WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.350 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.350 --> 00:00:04.530 align:middle line:84% --series we're happy to get going again, 00:00:04.530 --> 00:00:12.900 align:middle line:84% bring you some more words, the right words. 00:00:12.900 --> 00:00:15.240 align:middle line:84% I'd like to tell you about a few other events that 00:00:15.240 --> 00:00:18.870 align:middle line:84% are coming up fairly quickly that you may want to know about. 00:00:18.870 --> 00:00:21.810 align:middle line:84% February 3, Ray A. Young Bear is going 00:00:21.810 --> 00:00:24.450 align:middle line:84% to be reading here from a new book, which 00:00:24.450 --> 00:00:27.600 align:middle line:84% is a book-length poem called Black Eagle Child: The Facepaint 00:00:27.600 --> 00:00:29.190 align:middle line:90% Narratives. 00:00:29.190 --> 00:00:33.090 align:middle line:84% He's from the Meskwaki, or Red Earth, 00:00:33.090 --> 00:00:34.980 align:middle line:90% tribal settlement in Tama, Iowa. 00:00:34.980 --> 00:00:37.140 align:middle line:84% And it's really an extraordinary book, 00:00:37.140 --> 00:00:39.210 align:middle line:84% so I would really urge you to come. 00:00:39.210 --> 00:00:41.700 align:middle line:90% That's February 3, here. 00:00:41.700 --> 00:00:45.510 align:middle line:84% Also, right now at the Tucson Museum of Art downtown 00:00:45.510 --> 00:00:50.220 align:middle line:84% there's an exhibit of work by the Guerrilla Girls called 00:00:50.220 --> 00:00:53.070 align:middle line:90% Guerrilla Girls Talk Back. 00:00:53.070 --> 00:00:54.720 align:middle line:84% And in conjunction with that, there's 00:00:54.720 --> 00:00:57.420 align:middle line:84% going to be a feminist panel discussion talking 00:00:57.420 --> 00:01:00.240 align:middle line:84% about what it takes for women to survive 00:01:00.240 --> 00:01:03.150 align:middle line:84% in the arts that's called "Girls in the Jungle: 00:01:03.150 --> 00:01:04.500 align:middle line:90% a Survival Course." 00:01:04.500 --> 00:01:07.140 align:middle line:84% And that's going to be on Saturday, January 30, 00:01:07.140 --> 00:01:08.340 align:middle line:90% from 2:00 to 5:00. 00:01:08.340 --> 00:01:10.500 align:middle line:84% Yours truly will be moderator and one 00:01:10.500 --> 00:01:15.720 align:middle line:84% of four panelists, the others also women artists in Tucson. 00:01:15.720 --> 00:01:19.080 align:middle line:84% And so that, I think, will be a very interesting afternoon. 00:01:19.080 --> 00:01:22.410 align:middle line:84% And the final announcement is that the Poetry Center 00:01:22.410 --> 00:01:27.870 align:middle line:84% is currently taking entries for our annual poetry contest. 00:01:27.870 --> 00:01:30.840 align:middle line:84% This is a contest that's open to graduate students 00:01:30.840 --> 00:01:33.000 align:middle line:90% and undergraduate students. 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:35.550 align:middle line:84% There are money prizes, and all the winners 00:01:35.550 --> 00:01:40.650 align:middle line:84% are invited to read in the spring at a ceremony 00:01:40.650 --> 00:01:42.660 align:middle line:90% and celebratory reading. 00:01:42.660 --> 00:01:44.160 align:middle line:84% So if you're interested in that, you 00:01:44.160 --> 00:01:46.500 align:middle line:84% can pick up entries at the Poetry Center 00:01:46.500 --> 00:01:47.820 align:middle line:90% or in the English Department. 00:01:47.820 --> 00:01:52.250 align:middle line:90% 00:01:52.250 --> 00:01:54.170 align:middle line:84% I should tell you as well that we're 00:01:54.170 --> 00:01:57.530 align:middle line:84% happy that the ASUA bookstore is back again putting 00:01:57.530 --> 00:02:00.230 align:middle line:84% in extra hours to sell books this semester 00:02:00.230 --> 00:02:01.280 align:middle line:90% after the readings. 00:02:01.280 --> 00:02:06.200 align:middle line:84% And we have two books of W.S. Di Piero for sale, 00:02:06.200 --> 00:02:08.870 align:middle line:90% the two latest books of poetry-- 00:02:08.870 --> 00:02:12.350 align:middle line:84% The Dog Star and The Restorers-- so those you 00:02:12.350 --> 00:02:13.520 align:middle line:90% can get after the reading. 00:02:13.520 --> 00:02:18.740 align:middle line:90% 00:02:18.740 --> 00:02:22.730 align:middle line:84% I'm very happy to introduce tonight's reader. 00:02:22.730 --> 00:02:25.010 align:middle line:84% I've probably used this quote before because it's 00:02:25.010 --> 00:02:29.300 align:middle line:84% one of my favorites, but one of the things Donald Hall says 00:02:29.300 --> 00:02:32.060 align:middle line:84% about the history of writing is that the history of writing 00:02:32.060 --> 00:02:35.060 align:middle line:84% is also the history of friendships. 00:02:35.060 --> 00:02:39.410 align:middle line:84% And there are certain friendships 00:02:39.410 --> 00:02:41.930 align:middle line:84% that come to you through your life as a writer that 00:02:41.930 --> 00:02:44.480 align:middle line:84% mean a great deal, certain writers who come to you, 00:02:44.480 --> 00:02:47.570 align:middle line:84% who feed your work for one reason or another. 00:02:47.570 --> 00:02:51.590 align:middle line:84% And W.S. Di Piero has been that kind of a writer to me, 00:02:51.590 --> 00:02:57.110 align:middle line:84% so it's great for me to be able to bring him to you tonight. 00:02:57.110 --> 00:03:00.320 align:middle line:84% He grew up in South Philadelphia and has published 00:03:00.320 --> 00:03:04.880 align:middle line:84% five books of poetry, including The First Hour, The Only 00:03:04.880 --> 00:03:10.490 align:middle line:84% Dangerous Thing, Early Light, The Dog Star, and last year, 00:03:10.490 --> 00:03:15.200 align:middle line:84% The Restorers, published by the University of Chicago Press. 00:03:15.200 --> 00:03:18.170 align:middle line:84% And we hope that they will be bringing out a new book of poems 00:03:18.170 --> 00:03:19.520 align:middle line:90% soon. 00:03:19.520 --> 00:03:23.330 align:middle line:84% He's also published two quite stunning books 00:03:23.330 --> 00:03:28.190 align:middle line:84% of essays on art and on writing and on experience, 00:03:28.190 --> 00:03:31.370 align:middle line:84% and they are Memory and Enthusiasm, from Princeton 00:03:31.370 --> 00:03:35.390 align:middle line:84% University Press, and Out of Eden: Essays on Modern Art, 00:03:35.390 --> 00:03:37.880 align:middle line:84% from the University of California Press. 