WEBVTT

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It's actually Washington, DC.

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And now, to go very
far away in time,

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so to speak, to one
of these crummy,

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bleak New England mill towns.

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This afternoon, I was sort
of thinking what to read,

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and it just struck
me that some of these

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poems that are so alien, so
foreign, so different because

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of just the landscape
out my door or my window.

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These are places that are--

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this is what's left of
the Industrial Revolution,

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places abandoned by
industry even 50 years ago

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and have never recovered.

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So this is one--

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this is a place like that,
which is close to where I live.

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And the poem is called
"Toward Nightfall."

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"The weight of tragic
events on everyone's

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back, just as tragedy in
the proper Greek sense

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was thought impossible
to compose in our day.

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There were scaffolds, makeshift
stages, puny figures on them,

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like small indistinct animals
caught in the headlights.

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Crossing the roadway ahead
in the gray twilight,

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they went on hesitating on the
verge of a huge stylized autumn

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night.

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One could have been in a
backhoe, an open truck,

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hunkering because of
the speed and chill.

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One could have been
walking with a sidelong

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glance at the many
troubling shapes

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the bare trees made, like
those about to shriek,

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but finding themselves
unable to utter a word now.

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One could have been in
one of these dying mill

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towns, inside a small dim
gross city when the news broke.

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One drew near the radio with
the one many months pregnant

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who serves there at that hour.

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Was there a smell of
spilled blood in the air

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or was it that other
much finer scent

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of fear, the fear of
approaching death one met

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in the empty street?

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Monsters and movie posters
too, prominently displayed.

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Then, six factory
girls, arm in arm,

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laughing as if
they'd been drinking.

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At the very least, one
could have been one of them.

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The one with a mouth
painted bright red,

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who feels out of
sorts for no reason,

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very pale and so
excusing herself,

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vanishes where it
says 'rooms for rent'

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and immediately goes
to bed fully dressed,

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only to lie with eyes open,
trembling despite the covers.

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It's just a bad show, she
keeps telling herself,

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not having seen the papers which
the landlord has the dog bring

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from the front porch.

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The old man never learned
to read well and so

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reads on in that half whisper
and in that half light verging

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on the dark about
that day's tragedies,

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which supposedly
are not tragedies

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in the absence of
figures endowed

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with classic nobility of soul."

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