WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 align:middle line:90%


00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:09.540 align:middle line:84%
Due to technical difficulties,
the first 15 to 20 minutes

00:00:09.540 --> 00:00:12.300 align:middle line:84%
of Kenneth Koch's poetry
reading were not recorded.

00:00:12.300 --> 00:00:17.650 align:middle line:90%


00:00:17.650 --> 00:00:20.320 align:middle line:90%
...sweetly beguiling selflness.

00:00:20.320 --> 00:00:22.660 align:middle line:84%
Doris looked at
Andrews and knew now

00:00:22.660 --> 00:00:24.970 align:middle line:84%
she could love
someone completely.

00:00:24.970 --> 00:00:29.140 align:middle line:84%
April, then May came fluttering
through the branches of peach

00:00:29.140 --> 00:00:33.010 align:middle line:84%
and pear tree all around the
neatly landscaped young villa

00:00:33.010 --> 00:00:35.470 align:middle line:90%
two miles from the campers.

00:00:35.470 --> 00:00:38.860 align:middle line:84%
You, six months
pregnant, lost the baby.

00:00:38.860 --> 00:00:42.610 align:middle line:84%
It was the saddest thing
that ever happened to us.

00:00:42.610 --> 00:00:44.090 align:middle line:90%
You almost died.

00:00:44.090 --> 00:00:46.660 align:middle line:84%
They tried to give you
oxygen in the wrong way,

00:00:46.660 --> 00:00:49.210 align:middle line:84%
in the bare beamed
municipal hospital.

00:00:49.210 --> 00:00:50.830 align:middle line:90%
I helped save you.

00:00:50.830 --> 00:00:52.660 align:middle line:90%
They were lax again with blood.

00:00:52.660 --> 00:00:53.620 align:middle line:90%
Good God.

00:00:53.620 --> 00:00:57.070 align:middle line:84%
All life became peripheral,
a mess, a nightmare,

00:00:57.070 --> 00:00:59.140 align:middle line:90%
until you were back again.

00:00:59.140 --> 00:01:02.500 align:middle line:84%
My poem had not a trace
of these things medical.

00:01:02.500 --> 00:01:04.959 align:middle line:84%
But it was full of
dyings and revivings

00:01:04.959 --> 00:01:09.670 align:middle line:84%
and strange events that
went past plain connivings.

00:01:09.670 --> 00:01:12.130 align:middle line:84%
Such as the thrust
of Asia to the East,

00:01:12.130 --> 00:01:14.710 align:middle line:84%
and men turned
into statues, there

00:01:14.710 --> 00:01:18.850 align:middle line:84%
was also my whole past that
came fizzing up like yeast.

00:01:18.850 --> 00:01:21.850 align:middle line:84%
Joy in the fact that Ko
could throw a ball so,

00:01:21.850 --> 00:01:23.830 align:middle line:90%
and Pemmistrek a hog.

00:01:23.830 --> 00:01:25.480 align:middle line:90%
Good health increased.

00:01:25.480 --> 00:01:28.270 align:middle line:84%
I wrote some things
for Poetry Chicago.

00:01:28.270 --> 00:01:30.760 align:middle line:84%
Alouette went to
Asia, doing well,

00:01:30.760 --> 00:01:34.660 align:middle line:84%
with an enormous
new resort hotel.

00:01:34.660 --> 00:01:36.580 align:middle line:90%
Life in the work.

00:01:36.580 --> 00:01:39.160 align:middle line:84%
It is as if two orchestras
played separately,

00:01:39.160 --> 00:01:41.440 align:middle line:90%
and sometimes simultaneously.

00:01:41.440 --> 00:01:45.760 align:middle line:84%
One from the inside, deep
down, where García Lorca says

00:01:45.760 --> 00:01:49.720 align:middle line:84%
duende dwells, which
sometimes intravenously gets

00:01:49.720 --> 00:01:51.250 align:middle line:90%
fed by that outside.

00:01:51.250 --> 00:01:53.530 align:middle line:90%
Thus, metamorphosis.

00:01:53.530 --> 00:01:55.270 align:middle line:90%
Lamp into day.