00:03:37.880 --> 00:03:41.930 align:middle line:84% And one of the newer works in the art writing 00:03:41.930 --> 00:03:43.790 align:middle line:84% that he's completed is the catalog essay 00:03:43.790 --> 00:03:47.480 align:middle line:84% on the retrospective that's coming up 00:03:47.480 --> 00:03:52.910 align:middle line:84% at the National Gallery on the photographer Robert Frank. 00:03:52.910 --> 00:03:55.550 align:middle line:84% In addition to that, he's been a prolific translator 00:03:55.550 --> 00:03:57.060 align:middle line:90% from the Italian. 00:03:57.060 --> 00:03:59.450 align:middle line:90% There are three books out-- 00:03:59.450 --> 00:04:04.040 align:middle line:84% Leopardi's Pensieri, This Strange Joy: 00:04:04.040 --> 00:04:08.000 align:middle line:84% Selected Poems of Sandro Pina, and The Ellipse: 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:10.760 align:middle line:84% Selected Poems of Leonardo Sinisgalli. 00:04:10.760 --> 00:04:13.730 align:middle line:90% 00:04:13.730 --> 00:04:17.209 align:middle line:84% At a time when and in a culture in which 00:04:17.209 --> 00:04:22.760 align:middle line:84% language is used most commonly for debased and/or ridiculous 00:04:22.760 --> 00:04:28.100 align:middle line:84% ends, Di Piero has the audacity to insist 00:04:28.100 --> 00:04:31.850 align:middle line:90% that words convey the truth. 00:04:31.850 --> 00:04:37.610 align:middle line:84% His work is stark, tough, lyrical, uncompromising, humble, 00:04:37.610 --> 00:04:39.410 align:middle line:90% and passionate. 00:04:39.410 --> 00:04:41.990 align:middle line:84% As poet Alan Dugan says, he writes 00:04:41.990 --> 00:04:45.320 align:middle line:84% about what is ludicrous in America and how it works, 00:04:45.320 --> 00:04:50.090 align:middle line:84% and what is horrible in America and how that works too. 00:04:50.090 --> 00:04:55.130 align:middle line:84% I'd add to that he also writes about what is sublime. 00:04:55.130 --> 00:04:57.860 align:middle line:84% I turn to his work often to be dazzled 00:04:57.860 --> 00:05:01.820 align:middle line:84% by the capacity for language to give thingness 00:05:01.820 --> 00:05:05.480 align:middle line:84% to the weird mysteries of the inner life. 00:05:05.480 --> 00:05:09.557 align:middle line:90% Please welcome W.S. Di Piero. 00:05:09.557 --> 00:05:13.050 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:05:13.050 --> 00:05:23.540 align:middle line:90% 00:05:23.540 --> 00:05:27.410 align:middle line:84% Thank you, Alison, for that very lovely introduction. 00:05:27.410 --> 00:05:30.710 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read mostly poems from my new book, The Restorers, 00:05:30.710 --> 00:05:38.450 align:middle line:84% and a little bit farther on read some newer poems. 00:05:38.450 --> 00:05:43.080 align:middle line:84% This is called "The Museum of Natural History," 00:05:43.080 --> 00:05:47.450 align:middle line:84% and it's a kind of evolutionary love poem 00:05:47.450 --> 00:05:52.410 align:middle line:84% and is set mostly inside a Museum of Natural History. 00:05:52.410 --> 00:06:01.020 align:middle line:84% And then there's a wipe, or a switch, to a lakeside close by-- 00:06:01.020 --> 00:06:05.420 align:middle line:90% at the museum, but out of doors. 00:06:05.420 --> 00:06:08.440 align:middle line:90% "The Museum of Natural History." 00:06:08.440 --> 00:06:11.620 align:middle line:84% "Dawn rises where the great hall ends. 00:06:11.620 --> 00:06:14.950 align:middle line:84% The water hole's twilight shocking pink 00:06:14.950 --> 00:06:19.410 align:middle line:84% erodes to backstage noises, shapes-- 00:06:19.410 --> 00:06:23.040 align:middle line:84% The antelope's indifferent head points its antlers 00:06:23.040 --> 00:06:27.190 align:middle line:84% toward a wasp nest's corrugated skull-heap. 00:06:27.190 --> 00:06:30.760 align:middle line:84% The sound track whines and mixes the varieties 00:06:30.760 --> 00:06:33.940 align:middle line:90% of mud's coppery morning song. 00:06:33.940 --> 00:06:35.680 align:middle line:90% And killing ground. 00:06:35.680 --> 00:06:38.590 align:middle line:84% The numbed roar of big cats in the distance 00:06:38.590 --> 00:06:41.950 align:middle line:84% cuts through the other hunger music. 00:06:41.950 --> 00:06:45.970 align:middle line:84% Above, a hooter ridicules creation-- 00:06:45.970 --> 00:06:50.260 align:middle line:84% the thirsty me-monkey, the person snickering 00:06:50.260 --> 00:06:54.310 align:middle line:84% nervous in the tree, waiting to shimmy down and drink 00:06:54.310 --> 00:06:59.340 align:middle line:84% from the clear pool, the source, the ditch. 00:06:59.340 --> 00:07:03.280 align:middle line:84% The diorama's temper fades toward dusk. 00:07:03.280 --> 00:07:07.060 align:middle line:84% We move, outrunning that shriveled time, 00:07:07.060 --> 00:07:11.380 align:middle line:84% into the room where we feel at once all sorts of blood 00:07:11.380 --> 00:07:16.690 align:middle line:84% laboring separate in our veins, from savanna's matinal light 00:07:16.690 --> 00:07:20.800 align:middle line:84% to stinking rock moss and pit slime. 00:07:20.800 --> 00:07:23.920 align:middle line:84% The crocodile's muddy blood pumped twice, 00:07:23.920 --> 00:07:27.580 align:middle line:84% a hundred years each time, whipped the dragon tail 00:07:27.580 --> 00:07:31.660 align:middle line:84% to kill some absent or remembered threat. 00:07:31.660 --> 00:07:36.890 align:middle line:84% Behind, the tortoise was another blear-veined rock. 00:07:36.890 --> 00:07:42.380 align:middle line:84% You turned, stooped, bent your nose against the glass, inches 00:07:42.380 --> 00:07:44.870 align:middle line:84% from the rattler's head slung midair 00:07:44.870 --> 00:07:47.120 align:middle line:90% from its squat black perch. 00:07:47.120 --> 00:07:51.230 align:middle line:84% I remembered later how you rapped hard, impatient, 00:07:51.230 --> 00:07:52.910 align:middle line:90% at the glass. 00:07:52.910 --> 00:07:57.970 align:middle line:84% To startle or wake the killer's attention? 00:07:57.970 --> 00:08:02.590 align:middle line:84% At lakeside, the blood-drop pricked from rock 00:08:02.590 --> 00:08:08.140 align:middle line:84% was a ladybug's carapace, flown in a blister of wingbeats 00:08:08.140 --> 00:08:11.020 align:middle line:84% when you drummed your stubby fingertips, 00:08:11.020 --> 00:08:13.915 align:middle line:84% when you drummed your thick red nails." 00:08:13.915 --> 00:08:18.320 align:middle line:90% 00:08:18.320 --> 00:08:24.440 align:middle line:84% I knew a young boy who confided in his parents 00:08:24.440 --> 00:08:29.210 align:middle line:84% that he didn't want to live any longer. 