00:18:59.150 --> 00:19:01.460 align:middle line:84% the way the troubadours of Provence 00:19:01.460 --> 00:19:04.430 align:middle line:90% addressed their ladies fair. 00:19:04.430 --> 00:19:08.150 align:middle line:84% In Málaga where I was born, I found a broken mirror 00:19:08.150 --> 00:19:11.300 align:middle line:84% in a cottage a few feet from the road. 00:19:11.300 --> 00:19:14.600 align:middle line:84% The mirror spoke: you must be a strong man 00:19:14.600 --> 00:19:17.870 align:middle line:84% to travel so far toward a miracle. 00:19:17.870 --> 00:19:20.690 align:middle line:84% I sat drinking with a farmer, a simple man. 00:19:20.690 --> 00:19:22.580 align:middle line:84% And when he fell asleep, I yelled, 00:19:22.580 --> 00:19:27.320 align:middle line:84% my name is Pablo Picasso and all words rhyme. 00:19:27.320 --> 00:19:30.590 align:middle line:84% In Andalusia, there is a bird called cowbird. 00:19:30.590 --> 00:19:34.130 align:middle line:84% It lays its spotted eggs in the nests of other birds, 00:19:34.130 --> 00:19:35.870 align:middle line:90% then disappears. 00:19:35.870 --> 00:19:39.080 align:middle line:84% Look for it in your nest, little bird. 00:19:39.080 --> 00:19:43.670 align:middle line:84% There is a second surprise: the artist carries no sword. 00:19:43.670 --> 00:19:47.390 align:middle line:84% Walking across a field, I heard his slurred whistle. 00:19:47.390 --> 00:19:49.370 align:middle line:90% Cowbird. 00:19:49.370 --> 00:19:52.610 align:middle line:84% Now I am gone, my eyes have full freedom, 00:19:52.610 --> 00:19:57.020 align:middle line:84% and my name, Pablo Picasso, hides in the bunch grass. 00:19:57.020 --> 00:20:01.220 align:middle line:84% Some of the birds are gray, and some black, and some practice 00:20:01.220 --> 00:20:04.100 align:middle line:84% suffering, and some patter their lobed feet 00:20:04.100 --> 00:20:06.140 align:middle line:90% on the water's surface. 00:20:06.140 --> 00:20:10.100 align:middle line:84% What's to be done about my sullen disposition, my money, 00:20:10.100 --> 00:20:14.480 align:middle line:84% and my heirs, my houses, and my death, which is what I fear 00:20:14.480 --> 00:20:17.000 align:middle line:90% will attract your attention? 00:20:17.000 --> 00:20:20.120 align:middle line:84% What finally rhymes in rocks and clouds, 00:20:20.120 --> 00:20:23.180 align:middle line:84% in the fat in the grain of wood, is the life 00:20:23.180 --> 00:20:27.260 align:middle line:84% you feared, and I am dead as you have guessed. 00:20:27.260 --> 00:20:29.780 align:middle line:84% I have become a pest, the great man, 00:20:29.780 --> 00:20:32.360 align:middle line:84% who tosses up shapes, who fractures 00:20:32.360 --> 00:20:37.040 align:middle line:84% your face and arms, your thighs; who knows what I'll do next? 00:20:37.040 --> 00:20:38.668 align:middle line:90% Lady." 00:20:38.668 --> 00:20:42.161 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:20:42.161 --> 00:20:53.415 align:middle line:90% 00:20:53.415 --> 00:20:55.040 align:middle line:84% This is the last time I'm going to read 00:20:55.040 --> 00:20:58.520 align:middle line:84% from the most recent book, and it's called "The Acrobat." 00:20:58.520 --> 00:21:05.270 align:middle line:90% 00:21:05.270 --> 00:21:08.060 align:middle line:84% It's about a certain time in my life 00:21:08.060 --> 00:21:10.190 align:middle line:84% where things weren't going well around me. 00:21:10.190 --> 00:21:16.190 align:middle line:84% But the poem brings me back to a time when I was a teenager 00:21:16.190 --> 00:21:20.840 align:middle line:84% and spent several months in a hospital with rheumatic fever. 00:21:20.840 --> 00:21:24.590 align:middle line:84% And with that kind of fever and that kind of heat in the summer 00:21:24.590 --> 00:21:26.360 align:middle line:84% before, there wasn't any air conditioning. 00:21:26.360 --> 00:21:31.460 align:middle line:84% I had a kind of hallucination and that figures in the poem. 00:21:31.460 --> 00:21:34.370 align:middle line:90% It's called "The Acrobat." 00:21:34.370 --> 00:21:38.900 align:middle line:84% "I was digging in the yard, pyracantha, lady banksia, 00:21:38.900 --> 00:21:41.720 align:middle line:84% drought-loving thorny Chilean mesquite, 00:21:41.720 --> 00:21:44.900 align:middle line:84% a tree against the next year and the next 00:21:44.900 --> 00:21:49.670 align:middle line:84% as though each green thing out there awaited my decision. 00:21:49.670 --> 00:21:51.800 align:middle line:90% I really thought that. 00:21:51.800 --> 00:21:54.080 align:middle line:84% My wife watching from the porch was 00:21:54.080 --> 00:21:57.320 align:middle line:90% glad for this something to do. 00:21:57.320 --> 00:22:01.610 align:middle line:84% All afternoon on the radio echoing from wall to wall, 00:22:01.610 --> 00:22:04.310 align:middle line:84% we heard the old songs that shaped us 00:22:04.310 --> 00:22:09.770 align:middle line:84% into one young couple dancing in a crowd 10 or so years ago. 00:22:09.770 --> 00:22:13.730 align:middle line:84% Later after supper, my wife curled up on the couch 00:22:13.730 --> 00:22:17.300 align:middle line:84% and cried for all that had lately gone wrong, 00:22:17.300 --> 00:22:20.630 align:middle line:90% a long marriage broken, another. 00:22:20.630 --> 00:22:23.840 align:middle line:84% A friend who felt her work had come to nothing, and then 00:22:23.840 --> 00:22:29.180 align:middle line:84% a baby, a friend's, born into this world only part way. 00:22:29.180 --> 00:22:32.030 align:middle line:84% What we had valued falling away-- 00:22:32.030 --> 00:22:38.000 align:middle line:84% friendship, work, love, our own, stalled in its passions. 00:22:38.000 --> 00:22:41.180 align:middle line:84% And the small remembered songs of anybody's life, 00:22:41.180 --> 00:22:44.000 align:middle line:84% all that is daily like brushing the hair, 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:46.670 align:middle line:90% like doves on telephone wires. 00:22:46.670 --> 00:22:50.330 align:middle line:84% She looked out the window, lights of the city came on 00:22:50.330 --> 00:22:53.180 align:middle line:90% and the house seemed to float. 00:22:53.180 --> 00:22:56.900 align:middle line:84% I wanted to hold her crying, but she looked so frail 00:22:56.900 --> 00:22:59.180 align:middle line:84% I thought that if I touched her face 00:22:59.180 --> 00:23:04.880 align:middle line:84% or spoke the wrong transparent words, she might lose all hope. 00:23:04.880 --> 00:23:07.340 align:middle line:84% When I was a child, I thought first 00:23:07.340 --> 00:23:09.860 align:middle line:84% there came the feelings, then the words that 00:23:09.860 --> 00:23:14.190 align:middle line:84% told us what the feelings meant and what we ought to do. 00:23:14.190 --> 00:23:16.670 align:middle line:90% Then everything got confused. 00:23:16.670 --> 00:23:20.480 align:middle line:84% Someone told me a story first and then the feelings came-- 00:23:20.480 --> 00:23:23.870 align:middle line:84% sad ones, happy ones, it didn't matter which. 00:23:23.870 --> 00:23:26.840 align:middle line:84% I thought all the feelings waited out there 00:23:26.840 --> 00:23:28.430 align:middle line:90% for our decisions-- 00:23:28.430 --> 00:23:33.890 align:middle line:84% or all the words strung out into their many letters waited. 00:23:33.890 --> 00:23:37.340 align:middle line:84% She kissed me on the cheek and said good night. 00:23:37.340 --> 00:23:38.990 align:middle line:90% I drank some whiskey. 00:23:38.990 --> 00:23:41.690 align:middle line:84% I thought about my habit of hope. 00:23:41.690 --> 00:23:45.620 align:middle line:84% I heard my wife's deep steady breathing and the gas heater's 00:23:45.620 --> 00:23:47.120 align:middle line:90% long hiss. 00:23:47.120 --> 00:23:49.790 align:middle line:84% I knew my wife could not be argued with. 00:23:49.790 --> 00:23:53.720 align:middle line:84% I thought about one teenage summer I lay in a hospital bed 00:23:53.720 --> 00:23:55.040 align:middle line:90% in fever. 00:23:55.040 --> 00:23:58.490 align:middle line:84% The doctors listened to my heart and clucked. 00:23:58.490 --> 00:24:02.315 align:middle line:84% Relatives, friends, people I did not even know 00:24:02.315 --> 00:24:04.730 align:middle line:90% sent me greeting cards. 