WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.737 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.737 --> 00:00:01.320 align:middle line:90% It's terrible. 00:00:01.320 --> 00:00:04.318 align:middle line:84% I've gone places occasionally to read where they're not 00:00:04.318 --> 00:00:05.610 align:middle line:90% used to having poetry readings. 00:00:05.610 --> 00:00:06.840 align:middle line:84% And they applaud after every poem. 00:00:06.840 --> 00:00:08.670 align:middle line:84% And of course, the applause lessens and lessens until, 00:00:08.670 --> 00:00:10.020 align:middle line:90% finally-- till it peters out. 00:00:10.020 --> 00:00:12.300 align:middle line:90% You feel worse for it. 00:00:12.300 --> 00:00:13.560 align:middle line:90% Everybody feels bad. 00:00:13.560 --> 00:00:19.650 align:middle line:90% 00:00:19.650 --> 00:00:24.180 align:middle line:84% As I said before, Steve and David and I had a falling out. 00:00:24.180 --> 00:00:26.730 align:middle line:84% I should say Steven and I had a falling out with David. 00:00:26.730 --> 00:00:29.580 align:middle line:84% And it was at a time when Steve's life was pretty much up 00:00:29.580 --> 00:00:31.700 align:middle line:90% for grabs, anyway. 00:00:31.700 --> 00:00:35.130 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:35.130 --> 00:00:36.600 align:middle line:90% 00:00:36.600 --> 00:00:40.470 align:middle line:84% And I very seldom write poems that are about specific events. 00:00:40.470 --> 00:00:42.250 align:middle line:90% "Rosebud" is one exception. 00:00:42.250 --> 00:00:43.962 align:middle line:84% And this poem is an exception because I 00:00:43.962 --> 00:00:45.420 align:middle line:84% think for the only time in my life, 00:00:45.420 --> 00:00:48.540 align:middle line:84% I felt a moral kind of commitment 00:00:48.540 --> 00:00:52.470 align:middle line:84% to write something about what had happened, 00:00:52.470 --> 00:00:55.530 align:middle line:84% at least peripherally, without talking about it very directly, 00:00:55.530 --> 00:00:57.135 align:middle line:90% and to support Steve. 00:00:57.135 --> 00:00:59.790 align:middle line:90% 00:00:59.790 --> 00:01:01.410 align:middle line:84% Poem begins after the falling out 00:01:01.410 --> 00:01:03.602 align:middle line:84% had happened when Steve and I, a couple of days 00:01:03.602 --> 00:01:05.519 align:middle line:84% later, were sitting in a darkened room talking 00:01:05.519 --> 00:01:07.290 align:middle line:90% to each other. 00:01:07.290 --> 00:01:10.590 align:middle line:90% "A Commitment for Steve Orlen"-- 00:01:10.590 --> 00:01:15.030 align:middle line:84% "After I watched your face behind its mask of talk deaden, 00:01:15.030 --> 00:01:18.240 align:middle line:84% then grow animate, alternating light and dark 00:01:18.240 --> 00:01:21.240 align:middle line:84% as you bowed and drew yourself erect under the lamp 00:01:21.240 --> 00:01:24.330 align:middle line:84% light of someone else's room in which we talked, 00:01:24.330 --> 00:01:26.520 align:middle line:90% I was restored. 00:01:26.520 --> 00:01:30.600 align:middle line:84% Though in the minor darkness of my heart, where I'm most alone, 00:01:30.600 --> 00:01:34.260 align:middle line:84% I wanted to take your masculine face between my hands 00:01:34.260 --> 00:01:38.490 align:middle line:84% and press for strength, the skull, for me, 00:01:38.490 --> 00:01:45.330 align:middle line:84% is death and strength, merely objective in a world of sense. 00:01:45.330 --> 00:01:48.480 align:middle line:84% Within a month, you lost your wife, and then your friend, 00:01:48.480 --> 00:01:50.490 align:middle line:90% but not to death. 00:01:50.490 --> 00:01:52.410 align:middle line:84% I knew their leaving had the appearance 00:01:52.410 --> 00:01:56.190 align:middle line:84% of a judgment on your life because the friend was also 00:01:56.190 --> 00:02:01.630 align:middle line:84% mine and gone, because I loved your wife in you or apart. 00:02:01.630 --> 00:02:03.720 align:middle line:84% And because you wouldn't turn aside, 00:02:03.720 --> 00:02:06.900 align:middle line:84% I tilted the lampshade down and drifted with you 00:02:06.900 --> 00:02:09.720 align:middle line:90% on the edge of dark. 00:02:09.720 --> 00:02:12.420 align:middle line:84% I remembered an evening with friends in a small boat 00:02:12.420 --> 00:02:13.690 align:middle line:90% on a lake. 00:02:13.690 --> 00:02:15.150 align:middle line:90% It was September. 00:02:15.150 --> 00:02:17.910 align:middle line:84% The late afternoon light and wine we drank 00:02:17.910 --> 00:02:20.340 align:middle line:90% warmed us to each other. 00:02:20.340 --> 00:02:23.340 align:middle line:84% Our quietness then passed from the shadows of trees 00:02:23.340 --> 00:02:25.260 align:middle line:90% close to the water. 00:02:25.260 --> 00:02:29.520 align:middle line:84% It seemed we had drifted out over a great emptiness, silent, 00:02:29.520 --> 00:02:32.820 align:middle line:90% held only by our composure. 00:02:32.820 --> 00:02:35.040 align:middle line:90% I think now of those friends. 00:02:35.040 --> 00:02:40.830 align:middle line:84% I let them go, really, only for the ease of letting go. 00:02:40.830 --> 00:02:43.260 align:middle line:84% Now when I visit and attend their lives, 00:02:43.260 --> 00:02:45.570 align:middle line:90% they are partly strange. 00:02:45.570 --> 00:02:49.950 align:middle line:84% I know my hesitation seemed to judge their house. 00:02:49.950 --> 00:02:52.920 align:middle line:84% I wanted to say, as I watched you steady yourself 00:02:52.920 --> 00:02:56.970 align:middle line:84% in the dark, I was restored by your bearing and openness 00:02:56.970 --> 00:03:01.800 align:middle line:84% to pain, a commitment to what you had already lost. 00:03:01.800 --> 00:03:03.450 align:middle line:90% Our talk was personal. 00:03:03.450 --> 00:03:06.310 align:middle line:90% I said it in another way. 00:03:06.310 --> 00:03:10.260 align:middle line:84% But if all our losses are a form of death, a mirror in which we 00:03:10.260 --> 00:03:13.140 align:middle line:84% see ourselves advance, I believe in 00:03:13.140 --> 00:03:16.890 align:middle line:84% its terrible, empty reflection, its progress 00:03:16.890 --> 00:03:20.570 align:middle line:84% from judgment toward compassion."