00:08:29.210 --> 00:08:32.720 align:middle line:84% And when they were finally able to get the reasons out of him, 00:08:32.720 --> 00:08:36.530 align:middle line:84% it was because he had been experiencing visitations 00:08:36.530 --> 00:08:42.080 align:middle line:84% of creatures from the world of faery, who at first were 00:08:42.080 --> 00:08:47.540 align:middle line:84% friendly, seductive, good companions to him, 00:08:47.540 --> 00:08:52.730 align:middle line:90% and then began to terrorize him. 00:08:52.730 --> 00:08:55.730 align:middle line:84% I was reading just the other day a remark 00:08:55.730 --> 00:09:00.320 align:middle line:84% that Yeats makes about the Irish folklore and faeries 00:09:00.320 --> 00:09:04.490 align:middle line:90% who were known to kill people. 00:09:04.490 --> 00:09:09.680 align:middle line:84% And Joey, the boy in question here, 00:09:09.680 --> 00:09:12.425 align:middle line:84% was really threatened, to the point of being suicidal. 00:09:12.425 --> 00:09:15.290 align:middle line:90% 00:09:15.290 --> 00:09:20.750 align:middle line:84% And I wrote this poem out of that. 00:09:20.750 --> 00:09:22.280 align:middle line:90% He's fine now. 00:09:22.280 --> 00:09:23.840 align:middle line:90% The kid is fine. 00:09:23.840 --> 00:09:26.300 align:middle line:84% This world dissolved, the faery world-- 00:09:26.300 --> 00:09:30.470 align:middle line:90% the faeries fled him. 00:09:30.470 --> 00:09:32.300 align:middle line:84% This is called "The Faery Child." 00:09:32.300 --> 00:09:36.140 align:middle line:84% "Saying his prayers, he hears them scrape their flesh up 00:09:36.140 --> 00:09:41.020 align:middle line:84% from under the bed, their voices solid, animal, 00:09:41.020 --> 00:09:45.940 align:middle line:84% like those his own chimes with all day, the human ones. 00:09:45.940 --> 00:09:49.360 align:middle line:84% Except for the differentness, like fluted air, 00:09:49.360 --> 00:09:54.760 align:middle line:84% wind through tall bending trees, or owl's cry too drawn out. 00:09:54.760 --> 00:09:57.170 align:middle line:90% Their bodies are their voices. 00:09:57.170 --> 00:10:01.820 align:middle line:84% They tell him how to live, that he will soon return with them, 00:10:01.820 --> 00:10:03.590 align:middle line:90% to be of them. 00:10:03.590 --> 00:10:06.080 align:middle line:84% Some days they rise behind the sofa. 00:10:06.080 --> 00:10:09.380 align:middle line:84% Giggling, snorting, they finger the piano 00:10:09.380 --> 00:10:12.290 align:middle line:90% and tap the TV buttons. 00:10:12.290 --> 00:10:17.150 align:middle line:84% You're not of these things, they say, you can't belong to this, 00:10:17.150 --> 00:10:22.190 align:middle line:84% you belong to the voices of our flesh, our life's yours, 00:10:22.190 --> 00:10:25.060 align:middle line:90% we can make you really glad. 00:10:25.060 --> 00:10:26.980 align:middle line:84% Once, swarming through the door screen 00:10:26.980 --> 00:10:31.150 align:middle line:84% from the patio, hurried in their always near breathing voices, 00:10:31.150 --> 00:10:33.850 align:middle line:84% they closed around him, holding hands, 00:10:33.850 --> 00:10:38.770 align:middle line:84% locking dark on darker air, and he knew he could die for them 00:10:38.770 --> 00:10:41.950 align:middle line:84% and live his heart away, at last, from their sounds that 00:10:41.950 --> 00:10:45.670 align:middle line:84% are so beautiful they rip him from his place, 00:10:45.670 --> 00:10:49.570 align:middle line:84% for they won't let the plain, vaporous, half-seen world 00:10:49.570 --> 00:10:54.460 align:middle line:84% exist for him, their presences like pollen dust on the keys, 00:10:54.460 --> 00:10:57.580 align:middle line:84% the screen-door latch, his books, his pens. 00:10:57.580 --> 00:11:00.530 align:middle line:84% First time he saw them, from the school window, 00:11:00.530 --> 00:11:03.610 align:middle line:84% they were gray-green scarves, tangled in a bush, 00:11:03.610 --> 00:11:09.470 align:middle line:84% that turned to children grown moment to moment into adults, 00:11:09.470 --> 00:11:11.750 align:middle line:84% and now their voices come like scarves 00:11:11.750 --> 00:11:17.030 align:middle line:84% to swaddle him, untouching, cottony, ravishing him away 00:11:17.030 --> 00:11:20.780 align:middle line:84% from engulfment in some middle, necessary world." 00:11:20.780 --> 00:11:23.990 align:middle line:90% 00:11:23.990 --> 00:11:27.020 align:middle line:84% There are a handful of poems in this book which 00:11:27.020 --> 00:11:28.970 align:middle line:90% are lives of the saints-- 00:11:28.970 --> 00:11:30.800 align:middle line:84% versions of lives of the saints-- 00:11:30.800 --> 00:11:33.190 align:middle line:84% and one of them I'd like to read. 00:11:33.190 --> 00:11:38.450 align:middle line:84% It's a poem in three parts titled 00:11:38.450 --> 00:11:43.250 align:middle line:84% "Saint Francis of Assisi," and it's set, 00:11:43.250 --> 00:11:45.290 align:middle line:84% more or less-- the first and the last section 00:11:45.290 --> 00:11:46.790 align:middle line:84% are set more or less in the present. 00:11:46.790 --> 00:11:49.470 align:middle line:84% The middle section is set in 1944. 00:11:49.470 --> 00:11:52.580 align:middle line:84% And my notion when I was writing it was I was feeling really 00:11:52.580 --> 00:12:00.260 align:middle line:84% persuaded at the time that it's possible to exercise 00:12:00.260 --> 00:12:08.360 align:middle line:84% what I thought of as an angelic intelligence in a poem, which 00:12:08.360 --> 00:12:10.520 align:middle line:84% was sort of all migrating and it could have 00:12:10.520 --> 00:12:13.670 align:middle line:90% different times all at once. 00:12:13.670 --> 00:12:16.370 align:middle line:84% And I was trying to write poems in which I could get all this 00:12:16.370 --> 00:12:20.840 align:middle line:90% "all-at-onceness" there. 00:12:20.840 --> 00:12:24.605 align:middle line:84% And Assisi, as you probably know, is a hill town. 00:12:24.605 --> 00:12:27.230 align:middle line:84% I happen to have been there at a time when there was a drought, 00:12:27.230 --> 00:12:30.050 align:middle line:84% and that figures in one part of the poem. 00:12:30.050 --> 00:12:32.060 align:middle line:84% Another part of the poem, the middle section, 00:12:32.060 --> 00:12:33.710 align:middle line:84% takes place in the winter and has 00:12:33.710 --> 00:12:38.570 align:middle line:84% to do with the wolves that come to the town behind the church. 