00:24:04.730 --> 00:24:09.740 align:middle line:84% Our high school football hero, a boy perfect in his public life, 00:24:09.740 --> 00:24:16.250 align:middle line:84% came with his lonely duty to say how lucky I was to be alive. 00:24:16.250 --> 00:24:19.310 align:middle line:84% One night, I twisted in chills and squinted 00:24:19.310 --> 00:24:23.750 align:middle line:84% at the cards strung over my head and asked myself again 00:24:23.750 --> 00:24:25.850 align:middle line:90% how I was lucky. 00:24:25.850 --> 00:24:29.360 align:middle line:84% Then I saw the acrobat, a slim marionette 00:24:29.360 --> 00:24:31.910 align:middle line:90% dressed in a shiny leotard. 00:24:31.910 --> 00:24:35.510 align:middle line:84% He paced the string between two walls. 00:24:35.510 --> 00:24:38.060 align:middle line:84% In the middle, words from the cards 00:24:38.060 --> 00:24:40.700 align:middle line:84% slumped in shy groups like children 00:24:40.700 --> 00:24:44.000 align:middle line:84% at a pickup game waiting to be chosen. 00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:47.690 align:middle line:84% At one end in a small box nailed to the wall, 00:24:47.690 --> 00:24:52.070 align:middle line:84% my heart, whose pumping I'd been warned not to listen to. 00:24:52.070 --> 00:24:57.050 align:middle line:84% Slowly back and forth the acrobat his balance wove. 00:24:57.050 --> 00:24:57.890 align:middle line:90% Lucky. 00:24:57.890 --> 00:25:00.230 align:middle line:90% Lucky I was for such a friend. 00:25:00.230 --> 00:25:03.035 align:middle line:84% His only job in this world was not to fall." 00:25:03.035 --> 00:25:12.200 align:middle line:90% 00:25:12.200 --> 00:25:16.490 align:middle line:84% Starting a new book of poetry, it's fear 00:25:16.490 --> 00:25:20.510 align:middle line:84% inspiring and exciting experience. 00:25:20.510 --> 00:25:23.180 align:middle line:84% One does not want to repeat what one 00:25:23.180 --> 00:25:27.830 align:middle line:84% has done before yet what the new territory will hold in store 00:25:27.830 --> 00:25:31.340 align:middle line:84% is a great mystery of blank paper. 00:25:31.340 --> 00:25:37.880 align:middle line:84% And the mystery has been slightly filled 00:25:37.880 --> 00:25:39.830 align:middle line:90% since the last book. 00:25:39.830 --> 00:25:44.010 align:middle line:84% And I think the poems are quite different. 00:25:44.010 --> 00:25:46.940 align:middle line:84% The first one is called "Yankee Doodle Dandy," 00:25:46.940 --> 00:25:50.625 align:middle line:84% and it's about a trip to Europe I took when I was first out 00:25:50.625 --> 00:25:51.125 align:middle line:90% of college. 00:25:51.125 --> 00:25:53.750 align:middle line:90% 00:25:53.750 --> 00:25:56.330 align:middle line:84% "Hamburg at night from the Autobahn 00:25:56.330 --> 00:26:01.100 align:middle line:84% is a string of pearls around a lake in 1963 00:26:01.100 --> 00:26:03.830 align:middle line:84% and the prostitutes lined up like ships 00:26:03.830 --> 00:26:08.090 align:middle line:84% above the Reeperbahn, they were nothing to me. 00:26:08.090 --> 00:26:10.670 align:middle line:84% They were like ships' figureheads stalled 00:26:10.670 --> 00:26:14.930 align:middle line:84% in their homey ports above the street, almost nude, very 00:26:14.930 --> 00:26:19.160 align:middle line:84% pert, and very smooth and white, and slightly out of shape. 00:26:19.160 --> 00:26:21.980 align:middle line:90% I wanted one so badly. 00:26:21.980 --> 00:26:25.070 align:middle line:84% Upstairs I went with the Deutsche marks and told her I 00:26:25.070 --> 00:26:27.560 align:middle line:90% only wanted to look, please. 00:26:27.560 --> 00:26:31.010 align:middle line:84% In his statue on the square, Otto Von Bismarck 00:26:31.010 --> 00:26:33.320 align:middle line:90% overlooked everything. 00:26:33.320 --> 00:26:36.950 align:middle line:84% And she said, sing me ein kleine Liedchen, lieber, sing me 00:26:36.950 --> 00:26:39.260 align:middle line:90% a little song, sweetheart. 00:26:39.260 --> 00:26:41.390 align:middle line:90% I didn't do the other thing. 00:26:41.390 --> 00:26:43.820 align:middle line:84% I felt so lonely with whomever she 00:26:43.820 --> 00:26:48.020 align:middle line:84% was and that gaudy perfumed room far from the lake, 00:26:48.020 --> 00:26:49.850 align:middle line:90% and sorry for myself. 00:26:49.850 --> 00:26:53.660 align:middle line:84% I gave her all I owned, singing, Yankee Doodle 00:26:53.660 --> 00:26:58.250 align:middle line:84% went to town riding on a pony, stuck a feather in his cap 00:26:58.250 --> 00:27:00.800 align:middle line:90% and called it macaroni. 00:27:00.800 --> 00:27:04.277 align:middle line:84% Really, I just wanted to sail her home." 00:27:04.277 --> 00:27:07.616 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:27:07.616 --> 00:27:12.870 align:middle line:90% 00:27:12.870 --> 00:27:15.990 align:middle line:84% The next poem is called "Time is a Place and There is a Map." 00:27:15.990 --> 00:27:18.870 align:middle line:90% 00:27:18.870 --> 00:27:21.900 align:middle line:84% There was a Black woman I watched once in winter 00:27:21.900 --> 00:27:24.540 align:middle line:84% at a heroin connection, straddling 00:27:24.540 --> 00:27:27.960 align:middle line:84% a kitchen chair, bland, and featureless, 00:27:27.960 --> 00:27:30.480 align:middle line:90% and haplessly draining. 00:27:30.480 --> 00:27:33.750 align:middle line:84% The dope dealer pinched her breasts, he slapped her, 00:27:33.750 --> 00:27:36.060 align:middle line:84% and I didn't know why his slapping seemed 00:27:36.060 --> 00:27:40.590 align:middle line:84% so tender and I don't know whether she died or not. 00:27:40.590 --> 00:27:44.790 align:middle line:84% She didn't have time to slip the needle from her vein or time 00:27:44.790 --> 00:27:48.010 align:middle line:84% to feel the rush that comes for the money. 00:27:48.010 --> 00:27:51.360 align:middle line:84% She just slumped out of her chair and out of herself, 00:27:51.360 --> 00:27:52.800 align:middle line:90% I thought. 00:27:52.800 --> 00:27:57.870 align:middle line:84% Snowfall, snow light, I didn't learn a thing that night. 00:27:57.870 --> 00:28:02.070 align:middle line:84% I was too scared of dying, so I took off. 00:28:02.070 --> 00:28:06.660 align:middle line:84% What was I looking for anyway, but sweet amnesia, smelling 00:28:06.660 --> 00:28:08.340 align:middle line:90% of ether. 00:28:08.340 --> 00:28:12.660 align:middle line:84% We live at the edge of a giant globe spinning through space. 00:28:12.660 --> 00:28:15.930 align:middle line:84% And whatever we do, we do forever. 00:28:15.930 --> 00:28:17.850 align:middle line:90% I didn't know her very long. 00:28:17.850 --> 00:28:21.045 align:middle line:84% There is no place lost enough to hide a human being." 00:28:21.045 --> 00:28:27.893 align:middle line:90% 00:28:27.893 --> 00:28:29.560 align:middle line:84% This poem is called "Familiar," and it's 00:28:29.560 --> 00:28:33.715 align:middle line:84% the poem that appears on this lovely poster. 00:28:33.715 --> 00:28:39.130 align:middle line:90% 00:28:39.130 --> 00:28:43.630 align:middle line:84% And it's an elegy in memory of my father-in-law, Egon Marcus, 00:28:43.630 --> 00:28:48.010 align:middle line:84% who was born in 1910 and died in 1982. 00:28:48.010 --> 00:28:54.040 align:middle line:84% And the very beginning of the poem 00:28:54.040 --> 00:28:59.740 align:middle line:84% is about a short but long feeling of dying in a hospital. 00:28:59.740 --> 00:29:02.590 align:middle line:90% 00:29:02.590 --> 00:29:04.900 align:middle line:84% And towards the end of the poem, some odd things 00:29:04.900 --> 00:29:08.560 align:middle line:84% happen which actually did happen, 00:29:08.560 --> 00:29:11.350 align:middle line:84% everything broke in the house after he died. 00:29:11.350 --> 00:29:14.260 align:middle line:84% And I'm not a mystical person at all, 00:29:14.260 --> 00:29:19.180 align:middle line:84% but it was an odd concurrence of events. 