WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.070 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.070 --> 00:00:04.215 align:middle line:84% This is another New York City poem. 00:00:04.215 --> 00:00:07.230 align:middle line:90% 00:00:07.230 --> 00:00:17.265 align:middle line:84% And well, it's an autobiographical thing. 00:00:17.265 --> 00:00:19.140 align:middle line:84% Poem's called Shelley, it's the poet Shelley. 00:00:19.140 --> 00:00:22.260 align:middle line:90% 00:00:22.260 --> 00:00:25.950 align:middle line:90% I read Shelley one day. 00:00:25.950 --> 00:00:29.370 align:middle line:84% So it's about poor Shelley, who probably turn over 00:00:29.370 --> 00:00:30.420 align:middle line:90% in his grave. 00:00:30.420 --> 00:00:33.900 align:middle line:84% He's still turning over in his grave. 00:00:33.900 --> 00:00:38.700 align:middle line:84% Shelley-- poet of the dead leaves 00:00:38.700 --> 00:00:44.370 align:middle line:84% driven like ghosts, driven like pestilence-stricken multitudes. 00:00:44.370 --> 00:00:46.680 align:middle line:84% I read you first one rainy evening 00:00:46.680 --> 00:00:51.210 align:middle line:84% in New York City in my atrocious Slavic accent, 00:00:51.210 --> 00:00:55.770 align:middle line:84% saying the mellifluous verses from a battered, much stained 00:00:55.770 --> 00:00:59.940 align:middle line:84% volume I bought earlier that day in a used bookstore 00:00:59.940 --> 00:01:04.140 align:middle line:84% in Fourth Avenue ran by initiates 00:01:04.140 --> 00:01:07.020 align:middle line:90% of the occult masters. 00:01:07.020 --> 00:01:09.330 align:middle line:84% The little money I had already spent, 00:01:09.330 --> 00:01:12.810 align:middle line:84% I walked the streets, my nose in the book. 00:01:12.810 --> 00:01:16.650 align:middle line:84% I sat in a dingy coffee shop with last summer's dead flies 00:01:16.650 --> 00:01:18.180 align:middle line:90% on the table. 00:01:18.180 --> 00:01:20.010 align:middle line:84% The owner was an ex-sailor who had 00:01:20.010 --> 00:01:22.290 align:middle line:84% grown a huge hump on his back watching 00:01:22.290 --> 00:01:24.660 align:middle line:90% the empty streets, the rain. 00:01:24.660 --> 00:01:26.670 align:middle line:84% He was glad to have me sit and read. 00:01:26.670 --> 00:01:31.520 align:middle line:84% He'd refill my cup with a liquid as dark as sticks. 00:01:31.520 --> 00:01:34.740 align:middle line:84% Shelley spoke of a mad, blind, dying King, 00:01:34.740 --> 00:01:38.340 align:middle line:84% rulers who neither see nor feel nor know, 00:01:38.340 --> 00:01:41.130 align:middle line:84% of graves from which the glorious phantom may 00:01:41.130 --> 00:01:45.240 align:middle line:84% burst to illuminate our tempestuous day. 00:01:45.240 --> 00:01:48.240 align:middle line:84% I, too, felt like a glorious phantom going 00:01:48.240 --> 00:01:53.100 align:middle line:84% to have my dinner in a Chinese restaurant I knew so well. 00:01:53.100 --> 00:01:54.540 align:middle line:84% It had a three-fingered waiter who 00:01:54.540 --> 00:01:56.400 align:middle line:84% would bring my soup and rice each night 00:01:56.400 --> 00:01:58.860 align:middle line:90% without uttering a word. 00:01:58.860 --> 00:02:00.960 align:middle line:90% I never saw anyone else. 00:02:00.960 --> 00:02:03.570 align:middle line:84% The kitchen was separated by a curtain of glass beads 00:02:03.570 --> 00:02:05.520 align:middle line:90% which clicked faintly. 