00:12:38.570 --> 00:12:42.050 align:middle line:84% And there's mention in it of Alexander's army, 00:12:42.050 --> 00:12:47.540 align:middle line:84% and that mention comes out of Dante 00:12:47.540 --> 00:12:49.130 align:middle line:84% in one of the scenes in the Inferno 00:12:49.130 --> 00:12:52.430 align:middle line:84% when he describes the flakes of fire that rained down. 00:12:52.430 --> 00:12:55.190 align:middle line:84% And he describes the sinners stamping them out 00:12:55.190 --> 00:12:58.700 align:middle line:84% like Alexander's army was said to have done. 00:12:58.700 --> 00:13:05.060 align:middle line:90% 00:13:05.060 --> 00:13:08.780 align:middle line:84% So it's this-- each section has a little subheading. 00:13:08.780 --> 00:13:10.460 align:middle line:90% "Saint Francis of Assisi." 00:13:10.460 --> 00:13:11.750 align:middle line:90% "The View. 00:13:11.750 --> 00:13:15.320 align:middle line:84% The plain's hatching now after rainless months. 00:13:15.320 --> 00:13:20.840 align:middle line:84% A dust devil rips through a peach orchard down there, 00:13:20.840 --> 00:13:25.060 align:middle line:84% a seam snuffed by falling dust-fruit. 00:13:25.060 --> 00:13:27.790 align:middle line:84% Behind the vine rows' shriveled abundance 00:13:27.790 --> 00:13:33.820 align:middle line:84% a low fire runs ragged by the ditch, flaying the pale sod. 00:13:33.820 --> 00:13:37.130 align:middle line:90% The voided skins wave. 00:13:37.130 --> 00:13:43.820 align:middle line:84% September, thirsting, sings our Hosannah, shrieks red poverties 00:13:43.820 --> 00:13:45.410 align:middle line:90% to old heaven's eye. 00:13:45.410 --> 00:13:48.600 align:middle line:90% 00:13:48.600 --> 00:13:50.940 align:middle line:90% 1944." 00:13:50.940 --> 00:13:55.977 align:middle line:84% My sense is that this is sort of Francis's intelligence 00:13:55.977 --> 00:13:58.060 align:middle line:84% working here, speaking all this, feeling all this. 00:13:58.060 --> 00:13:59.050 align:middle line:90% "1944. 00:13:59.050 --> 00:14:00.250 align:middle line:90% You want February? 00:14:00.250 --> 00:14:04.360 align:middle line:84% Snow and sleet came down hard, heaven's post-Christmas gift 00:14:04.360 --> 00:14:06.670 align:middle line:90% to freeze our eyelids shut. 00:14:06.670 --> 00:14:10.270 align:middle line:84% Walking the icy ground, our shoes all shot with holes, 00:14:10.270 --> 00:14:13.240 align:middle line:84% we did the Alexander's Army Ragtime Dance, 00:14:13.240 --> 00:14:17.800 align:middle line:84% stomping snow off bones safely packed in newspapers. 00:14:17.800 --> 00:14:21.490 align:middle line:84% From down below, we must have looked crazy happy, 00:14:21.490 --> 00:14:26.050 align:middle line:84% dancing like Hollywood Indians, though who had anything to eat? 00:14:26.050 --> 00:14:29.060 align:middle line:90% We dreamed lard. 00:14:29.060 --> 00:14:33.980 align:middle line:84% So the wolves came, not straight into town, not into the piazza, 00:14:33.980 --> 00:14:36.740 align:middle line:84% but near the outcrop behind the church. 00:14:36.740 --> 00:14:40.070 align:middle line:84% God's design, the best, the way they 00:14:40.070 --> 00:14:45.050 align:middle line:84% study the tired world makes them next to human, or more. 00:14:45.050 --> 00:14:47.060 align:middle line:90% They're waiting while they move. 00:14:47.060 --> 00:14:49.370 align:middle line:90% I'd worship that expectancy. 00:14:49.370 --> 00:14:53.150 align:middle line:84% If I could talk to one, just a few minutes, 00:14:53.150 --> 00:14:56.270 align:middle line:90% he'd teach me hunger's secrets. 00:14:56.270 --> 00:14:59.210 align:middle line:84% So one awful night I wrapped my legs and feet, 00:14:59.210 --> 00:15:02.210 align:middle line:84% stuffed more papers inside my pants and shirt, 00:15:02.210 --> 00:15:06.530 align:middle line:84% than danced my way behind the church. 00:15:06.530 --> 00:15:09.820 align:middle line:90% Faint gray writing on the snow. 00:15:09.820 --> 00:15:16.800 align:middle line:84% Skin and bones, sneezes, frost feathers, drifting away. 00:15:16.800 --> 00:15:21.660 align:middle line:84% Two of them walked back, canny bigshot archbishop warrior 00:15:21.660 --> 00:15:23.220 align:middle line:90% types. 00:15:23.220 --> 00:15:26.700 align:middle line:84% They said-- The moon's blue, we know 00:15:26.700 --> 00:15:31.800 align:middle line:84% you want secrets, help, advice, news from this side. 00:15:31.800 --> 00:15:33.330 align:middle line:90% Our truth is-- 00:15:33.330 --> 00:15:37.860 align:middle line:84% Forget likenesses, live inside your carbon soul, 00:15:37.860 --> 00:15:39.810 align:middle line:90% the moon's black and blue. 00:15:39.810 --> 00:15:43.530 align:middle line:84% In the soul's time, the world's one winter together. 00:15:43.530 --> 00:15:46.770 align:middle line:90% 00:15:46.770 --> 00:15:48.870 align:middle line:90% Renunciation. 00:15:48.870 --> 00:15:51.600 align:middle line:84% The snowy poplar seeds are everywhere, 00:15:51.600 --> 00:15:56.460 align:middle line:84% balling against curbs and car wheels, sifting through gates, 00:15:56.460 --> 00:15:58.800 align:middle line:84% doorways, kitchen windows, snagged 00:15:58.800 --> 00:16:02.670 align:middle line:84% by white blossoms shaken loose from the nodding horse-chestnut 00:16:02.670 --> 00:16:04.170 align:middle line:90% leaves. 00:16:04.170 --> 00:16:06.330 align:middle line:90% We stand in their shadows-- 00:16:06.330 --> 00:16:08.700 align:middle line:90% our springtime's dark. 00:16:08.700 --> 00:16:14.250 align:middle line:84% The debris scrapes our cheeks, clings an instant to our lashes, 00:16:14.250 --> 00:16:20.040 align:middle line:84% chokes the soft breath before tumbling off the near precipice. 00:16:20.040 --> 00:16:23.280 align:middle line:90% We want divine uncertainty. 00:16:23.280 --> 00:16:26.970 align:middle line:84% O give us the Judas tree's blood shadows, 00:16:26.970 --> 00:16:30.720 align:middle line:84% make us sick with rank pear blossoms, 00:16:30.720 --> 00:16:36.000 align:middle line:84% blind us with earth's random pieces engorged with broom's 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:38.085 align:middle line:90% milky fallen-sun flesh." 