00:29:19.180 --> 00:29:21.985 align:middle line:84% There's the German phrase, ach, was ist ein 00:29:21.985 --> 00:29:24.250 align:middle line:90% Mann, oh, what is a man? 00:29:24.250 --> 00:29:28.900 align:middle line:84% And my father-in-law was a Jew from Germany 00:29:28.900 --> 00:29:32.710 align:middle line:84% who had escaped Nazi Germany in the 30s. 00:29:32.710 --> 00:29:34.750 align:middle line:84% And when he was ill, his friends were 00:29:34.750 --> 00:29:36.610 align:middle line:84% calling from all over the country 00:29:36.610 --> 00:29:41.890 align:middle line:84% and from New York where he lived and several of them 00:29:41.890 --> 00:29:45.100 align:middle line:84% said more than once to me, I was the official phone answerer, 00:29:45.100 --> 00:29:47.500 align:middle line:84% to give them the latest medical report-- 00:29:47.500 --> 00:29:51.400 align:middle line:84% people would say, oh, what is a man or ach, was ist ein Mann. 00:29:51.400 --> 00:29:56.140 align:middle line:84% And it seemed to put an oddly poetic expression 00:29:56.140 --> 00:29:58.390 align:middle line:84% for these particular people to use. 00:29:58.390 --> 00:30:01.270 align:middle line:84% And not until later did I discover what many you 00:30:01.270 --> 00:30:06.268 align:middle line:84% may already know that is part of a service it 00:30:06.268 --> 00:30:08.560 align:middle line:84% must come from a Psalm or from the Bible, I don't know. 00:30:08.560 --> 00:30:10.227 align:middle line:84% Does anybody know where that comes from? 00:30:10.227 --> 00:30:11.420 align:middle line:90% Oh, what is a man. 00:30:11.420 --> 00:30:14.380 align:middle line:84% Anyways, after the death at the funeral service, 00:30:14.380 --> 00:30:16.624 align:middle line:90% the rabbi used those very words. 00:30:16.624 --> 00:30:18.707 align:middle line:84% "Oh, what is a man, that thou art mindful of him." 00:30:18.707 --> 00:30:20.530 align:middle line:90% 00:30:20.530 --> 00:30:21.580 align:middle line:90% Say it again, "Oh-- 00:30:21.580 --> 00:30:25.690 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] God. 00:30:25.690 --> 00:30:27.320 align:middle line:90% I'm not sure if [INAUDIBLE]. 00:30:27.320 --> 00:30:27.820 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:30:27.820 --> 00:30:30.520 align:middle line:90% OK, thanks. 00:30:30.520 --> 00:30:33.520 align:middle line:90% Anyway, "Familiar." 00:30:33.520 --> 00:30:35.860 align:middle line:84% This is the shape of a man in sleep, 00:30:35.860 --> 00:30:40.810 align:middle line:84% breathing, not breathing, a moth between shadow and light, 00:30:40.810 --> 00:30:43.510 align:middle line:84% between wife and daughter, and the rain 00:30:43.510 --> 00:30:47.710 align:middle line:84% they watch out the window for hours, water, air, 00:30:47.710 --> 00:30:51.790 align:middle line:84% then nothing, bright miscellaneous debris. 00:30:51.790 --> 00:30:55.480 align:middle line:84% Asks an uncle, ach, was ist ein Mann? 00:30:55.480 --> 00:30:58.480 align:middle line:84% The question flutters from cousin to cousin. 00:30:58.480 --> 00:31:00.670 align:middle line:90% The black umbrellas open. 00:31:00.670 --> 00:31:05.500 align:middle line:84% Someone tosses a handful of dirt and what has been given returns 00:31:05.500 --> 00:31:07.270 align:middle line:90% to Earth. 00:31:07.270 --> 00:31:10.360 align:middle line:84% Asks, what is a widow and smiles over 00:31:10.360 --> 00:31:14.050 align:middle line:84% the melon, the fish, the bread, the coffee, 00:31:14.050 --> 00:31:17.620 align:middle line:84% the candle that burns yellow all night for a week. 00:31:17.620 --> 00:31:20.590 align:middle line:84% While in other rooms, things shatter-- 00:31:20.590 --> 00:31:25.240 align:middle line:84% a vase, then a mirror, accustomed to a different touch 00:31:25.240 --> 00:31:31.000 align:middle line:84% as though the soul breathed out now runs amok like a child 00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:36.460 align:middle line:84% through a new house finding each thing unfamiliar, unbelonging; 00:31:36.460 --> 00:31:38.155 align:middle line:90% familiar yet wrong." 00:31:38.155 --> 00:31:52.510 align:middle line:90% 00:31:52.510 --> 00:31:54.235 align:middle line:84% This is called "Even the Smallest Death." 00:31:54.235 --> 00:31:56.870 align:middle line:90% 00:31:56.870 --> 00:31:59.390 align:middle line:84% We found the orange cat this morning 00:31:59.390 --> 00:32:02.240 align:middle line:84% sprawled outside the window as though reaching 00:32:02.240 --> 00:32:05.210 align:middle line:90% to surprise his own reflection. 00:32:05.210 --> 00:32:09.380 align:middle line:84% The yard around us asks the simplest questions, 00:32:09.380 --> 00:32:11.960 align:middle line:84% better to question or wind and weather, 00:32:11.960 --> 00:32:15.650 align:middle line:84% going and coming, needing no reason. 00:32:15.650 --> 00:32:19.430 align:middle line:84% The sun rises and the flies gather as they will 00:32:19.430 --> 00:32:21.620 align:middle line:90% and the rest is sentiment. 00:32:21.620 --> 00:32:26.660 align:middle line:84% You beside me in the yard in sunlight grieving. 00:32:26.660 --> 00:32:30.530 align:middle line:84% Oh, everywhere you look, you shape your own ghosts 00:32:30.530 --> 00:32:35.750 align:middle line:84% in the air lest you forget, willful to memorize. 00:32:35.750 --> 00:32:38.060 align:middle line:90% I call it sentiment. 00:32:38.060 --> 00:32:42.740 align:middle line:84% Flies will gather soon as the sun sets over that far corner 00:32:42.740 --> 00:32:44.330 align:middle line:90% of the garden. 00:32:44.330 --> 00:32:50.210 align:middle line:84% Sluggish and obedient, the dead can't change, as now we must, 00:32:50.210 --> 00:32:51.950 align:middle line:90% or eye the empty spaces." 00:32:51.950 --> 00:33:02.660 align:middle line:90% 00:33:02.660 --> 00:33:04.130 align:middle line:84% This poem is called "Acts of Will," 00:33:04.130 --> 00:33:06.860 align:middle line:84% and this is the first poem that interested me 00:33:06.860 --> 00:33:12.170 align:middle line:84% that I had written after this book had been published. 00:33:12.170 --> 00:33:16.280 align:middle line:84% And it's a very long poem, but to give you 00:33:16.280 --> 00:33:21.410 align:middle line:84% an idea about the foolish waste that artists work is this poem. 00:33:21.410 --> 00:33:26.180 align:middle line:84% I finished the poem at about 120 lines and read it to my wife 00:33:26.180 --> 00:33:27.710 align:middle line:90% and to my friend, Julie. 00:33:27.710 --> 00:33:32.540 align:middle line:84% And they asked me if I thought maybe 00:33:32.540 --> 00:33:34.310 align:middle line:84% I ought to start writing detective novels. 00:33:34.310 --> 00:33:36.500 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:33:36.500 --> 00:33:39.860 align:middle line:84% And I trust my friend's responses 00:33:39.860 --> 00:33:43.400 align:middle line:84% and I guess it sounded a little like a Raymond Chandler novel. 00:33:43.400 --> 00:33:50.420 align:middle line:84% So I went back to my desk and realizing 00:33:50.420 --> 00:33:54.350 align:middle line:84% that it had many of the tics or habits of writing 00:33:54.350 --> 00:33:57.470 align:middle line:84% that I had been working with for several years. 00:33:57.470 --> 00:34:02.570 align:middle line:84% I thought cutting those tics might, those habits 00:34:02.570 --> 00:34:07.550 align:middle line:84% of location, and description, and story might 00:34:07.550 --> 00:34:09.090 align:middle line:90% make for an interesting poem. 00:34:09.090 --> 00:34:13.730 align:middle line:84% So I cut imagery, story, et cetera, most of it 00:34:13.730 --> 00:34:17.460 align:middle line:84% from the poem just to see if there would be left. 00:34:17.460 --> 00:34:20.840 align:middle line:90% And this is what was left. 00:34:20.840 --> 00:34:23.690 align:middle line:90% "Acts of Will." 00:34:23.690 --> 00:34:27.679 align:middle line:84% "On certain nights, the bad mood takes you by surprise 00:34:27.679 --> 00:34:32.090 align:middle line:84% and all the faces you meet shrink to the bleakest farthest 00:34:32.090 --> 00:34:33.560 align:middle line:90% stars. 00:34:33.560 --> 00:34:38.540 align:middle line:84% Oh, take a bus as far as it goes to the city's edge, 00:34:38.540 --> 00:34:43.190 align:middle line:84% that no man's land where it idles, breathing like a house 00:34:43.190 --> 00:34:46.159 align:middle line:90% alone in an empty field. 