WEBVTT

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And one last poem.

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I was going to take
exactly an hour.

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Tried to get out before an hour.

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I yak too much between poems.

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"Homage to Paul Cézanne,"
and it's an eight part poem.

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I don't know what
to say about it.

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It's an experiment
for me, because as I

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was talking to a couple
of the classes today.

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Cézanne, who is obviously
a great master, painting,

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great artist, at one
time said to someone--

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I can't remember who, I have the
quote elsewhere but not here--

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he said, you understand, I
advance my entire painting

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at the same time, which is to
say that it's accumulative.

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Everything comes at you at once.

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And the structure
of this poem, I'm

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trying to do a
non-linear progression.

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I'm trying to do an
accumulative progression.

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Notes.

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I say it's in eight sections.

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Each time I turn a page,
that will be a section.

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So you can count.

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[LAUGHTER]

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It has something of an abstract
subject matter, the dead,

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because I want to be able
to work in the language

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almost in a way that someone
might try to apply paint

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to a canvas, and
that's why it has

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the abstract subject matter.

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"Homage to Paul Cézanne."

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That night in the fish
light of the moon,

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the dead wear white shirts
to stay warm and litter

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the fields.

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We pick them up in the
mornings, dewy pieces of paper

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and scraps of cloth.

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Like us, they
refract themselves.

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Like us, they keep on
saying the same thing,

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trying to get it right.

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Like us, the water
unsettles their names.

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Sometimes they lie like
leaves in their little arcs

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and curl up at the edges.

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Sometimes they come
inside, wearing our shoes,

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and walk from mirror
to mirror, or lie

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on our beds with their gloves
off and touch our bodies,

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or talk in a corner, or wait
like envelopes on a desk.

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They reach up from
the ice plant.

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They shuttle their messengers
through the oat grass.

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Their answers rise
like rust on the stalks

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and the spidery leaves.

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We rub them off our hands.

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Each year, the dead grow
less dead and nudge close

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to the surface of all things.

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They start to remember the
silence that brought them

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there.

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They start to recount the
gain in their soiled hands.

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Their glasses let loose,
and grain by grain

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return to the riverbank.

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They point to their favorite
words growing around them,

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revealed as themselves
for the first time.

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They stand close to the
meanings and take them in.

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They stand there,
vague and without pain,

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under their fingernails
an unreturnable dirt.

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They stand there and it comes
back, the music of everything,

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syllable after syllable
out of the burning chair.

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Out of the beams of
light, it all comes back.

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And what they repeat
to themselves,

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and what they
repeat to themselves

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is the song that
our fathers sing.

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In steeps and sighs, the
ocean explains itself,

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backing and filling what
spaces it can't avoid,

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spaces in black shoes,
their hands clasped,

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their eyes teared at the edges.

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We watched from the high
hillside, the ocean swelling

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and flattening, the spaces
filling and emptying,

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horizon blade flashing
the early afternoon sun.

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The dead are constant in
the white lips of the sea.

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Over and over through clenched
teeth they tell their story,

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the story each knows by heart.

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Remember me, speak my name.

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When the moon tugs at my
sleeve, when the body of water

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is raised and becomes the
body of light, remember me.

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Speak my name.

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The dead are a cadmium blue.

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We spread them
with palette knives

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in broad blocks and planes.

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We layer them stroke
by stroke in steps

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and ascending mass, in
verticals raised from the Earth.

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We choose, and layer
them in, blue and a blue

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and a breath, circle and smudge,
cross-beak and button hook

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we layer them in.

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We squint hard and
terrace them line by line.

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And so we are come between,
and cry out, and stare up

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at the sky and its cloudy panes,
and finger the cypress twists.

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The dead understand all
of this and keep in touch.

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Rustle of hand, a hand in
the lemon trees, flags

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and the great sifts of anger
to powder and nothingness.

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The dead are a cadmium
blue, and they understand.

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The dead are with us to stay.

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Their shadows rock in the
backyard, so pure, so black

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between the oak
tree and the porch.

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Over our heads they're
huge in the night sky.

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In the tall grass they
turn with the zodiac.

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Under our feet they're
white with the snows

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of thousand years.

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They carry their colored
threads in baskets

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of silk to mend our clothes,
making us look right,

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altering, stitching, replacing
a button, closing a tear.

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They lie like tucks in our loose
sleeves, they hold us together,

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they blow the last leaves away,
they slide like an overflow

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into the river of heaven.

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Everywhere they are flying.

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The dead are a sleight
and a fade we fall for,

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like flowering plums, like
white coins from the rain.

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Their sighs are
gaps in the wind.

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The dead are waiting
for us in our rooms,

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little globules of light
in one of the far corners

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and close to the
ceiling, hovering,

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thinking our thoughts.

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Often they'll reach a
hand down or offer a word

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and ease us out of our bodies
to join them in theirs.

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We look back at our
other selves on the bed.

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We look back and we
don't care and we go,

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and thus we become
what we've longed

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for, past tense and otherwise,
a BB, a disk of light,

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song without words, and refer to
ourselves in the third person,

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seeing that other arm still
raised from the bed, fingers

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like licks and flames
in the boned air,

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only to hear that it's not time.

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Only to hear that we must
re-enter and lie still,

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our arms at rest at our sides,
the voices rising around us

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like mist and dew.

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It's all right, it's all
right, it's all right.

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The dead fall
around us like rain.

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They come down from
the last clouds

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in the late light for the last
time and slip through the sod.

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They lean uphill and face north.

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Like grass, they
bend toward the sea.

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They break toward
the setting sun.

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We filigree and we baste,
but what do the dead care

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for the fringe of words,
safe in their suits of milk?

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What do they care for the
honk and flash of a new style?

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And who is to say if the
inch of snow in our hearts

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is rectitude enough?

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Spring picks the
locks of the wind.

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High in the night sky,
the mirror is hauled up

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and unsheeted.

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In it we twist like stars.

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Ahead of us, through
the dark, the dead

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are beating their drums and
stirring the yellow leaves.

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We're out here, our
feet in the soil,

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our heads craned up
at the sky, the stars

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streaming and bursting
behind the trees.

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At dawn, as the
clouds gather, we

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watch the mountain glide
from the east on the valley

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floor, coming together
in starts and jumps.

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Behind their curtain, the
bears amble across the heavens,

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serene as black coffee.

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Whose unction can
intercede for the dead?

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Whose tongue is toothless
enough to speak their piece?

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What we are given in dreams we
write as blue paint, or messages

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to the clouds.

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At evening, we wait for the rain
to fall in the sky to clear.

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Our words are
words for the clay,

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uttered in undertones, our
gestures salve for the wind.

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We sit out on the Earth
and stretch our limbs,

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hoarding the little mounds of
soil laid up in our hearts.

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Thank you very much.

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[APPLAUSE]

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