00:02:05.520 --> 00:02:09.180 align:middle line:84% If the front door opened, the front door open-- 00:02:09.180 --> 00:02:11.700 align:middle line:84% the kitchen was separated by a curtain of glass beads 00:02:11.700 --> 00:02:14.970 align:middle line:84% which clicked faintly if the front door opened. 00:02:14.970 --> 00:02:16.890 align:middle line:84% The front door opened at the evening 00:02:16.890 --> 00:02:20.550 align:middle line:84% to admit the pale, little girl with glasses. 00:02:20.550 --> 00:02:23.910 align:middle line:84% The poet spoke of the everlasting universe of things, 00:02:23.910 --> 00:02:28.530 align:middle line:84% of gleams of a remoter world, which visit the soul in sleep, 00:02:28.530 --> 00:02:32.340 align:middle line:84% over desert peopled by storms alone. 00:02:32.340 --> 00:02:35.550 align:middle line:84% The streets were full of broken umbrellas, which 00:02:35.550 --> 00:02:39.480 align:middle line:84% looked like funereal kites that little Chinese girl might 00:02:39.480 --> 00:02:41.490 align:middle line:90% have made. 00:02:41.490 --> 00:02:44.340 align:middle line:84% The bars of MacDougal Street were emptying. 00:02:44.340 --> 00:02:46.230 align:middle line:90% There had been a fistfight. 00:02:46.230 --> 00:02:48.600 align:middle line:84% A man leaned against the lamppost 00:02:48.600 --> 00:02:53.550 align:middle line:84% as if crucified, the rain washing the blood off his face. 00:02:53.550 --> 00:02:55.620 align:middle line:84% In a dimly-lit side street, where the sidewalk 00:02:55.620 --> 00:02:59.280 align:middle line:84% was like a ballroom mirror at closing time, 00:02:59.280 --> 00:03:03.210 align:middle line:84% a well-dressed man without shoes asked me for money. 00:03:03.210 --> 00:03:04.230 align:middle line:90% His eyes shone. 00:03:04.230 --> 00:03:07.140 align:middle line:84% He looked triumphant like a fencing master who 00:03:07.140 --> 00:03:10.260 align:middle line:90% had just struck a mortal blow. 00:03:10.260 --> 00:03:14.430 align:middle line:84% How strange, though, was the world's raffle one dark October 00:03:14.430 --> 00:03:15.570 align:middle line:90% night. 00:03:15.570 --> 00:03:19.950 align:middle line:84% The yellowed volume of poetry with its splendors and glooms, 00:03:19.950 --> 00:03:23.880 align:middle line:84% which I examined by the light of storefronts, drug stores, 00:03:23.880 --> 00:03:25.620 align:middle line:90% and barbershops. 00:03:25.620 --> 00:03:28.890 align:middle line:84% Afraid of my small windowless room, 00:03:28.890 --> 00:03:31.455 align:middle line:84% cold as a tomb of an infant emperor. 00:03:31.455 --> 00:03:37.135 align:middle line:90% 00:03:37.135 --> 00:03:39.010 align:middle line:84% You can only write about Shelley and get away 00:03:39.010 --> 00:03:42.020 align:middle line:90% with that last line, though. 00:03:42.020 --> 00:03:43.880 align:middle line:90% What else do we know? 00:03:43.880 --> 00:03:45.520 align:middle line:90% It was just the thing that-- 00:03:45.520 --> 00:03:48.904 align:middle line:90% 00:03:48.904 --> 00:03:51.010 align:middle line:90% anyway, thank you. 00:03:51.010 --> 00:03:55.030 align:middle line:90% Let's see, where am I now? 00:03:55.030 --> 00:03:57.550 align:middle line:90% And what time is it? 00:03:57.550 --> 00:03:59.370 align:middle line:90% Let's see. 00:03:59.370 --> 00:04:05.000 align:middle line:90%