00:34:46.159 --> 00:34:50.000 align:middle line:84% You don't, of course, and the night shoves you along 00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:53.360 align:middle line:84% in unhooked trains of association, 00:34:53.360 --> 00:34:59.000 align:middle line:84% old regrets, blunders, humiliations, love, the dead. 00:34:59.000 --> 00:35:02.990 align:middle line:84% And nothing stops you until the end defeats the mind's 00:35:02.990 --> 00:35:06.080 align:middle line:90% self-repairing chemistry. 00:35:06.080 --> 00:35:08.870 align:middle line:84% What draws us into such a narrow place, 00:35:08.870 --> 00:35:12.980 align:middle line:84% a nameless, courseless, heartless chasm? 00:35:12.980 --> 00:35:15.860 align:middle line:90% Doubts we thought we'd overcome? 00:35:15.860 --> 00:35:19.550 align:middle line:84% Our body's occasional need for despair? 00:35:19.550 --> 00:35:24.410 align:middle line:84% Or is it the numb bliss, oblivion, we desire? 00:35:24.410 --> 00:35:27.230 align:middle line:84% Wouldn't it be better to talk to ourselves 00:35:27.230 --> 00:35:32.390 align:middle line:84% in a dark of our own choosing, go home, phone a pal 00:35:32.390 --> 00:35:38.510 align:middle line:84% or read a book, dance to the radio's late ballast of music. 00:35:38.510 --> 00:35:41.750 align:middle line:84% How long you stand there, fascinated. 00:35:41.750 --> 00:35:45.140 align:middle line:84% You touch your cheek, you need a shave. 00:35:45.140 --> 00:35:48.920 align:middle line:84% What casual truths such moments absorb. 00:35:48.920 --> 00:35:53.510 align:middle line:84% Those small decisions arrived at in the dark stall 00:35:53.510 --> 00:35:58.640 align:middle line:84% a moment longer, then whistle sing, grin, my friend. 00:35:58.640 --> 00:36:01.550 align:middle line:84% Welcome to the loneliest communion, 00:36:01.550 --> 00:36:05.405 align:middle line:84% an act of will from which you won't return quite whole." 00:36:05.405 --> 00:36:16.890 align:middle line:90% 00:36:16.890 --> 00:36:21.540 align:middle line:84% This is a poem that it was written not to-- 00:36:21.540 --> 00:36:23.490 align:middle line:84% it's called "At the Indoor Shopping Mall." 00:36:23.490 --> 00:36:26.160 align:middle line:84% And it's not a particularly complicated poem. 00:36:26.160 --> 00:36:30.510 align:middle line:84% Well, I think it's probably more like a song than a poem. 00:36:30.510 --> 00:36:34.350 align:middle line:84% But I worked on this poem for probably a year or a year 00:36:34.350 --> 00:36:38.040 align:middle line:84% and a half because I didn't know what it was supposed to mean. 00:36:38.040 --> 00:36:40.110 align:middle line:84% And it took me, and I bring it out of the drawer 00:36:40.110 --> 00:36:42.510 align:middle line:84% periodically, run it through the typewriter, 00:36:42.510 --> 00:36:44.100 align:middle line:84% run it through my head until I finally 00:36:44.100 --> 00:36:50.250 align:middle line:84% found what simple theme was lurking in the song. 00:36:50.250 --> 00:36:54.030 align:middle line:90% "At the Indoor Shopping Mall." 00:36:54.030 --> 00:36:58.590 align:middle line:84% "Either the snow's persistence or inertia sat me down 00:36:58.590 --> 00:37:03.120 align:middle line:84% after I'd run my errands beside a blue tiled fountain. 00:37:03.120 --> 00:37:06.330 align:middle line:84% And wherever I looked, young couples 00:37:06.330 --> 00:37:08.520 align:middle line:90% wheeled their sleeping infant. 00:37:08.520 --> 00:37:11.280 align:middle line:84% And in and out of shops went wives 00:37:11.280 --> 00:37:17.070 align:middle line:84% with trailing identical husbands in brightly colored trousers. 00:37:17.070 --> 00:37:18.210 align:middle line:90% Isn't it lovely? 00:37:18.210 --> 00:37:21.630 align:middle line:84% Said an elderly woman beside me on the bench 00:37:21.630 --> 00:37:23.670 align:middle line:90% beside the circular fountain. 00:37:23.670 --> 00:37:26.640 align:middle line:84% Her dress was a field of flowers. 00:37:26.640 --> 00:37:29.670 align:middle line:84% Over the flowers, the spray from the water 00:37:29.670 --> 00:37:33.450 align:middle line:84% was blue as the waters of a bottomless lagoon. 00:37:33.450 --> 00:37:39.690 align:middle line:84% And I there beside them emptied of need and happy at last. 00:37:39.690 --> 00:37:45.600 align:middle line:84% Until I saw way down below what seemed the movement of a fish, 00:37:45.600 --> 00:37:50.520 align:middle line:84% lantern-jawed and glowering, eyeless as a rock. 00:37:50.520 --> 00:37:54.810 align:middle line:84% And further down, like a vast and stupid secret, 00:37:54.810 --> 00:37:59.550 align:middle line:84% the plain bottom we can know but never see. 00:37:59.550 --> 00:38:00.750 align:middle line:90% Isn't it getting late? 00:38:00.750 --> 00:38:01.950 align:middle line:90% She said. 00:38:01.950 --> 00:38:05.550 align:middle line:84% She rose from the bench, a field of endlessly 00:38:05.550 --> 00:38:08.820 align:middle line:90% intricate wild flowering weeds. 00:38:08.820 --> 00:38:13.380 align:middle line:84% Then came the soft and airy whoosh of revolving doors, 00:38:13.380 --> 00:38:17.400 align:middle line:84% and shoppers coming through with armfuls of packages. 00:38:17.400 --> 00:38:20.280 align:middle line:84% And it was December again in the north, 00:38:20.280 --> 00:38:22.965 align:middle line:84% in the windowless light of perpetual waters." 00:38:22.965 --> 00:38:37.760 align:middle line:90% 00:38:37.760 --> 00:38:39.530 align:middle line:90% Everybody's got a cough. 00:38:39.530 --> 00:38:41.280 align:middle line:90% Lois left me six cups of water. 00:38:41.280 --> 00:38:43.610 align:middle line:84% I think I should pass them around. 00:38:43.610 --> 00:38:47.193 align:middle line:84% This reminds me of Gail and I where we were in Europe. 00:38:47.193 --> 00:38:49.610 align:middle line:84% But I don't know, a long, long time, 10 or 15 years ago we 00:38:49.610 --> 00:38:53.060 align:middle line:84% were in Greece and we'd go to the movies 00:38:53.060 --> 00:38:55.640 align:middle line:84% and you couldn't hear what they were saying 00:38:55.640 --> 00:38:58.100 align:middle line:84% on screen because everybody was smoking and coughing 00:38:58.100 --> 00:38:59.930 align:middle line:90% at the same time in the theater. 00:38:59.930 --> 00:39:00.890 align:middle line:90% It was incredible. 00:39:00.890 --> 00:39:05.150 align:middle line:90% 00:39:05.150 --> 00:39:07.520 align:middle line:84% This poem is called "Bagatelles." 00:39:07.520 --> 00:39:12.740 align:middle line:84% And a bagatelle is by dictionary definition a trifle, 00:39:12.740 --> 00:39:16.460 align:middle line:84% but it's also the name, the title of a series of piano 00:39:16.460 --> 00:39:20.030 align:middle line:90% pieces by Beethoven. 00:39:20.030 --> 00:39:22.640 align:middle line:84% It's a poem about the nature of memory I guess. 00:39:22.640 --> 00:39:25.610 align:middle line:90% 00:39:25.610 --> 00:39:29.150 align:middle line:84% "My father who forgets that yesterday he 00:39:29.150 --> 00:39:32.480 align:middle line:84% saw of the color of sky not slate, 00:39:32.480 --> 00:39:36.110 align:middle line:84% who argues with the endless irritation of the elderly, 00:39:36.110 --> 00:39:39.290 align:middle line:84% remembers which leg he broke at soccer, 00:39:39.290 --> 00:39:41.750 align:middle line:84% not the year but the sharp bluing 00:39:41.750 --> 00:39:44.960 align:middle line:90% bone escaping through his skin. 00:39:44.960 --> 00:39:47.570 align:middle line:84% He phones to tell me the past comes 00:39:47.570 --> 00:39:51.830 align:middle line:84% to visit when he sits listening in his room alone 00:39:51.830 --> 00:39:54.650 align:middle line:84% and the simple accumulation of years 00:39:54.650 --> 00:39:58.670 align:middle line:84% like a jigsaw puzzle pieced together in an afternoon 00:39:58.670 --> 00:40:02.120 align:middle line:90% tells him all he needs to know. 00:40:02.120 --> 00:40:04.340 align:middle line:90% I told this to a woman. 