00:16:38.085 --> 00:16:44.630 align:middle line:90% 00:16:44.630 --> 00:16:47.900 align:middle line:84% This is a poem about being in a strange place-- 00:16:47.900 --> 00:16:52.680 align:middle line:84% in a hotel, very late at night, returning to your room-- 00:16:52.680 --> 00:17:00.320 align:middle line:84% my room, and opening the door and realizing just a moment too 00:17:00.320 --> 00:17:01.670 align:middle line:90% late that it's the wrong door. 00:17:01.670 --> 00:17:04.609 align:middle line:90% It's the wrong room. 00:17:04.609 --> 00:17:08.990 align:middle line:84% And everything that happens in the poem-- when the door swings 00:17:08.990 --> 00:17:11.750 align:middle line:84% open, everything that I see in the poem 00:17:11.750 --> 00:17:13.760 align:middle line:90% takes place in the mirror. 00:17:13.760 --> 00:17:17.720 align:middle line:84% Myself, a woman seated on a chair, 00:17:17.720 --> 00:17:21.468 align:middle line:90% and a guy seated on the bed. 00:17:21.468 --> 00:17:23.510 align:middle line:84% There's an epigraph to the poem, and the epigraph 00:17:23.510 --> 00:17:26.150 align:middle line:90% is from Madame Bovary. 00:17:26.150 --> 00:17:28.040 align:middle line:90% "The Hotel Room Mirror." 00:17:28.040 --> 00:17:32.680 align:middle line:84% "But who was it, then, that made her so unhappy?" 00:17:32.680 --> 00:17:35.020 align:middle line:84% "A half-room, foreshortened even more 00:17:35.020 --> 00:17:38.710 align:middle line:84% in the huge speckled armoire glass, 00:17:38.710 --> 00:17:42.580 align:middle line:84% the distance chopped, uncrossable, between your image 00:17:42.580 --> 00:17:46.300 align:middle line:84% and where I stood twiddling the doorknob before I knew 00:17:46.300 --> 00:17:51.370 align:middle line:84% my own key didn't fit, late night, your interior 00:17:51.370 --> 00:17:56.530 align:middle line:84% so underlit that bluer shadows oozed your forms. 00:17:56.530 --> 00:18:00.190 align:middle line:84% Already still too late, the door breezed open 00:18:00.190 --> 00:18:02.320 align:middle line:84% where your back and thighs twisted 00:18:02.320 --> 00:18:09.260 align:middle line:84% in the green winged chair, your body's light coiled, at rest. 00:18:09.260 --> 00:18:13.730 align:middle line:84% Dressed, angled deeper in the surface, your man pleaded, 00:18:13.730 --> 00:18:17.900 align:middle line:84% hands wide, as he flexed sharp from the bed's protesting edge, 00:18:17.900 --> 00:18:21.500 align:middle line:84% the sheets pinwheeled beneath his weight. 00:18:21.500 --> 00:18:23.810 align:middle line:90% Your glance and his-- 00:18:23.810 --> 00:18:26.690 align:middle line:84% haphazard, stark and unconcerned-- 00:18:26.690 --> 00:18:30.840 align:middle line:84% found mine in the frame, waiting, 00:18:30.840 --> 00:18:33.540 align:middle line:84% though I stayed invisible to myself, 00:18:33.540 --> 00:18:39.880 align:middle line:84% my stare like your bold forms inhabiting our depth of field, 00:18:39.880 --> 00:18:42.730 align:middle line:84% in the scuffed glass transcribed. 00:18:42.730 --> 00:18:47.575 align:middle line:84% It was already still too late to save you or be saved." 00:18:47.575 --> 00:18:52.310 align:middle line:90% 00:18:52.310 --> 00:18:56.750 align:middle line:84% Some of the poems in this book have to do with-- 00:18:56.750 --> 00:18:59.700 align:middle line:84% not with politics per se, not with topical matters. 00:18:59.700 --> 00:19:01.820 align:middle line:90% I don't write-- 00:19:01.820 --> 00:19:04.513 align:middle line:84% I hardly ever write topically in that way. 00:19:04.513 --> 00:19:05.930 align:middle line:84% But there are some poems that have 00:19:05.930 --> 00:19:10.670 align:middle line:84% to do with power and authority, murderous authority, 00:19:10.670 --> 00:19:11.750 align:middle line:90% and this is one of them. 00:19:11.750 --> 00:19:15.780 align:middle line:90% 00:19:15.780 --> 00:19:19.440 align:middle line:84% I lived in Italy for a while, and at one point 00:19:19.440 --> 00:19:21.300 align:middle line:90% I visited Calabria. 00:19:21.300 --> 00:19:25.110 align:middle line:84% And the woman who was sort of showing me around, 00:19:25.110 --> 00:19:27.110 align:middle line:84% late one night we went out to get a bite to eat. 00:19:27.110 --> 00:19:28.902 align:middle line:84% And we went to this little restaurant which 00:19:28.902 --> 00:19:30.210 align:middle line:90% was built right on the beach-- 00:19:30.210 --> 00:19:32.910 align:middle line:84% the terrace of this restaurant was right on the beach-- 00:19:32.910 --> 00:19:37.618 align:middle line:84% and there was early-evening activities going on 00:19:37.618 --> 00:19:38.160 align:middle line:90% on the beach. 00:19:38.160 --> 00:19:40.800 align:middle line:84% Men, boys, and women crying for both of them 00:19:40.800 --> 00:19:44.092 align:middle line:84% to come home and eat, and all this. 00:19:44.092 --> 00:19:46.290 align:middle line:84% And the woman who ran the restaurant, when we first 00:19:46.290 --> 00:19:48.030 align:middle line:84% got there, we started talking to her. 00:19:48.030 --> 00:19:52.500 align:middle line:84% And we're talking in Italian, and my friend 00:19:52.500 --> 00:19:55.470 align:middle line:84% mentions to the woman who owns the restaurant that I'm 00:19:55.470 --> 00:19:57.140 align:middle line:90% an American. 00:19:57.140 --> 00:19:59.840 align:middle line:84% And the woman immediately stopped speaking Italian, 00:19:59.840 --> 00:20:03.880 align:middle line:84% and she said, so why are we speaking Italian, then? 00:20:03.880 --> 00:20:06.610 align:middle line:84% She had moved-- she had fallen in love 00:20:06.610 --> 00:20:10.540 align:middle line:84% with an Italian, who brought her from Ireland back to Italy. 00:20:10.540 --> 00:20:14.470 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] And then she told me her story. 00:20:14.470 --> 00:20:17.740 align:middle line:84% She told me this story, and a whole bunch 00:20:17.740 --> 00:20:20.530 align:middle line:84% of things that were happening at the time and things 00:20:20.530 --> 00:20:23.710 align:middle line:84% from her story sort of found its way 00:20:23.710 --> 00:20:27.460 align:middle line:84% into this poem, which also ends on a bit of lore 00:20:27.460 --> 00:20:29.680 align:middle line:90% about the swordfish. 00:20:29.680 --> 00:20:32.980 align:middle line:90% 00:20:32.980 --> 00:20:35.440 align:middle line:84% So the title of this is "In Calabria," 00:20:35.440 --> 00:20:42.030 align:middle line:84% and my voice sort of crosses and slants across her voice 00:20:42.030 --> 00:20:43.320 align:middle line:90% throughout the poem. 00:20:43.320 --> 00:20:47.470 align:middle line:90% 00:20:47.470 --> 00:20:51.800 align:middle line:84% "The fishbone husband, aslant behind her paddling hands, 00:20:51.800 --> 00:20:55.470 align:middle line:84% checked our plates then nosed back toward the kitchen. 