One other one, and then I want to play a little more
of The Necroambulites.
This is called In Sepia.
"Often you walked at night, house lights
made nets of their lawns, your shadow briefly over them.
Often you felt dishonored"--
I'm sorry.
I got to start again, missed a line.
In Sepia.
"Often you walked at night, house lights
made nets of their lawns, your shadow briefly over them.
You had been talking about death over and over.
Often you felt dishonest, though certainly some figure
moved in the dark yards, a parallel circumstance keeping
pace.
By 'death,' you meant a change of character.
He is a step ahead, interlocutor by
whose whisper the future parts like water, allowing entrance.
That was a way of facing it and circumventing it.
Death was the person into whom you stepped.
Life then was a series of static events,
as here the child in sepia climbs the front steps dressed
for winter.
Even the snow is brown.
And no, he will never enter that house
because each passage, as into a new life,
requires his forgetfulness.
Often you would explore these photographs, these memories
in sepia of another life.
Their use was tragic, evoking a circumstance,
the particular fragments of an always shattered past.
Death was processed then, a release of nostalgia
leaving you free to change.
Perhaps you were wrong, but walking at night,
each house got personal.
Each had a father.
He was reading a story so hopeless, so starless,
we all belonged."
[APPLAUSE]