00:40:04.340 --> 00:40:07.700 align:middle line:84% We were dancing at our 20th high school reunion, 00:40:07.700 --> 00:40:10.940 align:middle line:84% her thigh a presence against my own. 00:40:10.940 --> 00:40:13.940 align:middle line:84% I could barely remember who she was. 00:40:13.940 --> 00:40:16.490 align:middle line:84% I didn't remember telling her pretty soon 00:40:16.490 --> 00:40:19.640 align:middle line:84% boys will be chasing after you, though she did, 00:40:19.640 --> 00:40:22.220 align:middle line:84% and how solemn I'd looked, and how 00:40:22.220 --> 00:40:25.040 align:middle line:90% she planned her future then. 00:40:25.040 --> 00:40:28.820 align:middle line:84% Years later, standing before a mirror brushing her hair, 00:40:28.820 --> 00:40:31.820 align:middle line:84% the memory shuddered through her like music 00:40:31.820 --> 00:40:33.950 align:middle line:90% through an empty room. 00:40:33.950 --> 00:40:38.690 align:middle line:84% On the night of my 40th birthday far from home, 00:40:38.690 --> 00:40:41.210 align:middle line:90% I stayed up late and lonely. 00:40:41.210 --> 00:40:45.020 align:middle line:84% Snow fell on a city in the valley, lights in the windows 00:40:45.020 --> 00:40:48.620 align:middle line:84% went off, roofs blended evenly with snow, 00:40:48.620 --> 00:40:53.270 align:middle line:84% evergreens with snow until the whole white valley dissolved. 00:40:53.270 --> 00:40:56.630 align:middle line:84% I could vaguely remember women I'd loved, 00:40:56.630 --> 00:40:59.180 align:middle line:90% flake by flake snowing down. 00:40:59.180 --> 00:41:02.210 align:middle line:84% The courtesies, undressing slowly, 00:41:02.210 --> 00:41:05.030 align:middle line:90% pleasure given, pleasure taken. 00:41:05.030 --> 00:41:09.260 align:middle line:84% The nerves barely inquiring of each other-- 00:41:09.260 --> 00:41:14.180 align:middle line:84% not memory but ellipses, not the consciousness of afternoons 00:41:14.180 --> 00:41:18.320 align:middle line:84% but gray light falling, Beethoven from the next room. 00:41:18.320 --> 00:41:21.920 align:middle line:84% The bagatelles he wrote, not to be remembered by 00:41:21.920 --> 00:41:23.210 align:middle line:90% but to be played. 00:41:23.210 --> 00:41:25.550 align:middle line:90% Practice afternoons. 00:41:25.550 --> 00:41:28.190 align:middle line:84% On top of the piano, some bric-a-brac 00:41:28.190 --> 00:41:32.780 align:middle line:84% given me by friends, a brass whale paperclip and ivory 00:41:32.780 --> 00:41:35.660 align:middle line:84% elephant no bigger than a child's lore. 00:41:35.660 --> 00:41:40.850 align:middle line:84% And the globe with two polar bears seesawing in the snow. 00:41:40.850 --> 00:41:43.610 align:middle line:84% When I turn it over, I see us years 00:41:43.610 --> 00:41:46.040 align:middle line:90% from now talking on the phone. 00:41:46.040 --> 00:41:48.410 align:middle line:90% One says, remember this? 00:41:48.410 --> 00:41:52.550 align:middle line:84% And the other, rising white on white, remember that?" 00:41:52.550 --> 00:42:01.830 align:middle line:90% 00:42:01.830 --> 00:42:05.940 align:middle line:84% This is a little song called "Down at the Harvest Bar." 00:42:05.940 --> 00:42:09.390 align:middle line:84% The harvest bar is a bar restaurant 00:42:09.390 --> 00:42:11.940 align:middle line:84% in Cambridge, Massachusetts in Harvard Square. 00:42:11.940 --> 00:42:15.090 align:middle line:90% 00:42:15.090 --> 00:42:17.460 align:middle line:84% "Down at the harvest bar tonight I 00:42:17.460 --> 00:42:22.290 align:middle line:84% met a woman I met in college; one day, one kiss 00:42:22.290 --> 00:42:24.570 align:middle line:90% in the back seat of a car. 00:42:24.570 --> 00:42:26.850 align:middle line:90% I doubt she remembers it. 00:42:26.850 --> 00:42:31.590 align:middle line:84% That was 20 years ago and we sit boring each other now 00:42:31.590 --> 00:42:32.670 align:middle line:90% as we did then. 00:42:32.670 --> 00:42:35.520 align:middle line:90% 00:42:35.520 --> 00:42:40.470 align:middle line:84% Just one more kiss I think for another gin to prove I 00:42:40.470 --> 00:42:43.650 align:middle line:84% am more myself than I was then with 00:42:43.650 --> 00:42:47.010 align:middle line:90% less each night to remember." 00:42:47.010 --> 00:42:48.673 align:middle line:90% I hope she never reads that. 00:42:48.673 --> 00:42:51.138 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:42:51.138 --> 00:42:59.040 align:middle line:90% 00:42:59.040 --> 00:43:00.710 align:middle line:84% Sometimes when you're working on a poem, 00:43:00.710 --> 00:43:03.040 align:middle line:90% it's so close up to you. 00:43:03.040 --> 00:43:04.290 align:middle line:90% I'm repeating myself, I guess. 00:43:04.290 --> 00:43:05.920 align:middle line:84% But I'm not quite sure what it means 00:43:05.920 --> 00:43:07.530 align:middle line:84% and so I have to depend on my friends 00:43:07.530 --> 00:43:09.840 align:middle line:84% to say that it does connect so that everything 00:43:09.840 --> 00:43:11.460 align:middle line:90% does hold together in the poem. 00:43:11.460 --> 00:43:16.740 align:middle line:84% And I still can't see this poem, but Jon Anderson 00:43:16.740 --> 00:43:19.230 align:middle line:84% tells me that everything does connect although obliquely. 00:43:19.230 --> 00:43:21.470 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:43:21.470 --> 00:43:22.380 align:middle line:90% 00:43:22.380 --> 00:43:25.860 align:middle line:84% And I should have worn my baseball hat tonight, 00:43:25.860 --> 00:43:29.580 align:middle line:84% but my wife said one hat was enough. 00:43:29.580 --> 00:43:32.130 align:middle line:90% This is a childhood poem. 00:43:32.130 --> 00:43:36.600 align:middle line:84% It's called "A Certain Death of Mrs. Lyons." 00:43:36.600 --> 00:43:41.130 align:middle line:84% "I watched two men in white attempting what seemed a cinch, 00:43:41.130 --> 00:43:44.910 align:middle line:84% pick up a lady and carry her down to the sidewalk 00:43:44.910 --> 00:43:46.530 align:middle line:90% from the porch. 00:43:46.530 --> 00:43:49.170 align:middle line:84% When one stretcher bearer stumbled, 00:43:49.170 --> 00:43:52.620 align:middle line:84% I could hear the neighbors from their porches, Mrs. Becker, 00:43:52.620 --> 00:43:57.930 align:middle line:84% Mrs. Finn, and her mother, Mrs. Sullivan crying, whoops. 00:43:57.930 --> 00:44:01.410 align:middle line:84% I could feel the doll-like skull smacked the sidewalk 00:44:01.410 --> 00:44:04.830 align:middle line:84% like a baseball leaping off a bat. 00:44:04.830 --> 00:44:08.160 align:middle line:84% Even if you concentrate on one thing at a time, 00:44:08.160 --> 00:44:12.900 align:middle line:84% say, a baseball hurtling toward you growing larger wider 00:44:12.900 --> 00:44:16.290 align:middle line:84% in the sun, even if you refuse to flinch, 00:44:16.290 --> 00:44:18.700 align:middle line:90% some things turn out wrong. 00:44:18.700 --> 00:44:21.630 align:middle line:84% So that's what the fuss is all about, I thought, 00:44:21.630 --> 00:44:24.750 align:middle line:84% looking up long after Arnold Belcher took 00:44:24.750 --> 00:44:28.740 align:middle line:84% his famous razzle dazzle every which way wind up, and threw 00:44:28.740 --> 00:44:30.990 align:middle line:84% the ball again, my favorite pitch." 00:44:30.990 --> 00:44:40.550 align:middle line:90% 00:44:40.550 --> 00:44:42.950 align:middle line:84% The next one is called "Life Drawing." 00:44:42.950 --> 00:44:47.240 align:middle line:84% And a few years when my wife was teaching a life drawing 00:44:47.240 --> 00:44:50.630 align:middle line:84% class at the museum art school, I would go to pick her up. 00:44:50.630 --> 00:44:52.880 align:middle line:84% And if I came early, I'd wait in the back of the room. 00:44:52.880 --> 00:44:55.880 align:middle line:84% But it's a little awkward sitting in the back of the room 00:44:55.880 --> 00:44:56.690 align:middle line:90% doing nothing. 00:44:56.690 --> 00:45:02.000 align:middle line:84% Well, a nude person sits there in the front of the room. 00:45:02.000 --> 00:45:05.690 align:middle line:90% It seems rude to do it. 00:45:05.690 --> 00:45:09.830 align:middle line:84% So I started drawing rather than leave, one's got to leave. 00:45:09.830 --> 00:45:13.134 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:45:13.134 --> 00:45:17.390 align:middle line:90% 00:45:17.390 --> 00:45:19.580 align:middle line:84% And if no good drawing ever came out of it, 00:45:19.580 --> 00:45:23.480 align:middle line:90% at least that poem did come out. 00:45:23.480 --> 00:45:25.640 align:middle line:90% "Life Drawing." 