00:01:55.270 --> 00:01:58.660 align:middle line:84%
Or else, a drumbeat
famously heart-like inside

00:01:58.660 --> 00:02:03.130 align:middle line:84%
turns snowflakes on the window
sills to sounds like cries,

00:02:03.130 --> 00:02:06.610 align:middle line:90%
and then abstracter syllables.

00:02:06.610 --> 00:02:08.740 align:middle line:90%
Should one be ignorant?

00:02:08.740 --> 00:02:12.310 align:middle line:84%
Did I have knowledge
instinctively I don't have now?

00:02:12.310 --> 00:02:15.940 align:middle line:84%
Is knowing the kind one gets
from every kind of college

00:02:15.940 --> 00:02:18.550 align:middle line:84%
the opposite of the
ecstatic showing of what

00:02:18.550 --> 00:02:22.000 align:middle line:84%
life is in the amazing
sandwich of heart?

00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:25.480 align:middle line:90%
Is wisdom sun, or is it snowing?

00:02:25.480 --> 00:02:28.900 align:middle line:84%
And how much of one's life
and where it's going gets

00:02:28.900 --> 00:02:29.770 align:middle line:90%
in the work?

00:02:29.770 --> 00:02:32.290 align:middle line:90%
How is it filtered, altered?

00:02:32.290 --> 00:02:35.110 align:middle line:84%
What paths through clouds
rise from the chocolate

00:02:35.110 --> 00:02:40.210 align:middle line:84%
malted one drinks on a
hot day and feels exalted?

00:02:40.210 --> 00:02:44.830 align:middle line:84%
Is that truth truth still,
now that all is older?

00:02:44.830 --> 00:02:48.880 align:middle line:84%
I, Tuscany, our language,
Katherine, tutto?

00:02:48.880 --> 00:02:51.850 align:middle line:84%
Truth now that I come to
experience colder than ever I

00:02:51.850 --> 00:02:55.900 align:middle line:84%
did then, less absoluto,
with more good sense,

00:02:55.900 --> 00:02:58.990 align:middle line:84%
with decades in my folder
of proofs that quite

00:02:58.990 --> 00:03:00.730 align:middle line:90%
a lot of things are futile.

00:03:00.730 --> 00:03:01.930 align:middle line:90%
What's left?

00:03:01.930 --> 00:03:03.550 align:middle line:90%
What lasts?

00:03:03.550 --> 00:03:06.700 align:middle line:84%
Does it make sense to
bring out old poems again?

00:03:06.700 --> 00:03:10.060 align:middle line:84%
Oh, bells that ring ding, ding
out there in the air and do not

00:03:10.060 --> 00:03:11.470 align:middle line:90%
have this problem.

00:03:11.470 --> 00:03:12.880 align:middle line:90%
Give me advice.

00:03:12.880 --> 00:03:17.770 align:middle line:84%
Or you, convulsive air, you
hill, you field, you tree,

00:03:17.770 --> 00:03:19.420 align:middle line:90%
great candelabrum.

00:03:19.420 --> 00:03:22.150 align:middle line:90%
New nature still exists.

00:03:22.150 --> 00:03:23.590 align:middle line:90%
But what is there?

00:03:23.590 --> 00:03:25.330 align:middle line:84%
There, I mean, in
the words I wrote

00:03:25.330 --> 00:03:27.640 align:middle line:84%
while Katherine was
sleeping, and her mother

00:03:27.640 --> 00:03:29.320 align:middle line:90%
stitched her bear?

00:03:29.320 --> 00:03:32.800 align:middle line:84%
Then some years later when
all strong sensations I had,

00:03:32.800 --> 00:03:36.190 align:middle line:90%
I hurled into The Duplications?

00:03:36.190 --> 00:03:38.200 align:middle line:90%
The Duplications!

00:03:38.200 --> 00:03:40.750 align:middle line:84%
Hardly is that word
out when a vast image

00:03:40.750 --> 00:03:45.010 align:middle line:84%
out of Spiritus Mundi reminds
me of what it was all about.

00:03:45.010 --> 00:03:48.400 align:middle line:84%
Life as a violent wild
event packed Sunday

00:03:48.400 --> 00:03:51.910 align:middle line:84%
that makes the people
scream, and makes them shout,

00:03:51.910 --> 00:03:55.240 align:middle line:84%
and ply the sky as if
in search of funding.