00:20:55.470 --> 00:20:57.950 align:middle line:90% She stood watching with us-- 00:20:57.950 --> 00:21:01.340 align:middle line:84% just beyond the terrace rail barechested men 00:21:01.340 --> 00:21:05.270 align:middle line:84% hooted their sons from the cabin boat listing 00:21:05.270 --> 00:21:08.420 align:middle line:84% on chocks that gouged a crooked trench down 00:21:08.420 --> 00:21:12.550 align:middle line:90% to this small, noiseless surf. 00:21:12.550 --> 00:21:14.590 align:middle line:90% Still Greeks, she said. 00:21:14.590 --> 00:21:17.770 align:middle line:84% Sea salt in their blood, gills and seaweed 00:21:17.770 --> 00:21:19.930 align:middle line:90% for brains sometimes. 00:21:19.930 --> 00:21:21.980 align:middle line:90% Boys love it. 00:21:21.980 --> 00:21:24.800 align:middle line:84% We tried once to open a place back home. 00:21:24.800 --> 00:21:26.390 align:middle line:90% Wrong home. 00:21:26.390 --> 00:21:29.060 align:middle line:84% Landlocked, half-dunce for the weird language, 00:21:29.060 --> 00:21:31.970 align:middle line:90% my husband had to bring us back. 00:21:31.970 --> 00:21:36.170 align:middle line:84% Reverend Paisley used to stop and take a bowl of soup. 00:21:36.170 --> 00:21:43.000 align:middle line:84% A bad man then, a bad man now, visiting his mum. 00:21:43.000 --> 00:21:45.190 align:middle line:84% The plump hands wagged her words the way 00:21:45.190 --> 00:21:49.390 align:middle line:84% she shooed the boat, and boys, from our terrace, 00:21:49.390 --> 00:21:50.710 align:middle line:90% down toward the sea. 00:21:50.710 --> 00:21:52.120 align:middle line:90% Now that's all past. 00:21:52.120 --> 00:21:54.360 align:middle line:90% Now is now. 00:21:54.360 --> 00:21:57.480 align:middle line:84% The men peg down the boat, loop ropes on their shoulders, 00:21:57.480 --> 00:22:00.240 align:middle line:84% and walk away, shouting at the skinny boys 00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:03.840 align:middle line:84% to get back, be good, come on home. 00:22:03.840 --> 00:22:07.890 align:middle line:84% You get such a lousy share once the broker takes his cut-- 00:22:07.890 --> 00:22:11.400 align:middle line:84% a young family, two houses down, brought swordfish 00:22:11.400 --> 00:22:13.700 align:middle line:90% straight to market. 00:22:13.700 --> 00:22:17.090 align:middle line:84% The bonfire, the black-smoke gasoline stench 00:22:17.090 --> 00:22:21.680 align:middle line:84% their boats made, was like Ulster, like cars. 00:22:21.680 --> 00:22:24.770 align:middle line:84% Scorch marks chip the water while she speaks. 00:22:24.770 --> 00:22:28.330 align:middle line:90% The sea-bound dark thins out. 00:22:28.330 --> 00:22:31.240 align:middle line:84% A few Formica tables, 10 customers, 00:22:31.240 --> 00:22:33.160 align:middle line:90% her husband checking plates. 00:22:33.160 --> 00:22:35.050 align:middle line:90% Her arms sweep the terrace-- 00:22:35.050 --> 00:22:36.970 align:middle line:90% So after Ireland we took this. 00:22:36.970 --> 00:22:39.650 align:middle line:90% It's still too small. 00:22:39.650 --> 00:22:43.780 align:middle line:84% But when we're ready to expand, the landlord, a nice man, 00:22:43.780 --> 00:22:47.170 align:middle line:90% tells us someone won't be happy. 00:22:47.170 --> 00:22:50.440 align:middle line:84% The world belongs to always someone else. 00:22:50.440 --> 00:22:53.320 align:middle line:90% The full moon breaks the sea. 00:22:53.320 --> 00:22:55.750 align:middle line:84% Above invisible boats, farther out, 00:22:55.750 --> 00:22:59.140 align:middle line:84% fuzzed lanterns dangle, while the reaper 00:22:59.140 --> 00:23:02.960 align:middle line:90% rows a wide quiet circle. 00:23:02.960 --> 00:23:06.500 align:middle line:84% On nights like this, she says, the anchovies 00:23:06.500 --> 00:23:10.370 align:middle line:90% swim toward light if it's quiet. 00:23:10.370 --> 00:23:15.320 align:middle line:84% It's their turn, because the great one, the swordfish, 00:23:15.320 --> 00:23:20.370 align:middle line:84% can't be caught, so they say, because the moon's not right." 00:23:20.370 --> 00:23:25.840 align:middle line:90% 00:23:25.840 --> 00:23:28.270 align:middle line:84% Alison mentioned that I was born and raised, 00:23:28.270 --> 00:23:33.392 align:middle line:84% and lived until I was 21, in South Philadelphia, 00:23:33.392 --> 00:23:35.260 align:middle line:84% and though I've never been back to live, 00:23:35.260 --> 00:23:38.620 align:middle line:90% I visit at least once a year. 00:23:38.620 --> 00:23:43.230 align:middle line:90% 00:23:43.230 --> 00:23:46.380 align:middle line:90% And this is a poem-- 00:23:46.380 --> 00:23:47.460 align:middle line:90% it's called "Starlings." 00:23:47.460 --> 00:23:49.560 align:middle line:84% And it's about the most common bird, 00:23:49.560 --> 00:23:51.930 align:middle line:84% which also happens to be, like most of the human life 00:23:51.930 --> 00:23:57.950 align:middle line:84% in South Philadelphia, immigrant populations. 00:23:57.950 --> 00:24:03.590 align:middle line:84% And it takes place outside a bakery, early morning. 00:24:03.590 --> 00:24:04.910 align:middle line:90% "Starlings." 00:24:04.910 --> 00:24:10.880 align:middle line:84% "Snarls, bread trucks, yeast breathing inside huddled bags, 00:24:10.880 --> 00:24:15.260 align:middle line:84% and sleepers completing lives behind their gray windows. 00:24:15.260 --> 00:24:17.660 align:middle line:84% A whistle on the phonewires, feathers, 00:24:17.660 --> 00:24:21.440 align:middle line:84% twitches, whistling down to the hot loaves. 00:24:21.440 --> 00:24:28.490 align:middle line:84% Reeds everywhere, pulse, flesh, flutes, and wakened sighs. 00:24:28.490 --> 00:24:30.260 align:middle line:90% An answer. 00:24:30.260 --> 00:24:34.700 align:middle line:84% Radio news and breathers behind our windows, 00:24:34.700 --> 00:24:40.310 align:middle line:84% birds' new voices changing, changed, to the unforgiving 00:24:40.310 --> 00:24:42.530 align:middle line:90% hunger screech of immigrants." 00:24:42.530 --> 00:24:49.190 align:middle line:90% 00:24:49.190 --> 00:24:56.660 align:middle line:84% And this is a little biblical poem, a New Testament poem, 00:24:56.660 --> 00:24:59.720 align:middle line:84% coming out of the mind of a disciple at Gethsemane, 00:24:59.720 --> 00:25:03.297 align:middle line:90% and what Judas was doing. 