00:45:25.640 --> 00:45:28.100 align:middle line:84% "At night in the museum art school, 00:45:28.100 --> 00:45:33.140 align:middle line:84% men and women whose daily work doesn't require hands or eyes 00:45:33.140 --> 00:45:36.740 align:middle line:84% to surrender to such intimacy, and the instructor 00:45:36.740 --> 00:45:38.270 align:middle line:90% passing over us. 00:45:38.270 --> 00:45:41.180 align:middle line:84% And everything around the room in shadow 00:45:41.180 --> 00:45:44.690 align:middle line:84% gathers to intensify light on the model's body-- 00:45:44.690 --> 00:45:46.760 align:middle line:90% a stranger's, a woman. 00:45:46.760 --> 00:45:50.930 align:middle line:84% The charcoal starts erratically almost of its own accord, 00:45:50.930 --> 00:45:53.780 align:middle line:84% though we're hardly aware of time anymore. 00:45:53.780 --> 00:45:58.250 align:middle line:84% Hands moving to match body part to body whole. 00:45:58.250 --> 00:45:59.720 align:middle line:90% Nipple to breast. 00:45:59.720 --> 00:46:02.240 align:middle line:84% The long waist to the shadowy haunch 00:46:02.240 --> 00:46:08.030 align:middle line:84% like a blue whale rising falling back into the feeding dark. 00:46:08.030 --> 00:46:09.950 align:middle line:90% Her eyes are closed. 00:46:09.950 --> 00:46:11.990 align:middle line:90% What could she be thinking of? 00:46:11.990 --> 00:46:17.150 align:middle line:84% Her boundaries shift between each taken breath, more sure 00:46:17.150 --> 00:46:19.070 align:middle line:90% of their universe than we. 00:46:19.070 --> 00:46:22.790 align:middle line:84% The old masters drew her as an angel descended, 00:46:22.790 --> 00:46:25.640 align:middle line:84% walking across the farmyard lost, 00:46:25.640 --> 00:46:27.395 align:middle line:90% not in thought but motion. 00:46:27.395 --> 00:46:31.280 align:middle line:90% 00:46:31.280 --> 00:46:34.370 align:middle line:84% Sundays, the men who hang out at the park 00:46:34.370 --> 00:46:36.630 align:middle line:90% love to describe women. 00:46:36.630 --> 00:46:41.040 align:middle line:84% The young men sweep the air with huge emotions like liars 00:46:41.040 --> 00:46:44.360 align:middle line:84% after hours of no bath at the county reservoir, 00:46:44.360 --> 00:46:47.090 align:middle line:84% with a wink to the boy who caught the fish 00:46:47.090 --> 00:46:49.700 align:middle line:84% but doesn't know yet a woman's figure matters 00:46:49.700 --> 00:46:52.070 align:middle line:90% enough to tell lies. 00:46:52.070 --> 00:46:55.220 align:middle line:84% The old man's hands seem to stutter. 00:46:55.220 --> 00:46:59.750 align:middle line:84% They might be shaping the lost map of Thrace, stone house, 00:46:59.750 --> 00:47:03.200 align:middle line:84% stone wall, a horse nibbling grass, 00:47:03.200 --> 00:47:08.090 align:middle line:84% clouds from the long neigh; hands that labored in stone, 00:47:08.090 --> 00:47:10.400 align:middle line:90% or wood, or dirt for years-- 00:47:10.400 --> 00:47:33.600 align:middle line:90% 00:47:33.600 --> 00:47:36.240 align:middle line:84% with a wink to the boy who caught the fish 00:47:36.240 --> 00:47:38.700 align:middle line:84% but doesn't know yet a woman's figure 00:47:38.700 --> 00:47:41.580 align:middle line:90% matters enough to tell lies. 00:47:41.580 --> 00:47:44.730 align:middle line:84% The old man's hands seem to stutter. 00:47:44.730 --> 00:47:48.150 align:middle line:84% They might be shaping the lost map of Thrace, 00:47:48.150 --> 00:47:52.980 align:middle line:84% stone house, stone wall, a horse nibbling grass clouds 00:47:52.980 --> 00:47:57.990 align:middle line:84% from the long neigh; hands that labored in stone, or wood, 00:47:57.990 --> 00:48:02.520 align:middle line:84% or dirt for years when they're about to fly off the wrists 00:48:02.520 --> 00:48:03.705 align:middle line:90% vanish into their pockets. 00:48:03.705 --> 00:48:06.270 align:middle line:90% 00:48:06.270 --> 00:48:10.410 align:middle line:84% All the postures of flesh blur in the merciless overhead 00:48:10.410 --> 00:48:11.490 align:middle line:90% light. 00:48:11.490 --> 00:48:12.960 align:middle line:90% The model stretches. 00:48:12.960 --> 00:48:18.000 align:middle line:84% She puts on her glasses and pads naked and noisily around us 00:48:18.000 --> 00:48:22.020 align:middle line:84% like a silvery carp stranded on a beach or water 00:48:22.020 --> 00:48:26.130 align:middle line:84% as it overflows its banks seeking a new shape. 00:48:26.130 --> 00:48:30.240 align:middle line:84% She wants to see just how we have depicted her, then 00:48:30.240 --> 00:48:32.340 align:middle line:90% bends to pick up her clothes. 00:48:32.340 --> 00:48:35.490 align:middle line:84% And with her back to us, puts them on slowly-- 00:48:35.490 --> 00:48:40.260 align:middle line:84% bra, panties, and a shirt, blue jeans, rubber thongs. 00:48:40.260 --> 00:48:43.740 align:middle line:84% What lay there in a stillness older than statues 00:48:43.740 --> 00:48:48.090 align:middle line:84% of gods made from clay and spit is a teenager 00:48:48.090 --> 00:48:49.590 align:middle line:90% in a Rolling Stones T-shirt. 00:48:49.590 --> 00:48:52.140 align:middle line:90% 00:48:52.140 --> 00:48:54.660 align:middle line:84% If she could have watched the lumps of charcoal 00:48:54.660 --> 00:48:56.580 align:middle line:84% carefully produce, she might have 00:48:56.580 --> 00:48:59.580 align:middle line:84% thought, child playing dead at sunset 00:48:59.580 --> 00:49:03.210 align:middle line:84% after supper on the front lawn under the privet. 00:49:03.210 --> 00:49:05.430 align:middle line:90% Horizon, hill. 00:49:05.430 --> 00:49:11.250 align:middle line:84% Hill after hill someone cares enough about to sit and draw. 00:49:11.250 --> 00:49:13.080 align:middle line:90% We all love to look. 00:49:13.080 --> 00:49:16.530 align:middle line:84% And as we can't always touch, we walk home 00:49:16.530 --> 00:49:18.720 align:middle line:90% to more familiar shapes. 00:49:18.720 --> 00:49:22.080 align:middle line:84% The curves follow the light from the open door. 00:49:22.080 --> 00:49:26.910 align:middle line:84% And even as I sit on the bed, and stare, and wake her, 00:49:26.910 --> 00:49:30.420 align:middle line:84% even as my breathing starts to echo hers, 00:49:30.420 --> 00:49:33.240 align:middle line:84% there is something I can't have-- 00:49:33.240 --> 00:49:36.930 align:middle line:84% the drowsy neck, the hollow back of the knees, 00:49:36.930 --> 00:49:42.480 align:middle line:84% the ear that goes around, the feet like a slum at dawn. 00:49:42.480 --> 00:49:47.070 align:middle line:84% There is also the body as a version of habit skin deep; 00:49:47.070 --> 00:49:52.410 align:middle line:84% body going deeper, pleasuring itself even as it pleasures us. 00:49:52.410 --> 00:49:57.540 align:middle line:84% Body, the hotel of the spirit, elusive and presiding 00:49:57.540 --> 00:49:59.700 align:middle line:90% below nothing and to no one." 00:49:59.700 --> 00:50:10.118 align:middle line:90% 00:50:10.118 --> 00:50:13.430 align:middle line:84% This is a poem called "Acts Without Consequence." 00:50:13.430 --> 00:50:20.740 align:middle line:84% And it's about two different times. 00:50:20.740 --> 00:50:24.790 align:middle line:84% One is about working as an apprentice machinist 00:50:24.790 --> 00:50:27.430 align:middle line:84% just when I got out of high school 00:50:27.430 --> 00:50:32.020 align:middle line:84% and the other is more recently when I saw something very odd, 00:50:32.020 --> 00:50:36.100 align:middle line:84% and moving, and lovely, which appears at the end of the poem. 00:50:36.100 --> 00:50:39.760 align:middle line:84% It's called "Acts Without Consequence." 00:50:39.760 --> 00:50:43.000 align:middle line:84% "All one summer I thought about God. 00:50:43.000 --> 00:50:47.440 align:middle line:84% This in the factories and this at an age when I just as 00:50:47.440 --> 00:50:51.550 align:middle line:84% soon have felt like any ordinary apprentice, machinist, a 00:50:51.550 --> 00:50:54.550 align:middle line:84% recently graduated high school kid no different 00:50:54.550 --> 00:50:56.740 align:middle line:90% from anyone else. 00:50:56.740 --> 00:50:58.630 align:middle line:84% Then I began to wonder what they'd 00:50:58.630 --> 00:51:00.910 align:middle line:90% be thinking about, all of-- 00:51:00.910 --> 00:51:04.690 align:middle line:84% din of huge machines, routers, and lathes 00:51:04.690 --> 00:51:07.910 align:middle line:84% that cast the high windows with metal dust. 00:51:07.910 --> 00:51:10.960 align:middle line:84% And now and then, the random lap of waves 00:51:10.960 --> 00:51:17.110 align:middle line:84% came off a nearby canal creating a timeless sanctuary baffle. 