00:03:55.240 --> 00:03:59.860 align:middle line:84%
Venice and Samos, Stockholm
and Peru, London and Athens,

00:03:59.860 --> 00:04:02.710 align:middle line:90%
gardens in the blue.

00:04:02.710 --> 00:04:06.820 align:middle line:84%
There was no Florence anymore,
however, and no sweet feeling

00:04:06.820 --> 00:04:11.500 align:middle line:84%
of a quattrocento harmonious
mix of you, me, and the weather.

00:04:11.500 --> 00:04:14.890 align:middle line:90%
No Poliziano and Io mi rammento.

00:04:14.890 --> 00:04:17.560 align:middle line:84%
No tutte cose
coming all together.

00:04:17.560 --> 00:04:20.980 align:middle line:84%
And intimacy, spring
like as Sorrento.

00:04:20.980 --> 00:04:23.980 align:middle line:84%
The street was gray and
modern, and our marriage

00:04:23.980 --> 00:04:27.940 align:middle line:84%
was more than I could
mend with my then courage.

00:04:27.940 --> 00:04:30.820 align:middle line:84%
My writing now is
more investigation.

00:04:30.820 --> 00:04:33.310 align:middle line:84%
Or better yet, a
sort of archaeology,

00:04:33.310 --> 00:04:35.560 align:middle line:84%
set out to find the
great civilization that

00:04:35.560 --> 00:04:37.570 align:middle line:90%
once existed maybe.

00:04:37.570 --> 00:04:40.990 align:middle line:84%
An apology also for
what I couldn't do.

00:04:40.990 --> 00:04:45.370 align:middle line:84%
Sensation was what it rode
on, action, its theology.

00:04:45.370 --> 00:04:48.520 align:middle line:84%
A way of writing well
that may deceive us.

00:04:48.520 --> 00:04:53.800 align:middle line:84%
But I felt paradiso
redivivas, that Ko like bliss.

00:04:53.800 --> 00:04:55.630 align:middle line:90%
I had grown so attached to it.

00:04:55.630 --> 00:04:57.040 align:middle line:90%
Could use it writing.

00:04:57.040 --> 00:04:58.980 align:middle line:90%
It was even practical.

00:04:58.980 --> 00:05:02.080 align:middle line:84%
Made me think bliss could
be mine with no catch to it,

00:05:02.080 --> 00:05:05.920 align:middle line:84%
no fear, no fret, no
nothing but sabbatical.

00:05:05.920 --> 00:05:10.180 align:middle line:84%
As if it were mine,
not I its constituent.

00:05:10.180 --> 00:05:13.990 align:middle line:84%
Anxiety, any pain,
seemed unethical.

00:05:13.990 --> 00:05:15.430 align:middle line:90%
Not now, I felt, I thought.

00:05:15.430 --> 00:05:17.340 align:middle line:90%
Don't pain, don't tire me.

00:05:17.340 --> 00:05:22.290 align:middle line:84%
I'm in a state, and
that may dis-inspire me.

00:05:22.290 --> 00:05:24.990 align:middle line:84%
Now, 15 more years
later looking at them,

00:05:24.990 --> 00:05:28.500 align:middle line:84%
these poems of different
times and different systems,

00:05:28.500 --> 00:05:31.950 align:middle line:84%
of using life as if one
had a patent on its effect,

00:05:31.950 --> 00:05:36.060 align:middle line:84%
without regard to wisdom,
I feel sometimes delight,

00:05:36.060 --> 00:05:38.700 align:middle line:90%
and sometimes flattened.

00:05:38.700 --> 00:05:42.240 align:middle line:84%
What that is as I
am at 60 in them?

00:05:42.240 --> 00:05:45.570 align:middle line:84%
How can I ever hope to get in
sync with what they're about?

00:05:45.570 --> 00:05:48.090 align:middle line:90%
What do I have to think with?

