WEBVTT

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Hi, thank you very much.

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It's really nice to be here.

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This morning in Minneapolis,
it was 20 below.

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Also, it's Groundhog Day.

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But the real reason
it's nice to be here

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is because there are some
good friends here and new friends

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and students, former students.

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So I'm really happy
to read for you.

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I like to read for about an
hour and take a five minute

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break in the middle.

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That's what I
usually like to do.

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I'll read you mostly
poems from this new book

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and also some poems from a
third book I'm working on.

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This first poem is
called "Wedding Dawn,"

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it's the first poem
of the new book,

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and I read it because
it kind of sets up

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some themes of the second book,
which is to do with darkness

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and naming the
darkness and fighting

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that, what Rilke calls
the possibility of love

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in a climate of death.

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And I found in this book I was
writing about the same things

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a great deal.

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And it was about making
some kind of journey

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through that to bring
something out of it.

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The obvious mentor in
that is, for example,

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Rilke and some of
his longer poems.

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It's the first poem,
which I wrote in 1970.

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And I'd promised a poem
for somebody's wedding

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and couldn't seem to write it.

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And got up the day of
the wedding and in a farm

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in Vermont, and I'd
just been in a car wreck

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and I just also got a dog and
to kind of counteract the death,

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he's like a life object.

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I've written about that.

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And as the physical
doubt began to lift,

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so something seemed
to lift inside.

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And a lot of my
poems, as you'll hear,

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take their cues from
the physical world.

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I don't have a thought in
my head till I see something

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and that starts
something going inside.

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So I wrote this the
morning of the wedding.

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It's called
"Epithalamion: Wedding

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Dawn for Nicholas and Elena."

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Happy the man who is
thirsty, and the moths,

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pilgrims to our screens.

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The fisher stands waist-deep
in the water waiting,

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happy the man waiting.

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Who is not alone, who does
not sleep in the dark house

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of himself without music.

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The world, a collapsed
fire, shows only its smoke,

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and the smoke hides its
hills, hides to the places

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where we are sleeping.

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The hand opened,
the hand closed.

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Fragments, the lovers lie.
And the question saying,

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who is broken?

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No one is broken,
but some of them

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are sleeping, like
animals, like the dead.

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Tree dreams of the man he
was, who walked by the shore,

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who followed the
hill upward, who

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dragged his roots
through the universe

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and lay down to supper there.

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And loving the Earth,
left it exhausted,

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returned to it renewed.

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But the house is dark, the
sky at such time has no light,

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even the lines in the hand are
a little desert without name,

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and silent.

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Friends, in the hours before
dawn the day of your wedding,

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what will I tell you then?

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That solitude's thorn
breaks into bloom now,

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I think it is so.

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I think that if we are
scarred, life heals us now.

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We can be heard making
our difficult music,

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and for this, the
sun drags itself up

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from the dark parts of
the world, again, again.

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The windows take on
the peculiar fire

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of the living, the dog
hoots like a wood pigeon,

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he has his morning.

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You must not be angry
with this planet,

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for we are in a company whose
music surpasses its pain.

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For I tell you, I sat
in the dark, also.

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And the wedding night
came onto my window,

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and the hills are
cleared for me,

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and the fields spread
out in front of me,

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remarkable like marble.

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And I thought, this is their
day, how it breaks for them.

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Oh, sir, the angel
flies, even with bruises.

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Oh, lady, a bird can
wash himself anywhere.

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The dawn that came up
the day of your wedding

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took me in its hand,
like the creature I am.

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And I heard the dark that I
came from whispering, be silent.

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And the dawn said, sing.

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And I found the best words
I could find around me

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and came to your wedding.

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