00:51:17.110 --> 00:51:20.890 align:middle line:84% I'd let my mind work the same thought until the thought broke 00:51:20.890 --> 00:51:22.930 align:middle line:90% when the whistle blew. 00:51:22.930 --> 00:51:25.450 align:middle line:84% One time, one of the men must have 00:51:25.450 --> 00:51:28.090 align:middle line:84% sensed the burden of my thoughtfulness 00:51:28.090 --> 00:51:32.680 align:middle line:84% because he asked a question so generalized it felt intimate. 00:51:32.680 --> 00:51:36.850 align:middle line:84% I don't remember what, where do the dead live, about love. 00:51:36.850 --> 00:51:39.970 align:middle line:84% But I must have been amazed as I am now 00:51:39.970 --> 00:51:45.280 align:middle line:84% by any unexpected heartfelt endlessly answerable question. 00:51:45.280 --> 00:51:48.940 align:middle line:84% Maybe I felt that slurring in the brain that happens a split 00:51:48.940 --> 00:51:51.400 align:middle line:90% second into an accident. 00:51:51.400 --> 00:51:54.790 align:middle line:84% Anyway, I didn't so much decide to quit 00:51:54.790 --> 00:51:59.500 align:middle line:84% as I drifted into other jobs, then college and so on. 00:51:59.500 --> 00:52:03.040 align:middle line:84% I thought about it just a while ago, probably 00:52:03.040 --> 00:52:04.540 align:middle line:90% I was high back then. 00:52:04.540 --> 00:52:06.580 align:middle line:90% God kept me company. 00:52:06.580 --> 00:52:11.590 align:middle line:84% Or God was pure attention, seductive like a mantra. 00:52:11.590 --> 00:52:13.750 align:middle line:90% It hardly matters now. 00:52:13.750 --> 00:52:16.570 align:middle line:84% It so happens the poplars are in leaf. 00:52:16.570 --> 00:52:20.680 align:middle line:84% Bordering each yard, the white perennial African daisies 00:52:20.680 --> 00:52:23.920 align:middle line:84% and poppies whose languid yellow petals seem 00:52:23.920 --> 00:52:26.410 align:middle line:90% to palpitate like flesh. 00:52:26.410 --> 00:52:27.790 align:middle line:90% I was out walking. 00:52:27.790 --> 00:52:29.620 align:middle line:90% I glanced up. 00:52:29.620 --> 00:52:33.430 align:middle line:84% On a balcony above the avenue, stood a very old woman 00:52:33.430 --> 00:52:35.710 align:middle line:90% dressed in a robe and slippers. 00:52:35.710 --> 00:52:38.860 align:middle line:84% I saw that in the raised circle of her arms 00:52:38.860 --> 00:52:41.530 align:middle line:90% she held a photo in a frame. 00:52:41.530 --> 00:52:42.820 align:middle line:90% Then she was moving. 00:52:42.820 --> 00:52:46.630 align:middle line:84% She was dancing, a waltz, a box and four, 00:52:46.630 --> 00:52:49.210 align:middle line:84% as though she'd heard the call while ironing 00:52:49.210 --> 00:52:52.540 align:middle line:84% and it just fell on her like old clothes or spring 00:52:52.540 --> 00:52:57.100 align:middle line:84% snow: cheek to cheek early on a Sunday morning, 00:52:57.100 --> 00:53:00.700 align:middle line:84% who'd have imagined ever doing such a thing? 00:53:00.700 --> 00:53:03.130 align:middle line:84% And just as suddenly as she began, 00:53:03.130 --> 00:53:05.620 align:middle line:84% she stopped and bent her body out 00:53:05.620 --> 00:53:08.830 align:middle line:84% a little, neighboring yards, rows of houses, 00:53:08.830 --> 00:53:11.620 align:middle line:90% trees, flowers in their beds. 00:53:11.620 --> 00:53:15.490 align:middle line:84% Sometimes this world's almost the safest place to be." 00:53:15.490 --> 00:53:39.720 align:middle line:90% 00:53:39.720 --> 00:53:40.860 align:middle line:90% "Paradise." 00:53:40.860 --> 00:53:45.450 align:middle line:84% This poem begins with an eccentric version 00:53:45.450 --> 00:53:51.690 align:middle line:84% of the Genesis story of Adam and Eve and the snake. 00:53:51.690 --> 00:53:58.590 align:middle line:84% I've replaced the snake with a swallow for some reason. 00:53:58.590 --> 00:54:01.560 align:middle line:84% "When the bird saw how innocent they were, 00:54:01.560 --> 00:54:06.030 align:middle line:84% it flew toward the garden in a swallow's perfect curves. 00:54:06.030 --> 00:54:09.930 align:middle line:84% So luminous, she placed it in her companion. 00:54:09.930 --> 00:54:10.850 align:middle line:90% They kissed. 00:54:10.850 --> 00:54:13.680 align:middle line:84% They passed the light between them. 00:54:13.680 --> 00:54:17.010 align:middle line:84% They spoke and the bird flew out. 00:54:17.010 --> 00:54:19.470 align:middle line:84% This is the story I tell myself when 00:54:19.470 --> 00:54:23.730 align:middle line:84% I'm most unsure, when I stare out a window at dusk 00:54:23.730 --> 00:54:25.890 align:middle line:90% and can't decide-- 00:54:25.890 --> 00:54:31.140 align:middle line:84% at times love and at times hate like a phone ringing all night; 00:54:31.140 --> 00:54:34.650 align:middle line:84% sometimes the truth, sometimes the lie. 00:54:34.650 --> 00:54:37.710 align:middle line:90% The heart reasons or the mind. 00:54:37.710 --> 00:54:41.220 align:middle line:84% Above my room, the swallow fascinates even when 00:54:41.220 --> 00:54:43.470 align:middle line:90% I feel most sure. 00:54:43.470 --> 00:54:46.470 align:middle line:84% Oh, come back, they must have cried. 00:54:46.470 --> 00:54:51.570 align:middle line:84% Mouths held open in a perfect human singing: oh. 00:54:51.570 --> 00:54:55.320 align:middle line:84% The certainties dissolving on their tongues. 00:54:55.320 --> 00:54:57.750 align:middle line:90% How large the sky looks now. 00:54:57.750 --> 00:55:01.140 align:middle line:84% The swallow's locomotion and obstacle. 00:55:01.140 --> 00:55:04.170 align:middle line:84% Air holds him, makes him graceful. 00:55:04.170 --> 00:55:07.890 align:middle line:84% Sometimes baffled, a shifting helpless light 00:55:07.890 --> 00:55:08.760 align:middle line:90% above the garden." 00:55:08.760 --> 00:55:12.990 align:middle line:90% 00:55:12.990 --> 00:55:16.395 align:middle line:84% I'd like to read three more poems. 00:55:16.395 --> 00:55:20.508 align:middle line:90% 00:55:20.508 --> 00:55:22.050 align:middle line:84% This one is called "Alternate Lives." 00:55:22.050 --> 00:55:29.030 align:middle line:90% 00:55:29.030 --> 00:55:33.980 align:middle line:84% The opening allusion is to some of the writings of Leonardo da 00:55:33.980 --> 00:55:39.660 align:middle line:84% Vinci who wrote a wonderful list, a bestiary, symbology 00:55:39.660 --> 00:55:40.160 align:middle line:90% of beasts. 00:55:40.160 --> 00:55:43.510 align:middle line:90% 00:55:43.510 --> 00:55:46.960 align:middle line:84% "Da Vinci, she said reading from her book, 00:55:46.960 --> 00:55:51.880 align:middle line:84% has the swallow serve for inconstancy, always 00:55:51.880 --> 00:55:57.490 align:middle line:84% in motion, unable to endure the slightest discomfort. 00:55:57.490 --> 00:56:01.780 align:middle line:84% Have you ever, she asked, cheated on me once? 00:56:01.780 --> 00:56:03.520 align:middle line:90% How many times? 00:56:03.520 --> 00:56:04.840 align:middle line:90% Leave them. 00:56:04.840 --> 00:56:06.250 align:middle line:90% Leave them be. 00:56:06.250 --> 00:56:11.050 align:middle line:84% Hours in some neutral room where the light is weak groping 00:56:11.050 --> 00:56:14.020 align:middle line:90% another's body for an answer. 00:56:14.020 --> 00:56:17.920 align:middle line:84% Wouldn't it be worth to stay awake all night imagining how 00:56:17.920 --> 00:56:19.900 align:middle line:90% it would feel to live alone? 00:56:19.900 --> 00:56:22.930 align:middle line:84% To sit like a bachelor or spinster 00:56:22.930 --> 00:56:26.980 align:middle line:84% in a straight back chair in a bathrobe sipping whiskey, 00:56:26.980 --> 00:56:31.090 align:middle line:84% smoking one cigarette after another all by yourself, 00:56:31.090 --> 00:56:35.260 align:middle line:84% to watch the lilac light arrive, first swallow 00:56:35.260 --> 00:56:40.630 align:middle line:84% arching over the river and no one to tell or have to tell? 00:56:40.630 --> 00:56:42.850 align:middle line:84% Put your book away, he said, come here." 00:56:42.850 --> 00:56:51.790 align:middle line:90% 00:56:51.790 --> 00:56:53.040 align:middle line:90% This poem is called "A House." 