00:05:48.090 --> 00:05:51.420 align:middle line:84%
What's here, if I'm not that
same sensual Kenneth of years

00:05:51.420 --> 00:05:54.630 align:middle line:84%
ago, nuts for
exhilaration, and always

00:05:54.630 --> 00:05:57.720 align:middle line:84%
willing to convene the
Senate of nudes and nights

00:05:57.720 --> 00:06:01.440 align:middle line:84%
and nerve ends of the nation,
for one great further push

00:06:01.440 --> 00:06:03.600 align:middle line:84%
through the impenetrable
Castello del

00:06:03.600 --> 00:06:08.010 align:middle line:84%
Realization, to its high hall,
where, on the gods' advice,

00:06:08.010 --> 00:06:11.880 align:middle line:84%
is painted the true
face of paradise.

00:06:11.880 --> 00:06:15.210 align:middle line:84%
What is, I want to
know, the truth,

00:06:15.210 --> 00:06:17.190 align:middle line:84%
if there is truth in
the view of things

00:06:17.190 --> 00:06:20.730 align:middle line:84%
I had, and what is the
source, if it's mistaken,

00:06:20.730 --> 00:06:22.800 align:middle line:90%
of its errors?

00:06:22.800 --> 00:06:25.020 align:middle line:84%
Do we come into life
with minds and bodies

00:06:25.020 --> 00:06:27.600 align:middle line:84%
ready to live in
some ecstatic Paris?

00:06:27.600 --> 00:06:30.660 align:middle line:84%
Or is the limit of
our lives more modest?

00:06:30.660 --> 00:06:31.960 align:middle line:90%
Is there a seed in us?

00:06:31.960 --> 00:06:32.820 align:middle line:90%
Are we the pod?

00:06:32.820 --> 00:06:36.540 align:middle line:84%
Is the blossom pleasure
and the fruit the goddess?

00:06:36.540 --> 00:06:39.450 align:middle line:84%
Did you too have this burning
in your bodice for what might

00:06:39.450 --> 00:06:41.940 align:middle line:90%
be a perfect lifetime, Janice?

00:06:41.940 --> 00:06:43.560 align:middle line:90%
I don't know.

00:06:43.560 --> 00:06:45.180 align:middle line:90%
Don't know any of this.

00:06:45.180 --> 00:06:49.320 align:middle line:84%
My decades, six now, with
the beginning of a seventh,

00:06:49.320 --> 00:06:52.500 align:middle line:84%
counsel me, sure, to
dance to slower records.

00:06:52.500 --> 00:06:56.010 align:middle line:84%
But I'm still trumped and
bumped by glimpsed up heavens,

00:06:56.010 --> 00:06:57.930 align:middle line:90%
and think they may be true.

00:06:57.930 --> 00:07:00.090 align:middle line:90%
But just for seconds.

00:07:00.090 --> 00:07:01.950 align:middle line:90%
Two words, one word.

00:07:01.950 --> 00:07:04.260 align:middle line:90%
It used to be a sentence.

00:07:04.260 --> 00:07:06.300 align:middle line:84%
Nothing has come of
this except my wonder

00:07:06.300 --> 00:07:10.020 align:middle line:84%
what it's about before
I'm shoveled under.

00:07:10.020 --> 00:07:12.990 align:middle line:84%
Is its being vaguer
harder to put trust

00:07:12.990 --> 00:07:15.930 align:middle line:84%
in at 60 odd proof
that it's false?

00:07:15.930 --> 00:07:20.100 align:middle line:84%
Or that I, its register,
am wearing down or rusting?

00:07:20.100 --> 00:07:23.880 align:middle line:84%
Is it not activist, my
question batty, to dote

00:07:23.880 --> 00:07:27.120 align:middle line:84%
upon this carnival combustion
amid so many things

00:07:27.120 --> 00:07:28.890 align:middle line:90%
that really matter?

00:07:28.890 --> 00:07:32.550 align:middle line:84%
And what about the threat to all
this fluxion and fragrant life,

00:07:32.550 --> 00:07:35.160 align:middle line:90%
the goddamn bomb's destruction.

00:07:35.160 --> 00:07:36.120 align:middle line:90%
They're right.

00:07:36.120 --> 00:07:37.080 align:middle line:90%
You're right.

00:07:37.080 --> 00:07:37.890 align:middle line:90%
I'm right.

00:07:37.890 --> 00:07:38.970 align:middle line:90%
I'm wrong.