00:25:03.297 --> 00:25:04.880 align:middle line:84% What he was doing, what he was saying, 00:25:04.880 --> 00:25:08.870 align:middle line:84% and the kind of incoherence that betrayal 00:25:08.870 --> 00:25:13.460 align:middle line:84% is-- the kind of incoherence that betrayal is. 00:25:13.460 --> 00:25:15.860 align:middle line:84% When I wrote this I realized I was really 00:25:15.860 --> 00:25:18.650 align:middle line:84% writing a poem about language-- something 00:25:18.650 --> 00:25:21.050 align:middle line:84% having to do with language and belief. 00:25:21.050 --> 00:25:23.360 align:middle line:90% So this is "Gethsemane." 00:25:23.360 --> 00:25:29.270 align:middle line:84% "He had nerve enough to follow, dogging his heels, for what? 00:25:29.270 --> 00:25:32.660 align:middle line:84% To learn a new vocabulary, a prayer, 00:25:32.660 --> 00:25:36.080 align:middle line:84% down there in yellow iris that smelled like carcass? 00:25:36.080 --> 00:25:37.970 align:middle line:90% He came back smiling. 00:25:37.970 --> 00:25:41.490 align:middle line:84% The dog had its day, rolling in meat. 00:25:41.490 --> 00:25:43.310 align:middle line:90% The meat was news-- 00:25:43.310 --> 00:25:49.470 align:middle line:84% The Word of God wants what we want, to be unchosen. 00:25:49.470 --> 00:25:52.210 align:middle line:84% He must have made up his mind then. 00:25:52.210 --> 00:25:56.640 align:middle line:84% What if he said, I don't see Him here, we'll check later? 00:25:56.640 --> 00:26:01.380 align:middle line:84% Instead he gagged on words, like a mouthful of water brought 00:26:01.380 --> 00:26:04.440 align:middle line:84% from the garden, that blood squirms from the blossom 00:26:04.440 --> 00:26:08.490 align:middle line:84% loads and cracked boughs, and in the stagnant lake of the heart 00:26:08.490 --> 00:26:11.520 align:middle line:84% the sprouting trunk splits, groans, 00:26:11.520 --> 00:26:15.960 align:middle line:84% spilling wine, the spongy dirt inhaling any blood that falls, 00:26:15.960 --> 00:26:18.750 align:middle line:84% and I'm falling into the tree and dogs 00:26:18.750 --> 00:26:21.150 align:middle line:90% at lakeside bark at clouds. 00:26:21.150 --> 00:26:22.870 align:middle line:90% Like that. 00:26:22.870 --> 00:26:25.920 align:middle line:84% As if his own speech could infuriate time 00:26:25.920 --> 00:26:30.210 align:middle line:84% while he waited for an act to come upon him-- 00:26:30.210 --> 00:26:32.190 align:middle line:90% as joy sometimes happens. 00:26:32.190 --> 00:26:35.790 align:middle line:84% The soldiers-- were they his joy?-- 00:26:35.790 --> 00:26:37.410 align:middle line:90% got impatient. 00:26:37.410 --> 00:26:41.430 align:middle line:84% So finally his bloodless lips screamed More life! 00:26:41.430 --> 00:26:43.140 align:middle line:90% More salt! 00:26:43.140 --> 00:26:44.985 align:middle line:90% before he gave away his kiss." 00:26:44.985 --> 00:26:57.610 align:middle line:90% 00:26:57.610 --> 00:27:03.250 align:middle line:84% I'd like to read a few newer poems, 00:27:03.250 --> 00:27:08.440 align:middle line:84% and maybe go back to something from this book at the end. 00:27:08.440 --> 00:27:11.350 align:middle line:84% But my heart is really in these new poems, as things go. 00:27:11.350 --> 00:27:14.068 align:middle line:90% As they always go. 00:27:14.068 --> 00:27:15.985 align:middle line:84% And I've been writing poems which are almost-- 00:27:15.985 --> 00:27:20.940 align:middle line:90% 00:27:20.940 --> 00:27:23.730 align:middle line:84% are so clearly separated between poems 00:27:23.730 --> 00:27:25.710 align:middle line:84% having to do with the Pacific, which 00:27:25.710 --> 00:27:27.570 align:middle line:84% is where I've lived for 10 years, 00:27:27.570 --> 00:27:30.600 align:middle line:84% and poems having to do with the Atlantic, and sort 00:27:30.600 --> 00:27:34.620 align:middle line:84% of Northeasterly, Atlantic things, 00:27:34.620 --> 00:27:37.603 align:middle line:84% that I decided I would read one from one side 00:27:37.603 --> 00:27:39.270 align:middle line:84% and then read another from another side, 00:27:39.270 --> 00:27:40.890 align:middle line:90% and see how they go. 00:27:40.890 --> 00:27:42.930 align:middle line:84% This is a poem that comes out of my past. 00:27:42.930 --> 00:27:45.060 align:middle line:84% And it has to do with a person in my family-- 00:27:45.060 --> 00:27:48.510 align:middle line:84% who wasn't really a member of my family, 00:27:48.510 --> 00:27:56.496 align:middle line:84% but we all felt her to be such-- who had telekinetic powers, 00:27:56.496 --> 00:27:58.880 align:middle line:90% and what that became to me. 00:27:58.880 --> 00:28:00.845 align:middle line:84% The title of the poem is "Moving Things." 00:28:00.845 --> 00:28:03.440 align:middle line:90% 00:28:03.440 --> 00:28:07.460 align:middle line:84% "My aunts mentioned her just once, calling her my aunt, 00:28:07.460 --> 00:28:10.040 align:middle line:90% their sister, though she wasn't. 00:28:10.040 --> 00:28:12.470 align:middle line:84% They mentioned the vinyl recliner 00:28:12.470 --> 00:28:18.080 align:middle line:84% in the kitchen, the 'I Like Ike' poster, the Sacred Heart, 00:28:18.080 --> 00:28:22.560 align:middle line:84% cabbage smells, sulfur, and shame. 00:28:22.560 --> 00:28:27.510 align:middle line:84% Before jolted by the gift that called through but never really 00:28:27.510 --> 00:28:32.010 align:middle line:84% for her, she became unpleasantly calm. 00:28:32.010 --> 00:28:35.220 align:middle line:84% Moments later, after she said 'I don't want this 00:28:35.220 --> 00:28:40.960 align:middle line:84% please,' God's love raced down the pulse into her look. 00:28:40.960 --> 00:28:44.140 align:middle line:84% The neuron deity jangled things-- 00:28:44.140 --> 00:28:49.720 align:middle line:84% a table leg scraped the floor, a fork wobbled in a drawer, 00:28:49.720 --> 00:28:51.430 align:middle line:90% knickknacks fell. 00:28:51.430 --> 00:28:54.130 align:middle line:84% She nearly died each time it happened. 00:28:54.130 --> 00:28:58.090 align:middle line:84% They said her mind just wasn't there, 00:28:58.090 --> 00:29:02.240 align:middle line:90% or she wasn't in it anymore. 00:29:02.240 --> 00:29:06.590 align:middle line:84% She sat helpless afterward, papery when they lifted her 00:29:06.590 --> 00:29:09.990 align:middle line:90% from the vision seat to bed. 00:29:09.990 --> 00:29:13.770 align:middle line:84% The might to move what her eye fell upon 00:29:13.770 --> 00:29:19.340 align:middle line:84% is the image of her I keep, that fading, iridescent readiness." 00:29:19.340 --> 00:29:26.160 align:middle line:90% 00:29:26.160 --> 00:29:34.000 align:middle line:84% My wife meditates and meditates on objects. 