00:56:53.040 --> 00:56:58.140 align:middle line:90% 00:56:58.140 --> 00:57:02.430 align:middle line:84% "Their mouths blur like leaves caught in a crosswind, 00:57:02.430 --> 00:57:05.190 align:middle line:84% lips barely softly touching there. 00:57:05.190 --> 00:57:08.340 align:middle line:84% And behind the lips, the hard white teeth. 00:57:08.340 --> 00:57:14.070 align:middle line:84% And further in, pink membranes pulsing to seize a breath. 00:57:14.070 --> 00:57:15.900 align:middle line:90% How deep is a mouth? 00:57:15.900 --> 00:57:19.050 align:middle line:90% How far in before in the other? 00:57:19.050 --> 00:57:21.660 align:middle line:84% Some nights they fall asleep like that 00:57:21.660 --> 00:57:26.820 align:middle line:84% then wake, walk out to check the weather, breakfast together, 00:57:26.820 --> 00:57:29.460 align:middle line:90% and off to the world for a day. 00:57:29.460 --> 00:57:33.630 align:middle line:84% All morning and all afternoon inside the house, shadows 00:57:33.630 --> 00:57:35.610 align:middle line:90% change places with light. 00:57:35.610 --> 00:57:39.330 align:middle line:84% Noon, then twilight, dusk, until the shadows 00:57:39.330 --> 00:57:41.670 align:middle line:90% become one darkness. 00:57:41.670 --> 00:57:44.400 align:middle line:84% How thoughtless it looks to a passerby. 00:57:44.400 --> 00:57:49.110 align:middle line:84% Room by room, the lamps go on as though to repair the harm 00:57:49.110 --> 00:57:51.480 align:middle line:90% the hours have done. 00:57:51.480 --> 00:57:55.980 align:middle line:84% But what can you say in dark or light that hasn't been said? 00:57:55.980 --> 00:57:59.940 align:middle line:84% Good morning, good night, a kiss again. 00:57:59.940 --> 00:58:04.500 align:middle line:84% Then in the body's deepest place as in a room revisited 00:58:04.500 --> 00:58:07.380 align:middle line:84% after years away some space you thought 00:58:07.380 --> 00:58:12.510 align:middle line:84% of as your own, same radio, same bed and sink, same view. 00:58:12.510 --> 00:58:16.950 align:middle line:84% You meet another passing through, a pilgrim, not quite 00:58:16.950 --> 00:58:19.960 align:middle line:90% familiar, not quite a stranger. 00:58:19.960 --> 00:58:21.030 align:middle line:90% What way? 00:58:21.030 --> 00:58:23.760 align:middle line:84% This is where things change sometimes. 00:58:23.760 --> 00:58:25.455 align:middle line:90% This is how some people love." 00:58:25.455 --> 00:58:29.970 align:middle line:90% 00:58:29.970 --> 00:58:32.160 align:middle line:90% And this is the last poem. 00:58:32.160 --> 00:58:35.160 align:middle line:90% It's in two sections. 00:58:35.160 --> 00:58:37.920 align:middle line:84% And to continue the theme of acts of-- 00:58:37.920 --> 00:58:39.585 align:middle line:84% this one is called "Acts of Grace." 00:58:39.585 --> 00:58:44.180 align:middle line:90% 00:58:44.180 --> 00:58:48.110 align:middle line:84% The beginning of the poem is a real experience. 00:58:48.110 --> 00:58:51.500 align:middle line:84% It took place when I was on a bus traveling 00:58:51.500 --> 00:58:57.740 align:middle line:84% at night through Yugoslavia in the mountain. 00:58:57.740 --> 00:59:01.760 align:middle line:84% "Entering any unknown lovely mysterious place, woods, 00:59:01.760 --> 00:59:04.820 align:middle line:84% or water, and for whatever reason 00:59:04.820 --> 00:59:08.780 align:middle line:84% carries you along a slurred amnesiac passage. 00:59:08.780 --> 00:59:09.710 align:middle line:90% It's dark. 00:59:09.710 --> 00:59:11.930 align:middle line:90% The bus slows around a curve. 00:59:11.930 --> 00:59:15.110 align:middle line:84% It's always dark when I remember this. 00:59:15.110 --> 00:59:19.040 align:middle line:84% I've been traveling alone a while from one European country 00:59:19.040 --> 00:59:20.120 align:middle line:90% to another. 00:59:20.120 --> 00:59:24.350 align:middle line:84% Every city looked the same, cathedrals, farmers' markets. 00:59:24.350 --> 00:59:27.320 align:middle line:84% From any hill, the harbors gleamed 00:59:27.320 --> 00:59:31.050 align:middle line:84% with a broad and tireless contentment. 00:59:31.050 --> 00:59:33.680 align:middle line:84% So when the bus stopped, I entered the woods 00:59:33.680 --> 00:59:37.790 align:middle line:84% at the side of the road and did not care to wonder where I was 00:59:37.790 --> 00:59:42.230 align:middle line:84% or what drew me down a path between the trees so late, 00:59:42.230 --> 00:59:46.160 align:middle line:84% unable to distinguish one darkness from another. 00:59:46.160 --> 00:59:48.410 align:middle line:84% Have you ever looked in a mirror in the dark 00:59:48.410 --> 00:59:52.160 align:middle line:84% and seeing yourself grown older other? 00:59:52.160 --> 00:59:55.670 align:middle line:84% I did as a child, and could not help but touch 00:59:55.670 --> 00:59:59.090 align:middle line:84% that terrifying face which was a skull. 00:59:59.090 --> 01:00:01.430 align:middle line:84% There was a lake, and in the distance, 01:00:01.430 --> 01:00:03.650 align:middle line:90% a cottage with a single light. 01:00:03.650 --> 01:00:08.180 align:middle line:84% A thought so lonesome I felt myself dissolve. 01:00:08.180 --> 01:00:11.870 align:middle line:84% Whatever I saw, it went abstract. 01:00:11.870 --> 01:00:15.290 align:middle line:84% Out of such emptiness, I would invent a future-- 01:00:15.290 --> 01:00:19.580 align:middle line:84% husband, friend, poet, prodigal son. 01:00:19.580 --> 01:00:24.350 align:middle line:84% What a lovely foolish luxury of thought. 01:00:24.350 --> 01:00:26.600 align:middle line:90% Two. 01:00:26.600 --> 01:00:28.790 align:middle line:84% Have you ever looked in a window at night 01:00:28.790 --> 01:00:31.370 align:middle line:84% out walking when you can't sleep? 01:00:31.370 --> 01:00:35.090 align:middle line:84% The shade is up, table and chair, a lamp, 01:00:35.090 --> 01:00:38.540 align:middle line:84% and open book, a half-filled whiskey glass, 01:00:38.540 --> 01:00:40.700 align:middle line:90% though no one's there. 01:00:40.700 --> 01:00:44.540 align:middle line:84% I wrote one poem, willful and exact. 01:00:44.540 --> 01:00:49.550 align:middle line:84% I love a slim woman in a house in a quiet neighborhood. 01:00:49.550 --> 01:00:54.590 align:middle line:84% This yard and small trees I've planted to resemble other yards 01:00:54.590 --> 01:00:57.590 align:middle line:84% are shapes I've almost memorized. 01:00:57.590 --> 01:01:03.890 align:middle line:84% Wherever I look, the same bright patient stars pause overhead. 01:01:03.890 --> 01:01:07.340 align:middle line:84% On nights like this, I can recite names 01:01:07.340 --> 01:01:09.950 align:middle line:90% of streets and local flowers. 01:01:09.950 --> 01:01:13.790 align:middle line:84% I know the seasons by the turning light, knowledge 01:01:13.790 --> 01:01:16.760 align:middle line:84% to fit in a coffee cup, mornings when 01:01:16.760 --> 01:01:21.700 align:middle line:84% I watch one lovely yellow flower opening to light. 01:01:21.700 --> 01:01:24.350 align:middle line:90% Their history begins. 01:01:24.350 --> 01:01:29.390 align:middle line:84% I cannot see but know the rising breadth of houses as is 01:01:29.390 --> 01:01:32.270 align:middle line:90% valuable even as it vanishes. 01:01:32.270 --> 01:01:35.060 align:middle line:84% Once, at the funeral of a quiet man, 01:01:35.060 --> 01:01:40.310 align:middle line:84% I elegized the quick familiar motion of his waving hand. 01:01:40.310 --> 01:01:44.330 align:middle line:84% If there's a light, I stop, I look in. 01:01:44.330 --> 01:01:48.290 align:middle line:84% Here is what the book says: whatever you learn, 01:01:48.290 --> 01:01:52.640 align:middle line:84% you will forget, so you might have its glimpse again. 01:01:52.640 --> 01:01:56.090 align:middle line:84% When have I ever felt lonelier, happier? 01:01:56.090 --> 01:01:57.189 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 01:01:57.189 --> 01:02:00.682 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 01:02:00.682 --> 01:02:26.131 align:middle line:90% 01:02:26.131 --> 01:02:30.617 align:middle line:90% [INTERPOSING VOICES] 01:02:30.617 --> 01:03:14.103 align:middle line:90%