00:07:38.970 --> 00:07:42.150 align:middle line:84%
I have no answer, except
the one that poets often

00:07:42.150 --> 00:07:46.350 align:middle line:84%
sport occupationally like
an Afro, that what we give

00:07:46.350 --> 00:07:50.490 align:middle line:84%
is what we have been given, and
hope we are of use that way,

00:07:50.490 --> 00:07:54.900 align:middle line:84%
as Svevo has helped me
live since I was 37.

00:07:54.900 --> 00:07:58.020 align:middle line:84%
I am concerned with
many things and active,

00:07:58.020 --> 00:08:02.100 align:middle line:84%
but this one makes me
radiantly reflective.

00:08:02.100 --> 00:08:04.950 align:middle line:84%
The question stays for
me, and in my reading

00:08:04.950 --> 00:08:09.780 align:middle line:84%
these poems again, and
stays outside such study.

00:08:09.780 --> 00:08:13.110 align:middle line:84%
If I'm a house, I feel
that house is leaning,

00:08:13.110 --> 00:08:15.840 align:middle line:90%
and soon may fall.

00:08:15.840 --> 00:08:18.510 align:middle line:84%
I want to ask somebody
what it's all been about,

00:08:18.510 --> 00:08:21.780 align:middle line:84%
but not believing I'll find
the answer my young years made

00:08:21.780 --> 00:08:24.330 align:middle line:90%
ready.

00:08:24.330 --> 00:08:26.640 align:middle line:84%
With things another
way, might one

00:08:26.640 --> 00:08:31.530 align:middle line:84%
come stumbling to the sweet sill
of truth, and get to something?

00:08:31.530 --> 00:08:32.880 align:middle line:90%
Is there a city?

00:08:32.880 --> 00:08:33.840 align:middle line:90%
Was there?

00:08:33.840 --> 00:08:39.299 align:middle line:84%
And a woman, to go through death
with, even, like Tutankhamun?

00:08:39.299 --> 00:08:40.200 align:middle line:90%
Oh, sun.

00:08:40.200 --> 00:08:42.960 align:middle line:90%
Exhilaration and regret.

00:08:42.960 --> 00:08:46.260 align:middle line:90%
Am I advance, or am I cataclysm?

00:08:46.260 --> 00:08:48.120 align:middle line:90%
Do I believe this anymore?

00:08:48.120 --> 00:08:52.150 align:middle line:84%
Has it gone down away,
or have I lost my vision?

00:08:52.150 --> 00:08:55.260 align:middle line:84%
It may be here, where
I'm still hit, hit,

00:08:55.260 --> 00:09:00.240 align:middle line:84%
hit by what seem its
surprises more than wisdom.

00:09:00.240 --> 00:09:02.100 align:middle line:90%
But what here is mine?

00:09:02.100 --> 00:09:05.580 align:middle line:84%
If I'm no more that wit to
whom the academic world was

00:09:05.580 --> 00:09:08.970 align:middle line:84%
poisoned, and every modern
critic full of shit,

00:09:08.970 --> 00:09:11.910 align:middle line:84%
and all their works as
spilled out shaving kit,

00:09:11.910 --> 00:09:15.090 align:middle line:84%
and wished most poets
would by dogs get bit,

00:09:15.090 --> 00:09:17.520 align:middle line:84%
and was content with
one good friend to sit,

00:09:17.520 --> 00:09:20.820 align:middle line:84%
or with another in the
fading glint of twilight,

00:09:20.820 --> 00:09:25.530 align:middle line:84%
happy as a catcher's mitt,
and full of futuration.

00:09:25.530 --> 00:09:30.780 align:middle line:84%
In such status, how could we,
I, dream of time's splintering

00:09:30.780 --> 00:09:35.430 align:middle line:84%
lattice, which would take
Frank away, and Janice later,

00:09:35.430 --> 00:09:38.160 align:middle line:84%
turned John into an
eminence, though now we

00:09:38.160 --> 00:09:39.570 align:middle line:90%
get along all right.

00:09:39.570 --> 00:09:42.060 align:middle line:90%
Our verbal seder reconstitutes.

