WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.570 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.570 --> 00:00:02.970 align:middle line:90% Next poem is called "The Saint." 00:00:02.970 --> 00:00:07.330 align:middle line:84% And the saint in this case is Francis of Assisi. 00:00:07.330 --> 00:00:10.360 align:middle line:84% And I think I wrote the poem because I 00:00:10.360 --> 00:00:13.930 align:middle line:84% have some love for the figure of Francis of Assisi. 00:00:13.930 --> 00:00:17.050 align:middle line:84% And also in a sense, to desentimentalize what 00:00:17.050 --> 00:00:19.870 align:middle line:84% has been, in history, a very sentimental saint. 00:00:19.870 --> 00:00:22.810 align:middle line:90% 00:00:22.810 --> 00:00:26.960 align:middle line:84% I don't think there's anything else I have to say about it. 00:00:26.960 --> 00:00:29.630 align:middle line:90% "The Saint." 00:00:29.630 --> 00:00:33.650 align:middle line:84% In the heart of Umbria, Francis of Assisi was born. 00:00:33.650 --> 00:00:35.930 align:middle line:84% His father owned a horse to take the family 00:00:35.930 --> 00:00:37.610 align:middle line:90% through the countryside. 00:00:37.610 --> 00:00:40.400 align:middle line:84% And when the boy saw a field mouse borne away 00:00:40.400 --> 00:00:43.190 align:middle line:84% in a hawk's claws, he felt as hard 00:00:43.190 --> 00:00:46.220 align:middle line:84% as the war extended over the gloomy highway 00:00:46.220 --> 00:00:50.240 align:middle line:84% away from Florence to his grandmother's farm. 00:00:50.240 --> 00:00:53.120 align:middle line:84% That night, this from his diary, he 00:00:53.120 --> 00:00:55.880 align:middle line:84% watched the faces of his family in sleep, 00:00:55.880 --> 00:01:00.320 align:middle line:84% and for the moment believed he was the only one alive. 00:01:00.320 --> 00:01:04.310 align:middle line:84% He knelt and poured his body into his knees on the floor, 00:01:04.310 --> 00:01:07.580 align:middle line:84% dreaming he came on a red cottage, down a hill, 00:01:07.580 --> 00:01:08.690 align:middle line:90% toward a stream. 00:01:08.690 --> 00:01:12.830 align:middle line:84% And his eyes fixed on a murder taking place inside, 00:01:12.830 --> 00:01:16.940 align:middle line:84% the ritual of blood foaming out of a woman's side. 00:01:16.940 --> 00:01:22.720 align:middle line:84% From this he sought a rational power too severe to satisfy. 00:01:22.720 --> 00:01:27.070 align:middle line:84% So he grew and roamed with little love for priests 00:01:27.070 --> 00:01:30.160 align:middle line:84% and the tired women who followed everywhere he walked. 00:01:30.160 --> 00:01:33.010 align:middle line:84% He allowed their watchings of his ministration 00:01:33.010 --> 00:01:34.780 align:middle line:90% to the animals. 00:01:34.780 --> 00:01:37.300 align:middle line:84% He felt no nostalgia for the dead. 00:01:37.300 --> 00:01:42.220 align:middle line:84% We see his mouth often painted flower-like, equivocal. 00:01:42.220 --> 00:01:44.620 align:middle line:84% For like a mother of too many children, 00:01:44.620 --> 00:01:47.470 align:middle line:84% his strength was a kind of disenchantment. 00:01:47.470 --> 00:01:50.050 align:middle line:90% He had no faith. 00:01:50.050 --> 00:01:53.440 align:middle line:84% Complex with age, as if the severity of youth 00:01:53.440 --> 00:01:55.660 align:middle line:90% were preparation for a death. 00:01:55.660 --> 00:01:59.500 align:middle line:84% He carried a lock of his grandmother's hair on walks. 00:01:59.500 --> 00:02:02.500 align:middle line:84% Everywhere, he heard echoes of himself, 00:02:02.500 --> 00:02:05.170 align:middle line:84% beating of too many tired hearts. 00:02:05.170 --> 00:02:10.449 align:middle line:84% And all paths away from cities were fingers stripped of flesh. 00:02:10.449 --> 00:02:14.560 align:middle line:84% He tried to pass those fingers into the walls of his skull. 00:02:14.560 --> 00:02:17.530 align:middle line:84% But there was no escaping the huddled farmers who 00:02:17.530 --> 00:02:20.420 align:middle line:90% brought their sorry cows. 00:02:20.420 --> 00:02:23.020 align:middle line:84% Though it was said he never loved any woman, 00:02:23.020 --> 00:02:26.830 align:middle line:84% he offered the lock of hair as a token of his need. 00:02:26.830 --> 00:02:29.260 align:middle line:90% He always took it back. 00:02:29.260 --> 00:02:32.140 align:middle line:84% He told one disciple he carried that memory 00:02:32.140 --> 00:02:35.500 align:middle line:84% of his family in sleep, thinking them dead, 00:02:35.500 --> 00:02:38.410 align:middle line:84% that the gray hair sprouting from the widow's peak 00:02:38.410 --> 00:02:41.640 align:middle line:90% oppressed him by its passion. 00:02:41.640 --> 00:02:45.240 align:middle line:84% At his death, the whole country undulated. 00:02:45.240 --> 00:02:49.710 align:middle line:84% He was fate, a lack of emotion in the fingertips. 00:02:49.710 --> 00:02:54.060 align:middle line:84% He became the easiest of saints to sentimentalize. 00:02:54.060 --> 00:02:57.270 align:middle line:84% Perhaps he was the invention of the religious painters, 00:02:57.270 --> 00:03:00.960 align:middle line:84% a gourd into which some country wine was poured. 00:03:00.960 --> 00:03:05.430 align:middle line:84% We make from that wine some parables, not of ourselves, 00:03:05.430 --> 00:03:09.570 align:middle line:84% but of what we wish to commemorate, moral in us all. 00:03:09.570 --> 00:03:12.720 align:middle line:84% A kind of obligation or human invention 00:03:12.720 --> 00:03:15.770 align:middle line:90% best left misunderstood.