00:09:42.060 --> 00:09:45.810 align:middle line:84%
But not those times,
oh cow, O Holy Hathor,

00:09:45.810 --> 00:09:49.080 align:middle line:84%
Egypt's cultivator, not
those delicious moments

00:09:49.080 --> 00:09:52.860 align:middle line:84%
on the brow of Tuscan hill,
when happy as gardenias

00:09:52.860 --> 00:09:57.390 align:middle line:84%
we gave our souls up to
the evening's genius.

00:09:57.390 --> 00:10:01.770 align:middle line:84%
It's 1986 or '87, depending
if you're reading this

00:10:01.770 --> 00:10:04.290 align:middle line:90%
in holograph or in the book.

00:10:04.290 --> 00:10:08.520 align:middle line:84%
The past that seems quite
often to be false or fantastic

00:10:08.520 --> 00:10:12.840 align:middle line:84%
like a hippogriff, or to be a
huge book we have been given,

00:10:12.840 --> 00:10:15.690 align:middle line:84%
of which we've hardly
time to read a paragraph,

00:10:15.690 --> 00:10:21.590 align:middle line:84%
is in these poems, I hope, some
way at random, story and past,

00:10:21.590 --> 00:10:24.410 align:middle line:90%
as if they were in tandem.

00:10:24.410 --> 00:10:28.340 align:middle line:84%
All in these stanzas that
remind to clumsiness, by needing

00:10:28.340 --> 00:10:30.710 align:middle line:84%
rhymes that interrupt
one's quietly attending

00:10:30.710 --> 00:10:33.890 align:middle line:84%
to one's intellectual
business, demanding,

00:10:33.890 --> 00:10:37.130 align:middle line:84%
make one feel one can
entirely say what one wants,

00:10:37.130 --> 00:10:41.120 align:middle line:84%
and profit from this funniness,
by mixing things that in states

00:10:41.120 --> 00:10:44.120 align:middle line:84%
of sobriety one would
not mix, and give

00:10:44.120 --> 00:10:47.600 align:middle line:84%
the proper airiness to
what is neither chance nor

00:10:47.600 --> 00:10:49.970 align:middle line:90%
arbitrariness.

00:10:49.970 --> 00:10:52.520 align:middle line:90%
Stanzas still here.

00:10:52.520 --> 00:10:55.490 align:middle line:84%
How strange, it
is, your present.

00:10:55.490 --> 00:10:58.160 align:middle line:84%
Stanzas I wrote
upon the via Susini

00:10:58.160 --> 00:11:02.810 align:middle line:84%
where Ottavino, saying I'm a
peasant, Io sono contadino,

00:11:02.810 --> 00:11:07.790 align:middle line:84%
pressed the greeny latch of the
gateway, smiling as he entered.

00:11:07.790 --> 00:11:12.350 align:middle line:84%
That was 15 years after
Mussolini, a long time past.

00:11:12.350 --> 00:11:15.560 align:middle line:84%
Now, as I read you over,
there's something new

00:11:15.560 --> 00:11:18.290 align:middle line:90%
I'm trying to discover.

00:11:18.290 --> 00:11:22.550 align:middle line:84%
Here it is May again, and
the wisteria smells sweet,

00:11:22.550 --> 00:11:25.640 align:middle line:84%
and there's still tape splat
on my window from last year's

00:11:25.640 --> 00:11:26.930 align:middle line:90%
storm.

00:11:26.930 --> 00:11:30.830 align:middle line:84%
I've planted a huge area
of wildflowers, perennials,

00:11:30.830 --> 00:11:34.010 align:middle line:84%
with no end to their
coming back it says.

00:11:34.010 --> 00:11:37.940 align:middle line:84%
What fond hysteria our
writing, our remembering!

00:11:37.940 --> 00:11:42.230 align:middle line:84%
Where to send to find out what's
the truth, when living tramples

00:11:42.230 --> 00:11:46.520 align:middle line:84%
down everything it
gives us as examples.

00:11:46.520 --> 00:11:49.940 align:middle line:84%
It's gone, but in the
head it stays and sizzles.

00:11:49.940 --> 00:11:52.910 align:middle line:84%
It's gone, but in the
heart it stays and sings.

00:11:52.910 --> 00:11:56.130 align:middle line:84%
It's gone sometimes, like
boomeranging missiles.

00:11:56.130 --> 00:11:59.570 align:middle line:84%
And it comes back and
makes and breaks up things.

00:11:59.570 --> 00:12:00.830 align:middle line:90%
It's past.

00:12:00.830 --> 00:12:02.240 align:middle line:90%
You cannot find it.

00:12:02.240 --> 00:12:04.670 align:middle line:84%
Yells and whistles
help not at all.

00:12:04.670 --> 00:12:07.820 align:middle line:84%
But when the spray first
springs, watch out.

00:12:07.820 --> 00:12:10.040 align:middle line:84%
You've got it in your
pectoral muscles.

00:12:10.040 --> 00:12:13.670 align:middle line:84%
And in those colors
first eye closing brings.

00:12:13.670 --> 00:12:18.050 align:middle line:84%
Is this the past, or life's
sure force in purity,

00:12:18.050 --> 00:12:22.490 align:middle line:84%
without the mask of
memory or futurity?

00:12:22.490 --> 00:12:24.830 align:middle line:84%
Some years ago, when I
went back to Florence,

00:12:24.830 --> 00:12:28.160 align:middle line:84%
up past the Ortopedico
to where we've been,

00:12:28.160 --> 00:12:30.620 align:middle line:84%
I found it cluttered
with deterrence.

00:12:30.620 --> 00:12:33.620 align:middle line:84%
New buildings, not
quite a suburban smear,

00:12:33.620 --> 00:12:37.310 align:middle line:84%
and filled with smiling
children and their parents.

00:12:37.310 --> 00:12:40.910 align:middle line:84%
Sad, I let all my
sadness disappear.

00:12:40.910 --> 00:12:43.070 align:middle line:84%
Going back over
where we'd walked,

00:12:43.070 --> 00:12:48.050 align:middle line:84%
then driving to a new town,
while thinking of arriving.

00:12:48.050 --> 00:12:52.280 align:middle line:84%
Oh, bed and base and breakfast
of these times, to work,

00:12:52.280 --> 00:12:55.670 align:middle line:84%
love, and good
actions the cadenzas.

00:12:55.670 --> 00:12:59.090 align:middle line:84%
Oh, possibility, sweet chance
that there is a wholeness

00:12:59.090 --> 00:13:02.780 align:middle line:84%
only hinted by the stanzas,
struggling into existence

00:13:02.780 --> 00:13:04.070 align:middle line:90%
like raspberries.

00:13:04.070 --> 00:13:07.670 align:middle line:84%
Or, in the Caribbean
mold, garbanzos.

00:13:07.670 --> 00:13:10.160 align:middle line:84%
Do you remember,
Janice, the sweet Jerez

00:13:10.160 --> 00:13:14.210 align:middle line:84%
we drank 10,000 years ago
in Spain, when we picnicked

00:13:14.210 --> 00:13:16.640 align:middle line:90%
far from Barcelona's pavement?

00:13:16.640 --> 00:13:20.000 align:middle line:84%
And you were pregnant, wearing
your pink raincoat, which

00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:23.480 align:middle line:84%
Spanish men found puzzling
or hilarious, your being so

00:13:23.480 --> 00:13:25.820 align:middle line:90%
big and garbed in such a color.

00:13:25.820 --> 00:13:29.870 align:middle line:84%
And we walked uphill
talking to each other.

00:13:29.870 --> 00:13:32.630 align:middle line:84%
I want to dedicate
to you these rhymes.

00:13:32.630 --> 00:13:33.980 align:middle line:90%
I know it now.

00:13:33.980 --> 00:13:36.710 align:middle line:84%
It's not made of
sensations, happiness,

00:13:36.710 --> 00:13:39.590 align:middle line:84%
though they are
among its treasures.

00:13:39.590 --> 00:13:44.150 align:middle line:84%
Can there be something greater
than all pleasures, and true?

00:13:44.150 --> 00:13:47.934 align:middle line:90%
Oh, was it ever yours and mine?

00:13:47.934 --> 00:13:51.406 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:13:51.406 --> 00:14:02.830 align:middle line:90%


00:14:02.830 --> 00:14:06.580 align:middle line:84%
Thank you for listening
to such a long poem.

00:14:06.580 --> 00:14:07.282 align:middle line:90%