00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:40.000 align:middle line:84% And we rented a house for a while in the-- 00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:42.820 align:middle line:84% I've lived in communities around Stanford University, where 00:29:42.820 --> 00:29:43.620 align:middle line:90% I teach. 00:29:43.620 --> 00:29:45.370 align:middle line:84% And we lived for a while in this one house 00:29:45.370 --> 00:29:48.460 align:middle line:84% that had this fabulous lilac bush. 00:29:48.460 --> 00:29:50.170 align:middle line:90% A real lilac bush. 00:29:50.170 --> 00:29:54.760 align:middle line:84% California, you can't-- it's very difficult to grow lilac 00:29:54.760 --> 00:29:56.230 align:middle line:90% in California. 00:29:56.230 --> 00:30:00.550 align:middle line:84% They have a fake lilac that they call California Lilac, 00:30:00.550 --> 00:30:01.480 align:middle line:90% and it's not lilac. 00:30:01.480 --> 00:30:04.300 align:middle line:90% 00:30:04.300 --> 00:30:09.280 align:middle line:90% But we had this real lilac bush. 00:30:09.280 --> 00:30:12.460 align:middle line:84% Whitman's lilac bush, I thought of this. 00:30:12.460 --> 00:30:13.480 align:middle line:90% And we loved this thing. 00:30:13.480 --> 00:30:16.600 align:middle line:90% 00:30:16.600 --> 00:30:18.880 align:middle line:84% And then we left the house, and the lilac bush 00:30:18.880 --> 00:30:20.980 align:middle line:84% was taken out by people who came in after us 00:30:20.980 --> 00:30:22.960 align:middle line:84% for reasons that are mentioned in the poem. 00:30:22.960 --> 00:30:29.170 align:middle line:84% And once a year I do go east, and once I 00:30:29.170 --> 00:30:34.270 align:middle line:84% brought a lilac-scented candle back. 00:30:34.270 --> 00:30:37.150 align:middle line:90% 00:30:37.150 --> 00:30:39.250 align:middle line:90% And so the voice-- 00:30:39.250 --> 00:30:40.990 align:middle line:84% though I'm telling all of this, there 00:30:40.990 --> 00:30:42.340 align:middle line:90% is quoted matter in the poem. 00:30:42.340 --> 00:30:45.140 align:middle line:84% The quoted matter is her speaking, 00:30:45.140 --> 00:30:48.590 align:middle line:90% the woman speaking in the poem. 00:30:48.590 --> 00:30:52.800 align:middle line:84% And the war in the Persian Gulf two years ago 00:30:52.800 --> 00:30:54.860 align:middle line:90% figures in this too. 00:30:54.860 --> 00:30:56.660 align:middle line:90% "The Prayer Mat." 00:30:56.660 --> 00:31:00.020 align:middle line:84% "'Bring me and California, you wrote, lilacs, 00:31:00.020 --> 00:31:01.850 align:middle line:90% or something lilacky. 00:31:01.850 --> 00:31:02.780 align:middle line:90% I miss you. 00:31:02.780 --> 00:31:04.550 align:middle line:90% My meditation feels off. 00:31:04.550 --> 00:31:06.380 align:middle line:84% And the people who rented after us 00:31:06.380 --> 00:31:08.210 align:middle line:90% tore out those gorgeous lilacs-- 00:31:08.210 --> 00:31:10.610 align:middle line:90% they felt so Atlantic-- 00:31:10.610 --> 00:31:14.190 align:middle line:90% to make parking space. 00:31:14.190 --> 00:31:18.450 align:middle line:84% Your candle's light burns early with a mockingbird's hysterics 00:31:18.450 --> 00:31:20.700 align:middle line:90% in the walnut tree. 00:31:20.700 --> 00:31:22.920 align:middle line:90% Also, smart bombs in a bunker. 00:31:22.920 --> 00:31:25.440 align:middle line:90% Small war, small war. 00:31:25.440 --> 00:31:29.150 align:middle line:84% Weepy green pulse smashed on impact. 00:31:29.150 --> 00:31:33.470 align:middle line:84% Kneeling before the candle, you pray as you do-- 00:31:33.470 --> 00:31:34.820 align:middle line:90% as thought. 00:31:34.820 --> 00:31:36.650 align:middle line:90% No request. 00:31:36.650 --> 00:31:39.770 align:middle line:84% State of creation and your mind coursing in I 00:31:39.770 --> 00:31:44.750 align:middle line:84% don't know what star gas torrent, praying for balance. 00:31:44.750 --> 00:31:47.630 align:middle line:90% Buddha who rages, who smiles. 00:31:47.630 --> 00:31:51.710 align:middle line:84% Conquest compassion, then evening news. 00:31:51.710 --> 00:31:54.200 align:middle line:84% Presidents love their dune coon wars. 00:31:54.200 --> 00:31:57.110 align:middle line:84% Why do they hate life in the name of life? 00:31:57.110 --> 00:32:00.350 align:middle line:84% What a program-- to make more death, for God's sake. 00:32:00.350 --> 00:32:03.330 align:middle line:90% And with Christmas lights. 00:32:03.330 --> 00:32:08.400 align:middle line:84% Asleep, grinding your teeth, you twist and chop the air. 00:32:08.400 --> 00:32:10.620 align:middle line:84% This morning I walked past your room. 00:32:10.620 --> 00:32:15.030 align:middle line:84% Your little shrine's lilac smell came again. 00:32:15.030 --> 00:32:20.100 align:middle line:84% What's sacrifice in your uncertain circle of devotions? 00:32:20.100 --> 00:32:25.290 align:middle line:84% So many mornings you balance there, behind the door, 00:32:25.290 --> 00:32:26.280 align:middle line:90% out of my sight." 00:32:26.280 --> 00:32:32.180 align:middle line:90% 00:32:32.180 --> 00:32:38.030 align:middle line:84% And this is a poem which is a real Philadelphia poem. 00:32:38.030 --> 00:32:40.460 align:middle line:84% They have the-- it used to be that the tallest 00:32:40.460 --> 00:32:43.400 align:middle line:84% structure in Philadelphia was City Hall, at the top of which 00:32:43.400 --> 00:32:44.715 align:middle line:90% was a statue of William Penn. 00:32:44.715 --> 00:32:47.090 align:middle line:84% And for many years it was a kind of gentleman's agreement 00:32:47.090 --> 00:32:50.210 align:middle line:84% in Philadelphia that no new building 00:32:50.210 --> 00:32:55.810 align:middle line:84% would be built taller than the top of William Penn's hat. 00:32:55.810 --> 00:32:58.180 align:middle line:84% I visited Philadelphia at a time when 00:32:58.180 --> 00:33:02.680 align:middle line:84% they were doing a refinishing work on the statue, 00:33:02.680 --> 00:33:07.150 align:middle line:84% so that the statue of William Penn up to here had scaffolding, 00:33:07.150 --> 00:33:09.760 align:middle line:84% and the rest of him was being sandblasted and cleaned off. 00:33:09.760 --> 00:33:11.140 align:middle line:84% And they had constructed by now-- 00:33:11.140 --> 00:33:12.723 align:middle line:84% if you go to Philadelphia in downtown, 00:33:12.723 --> 00:33:15.010 align:middle line:84% they have these buildings, a couple or three of them, 00:33:15.010 --> 00:33:19.600 align:middle line:84% which are taller than William Penn. 00:33:19.600 --> 00:33:24.370 align:middle line:84% And all this takes place underground, 00:33:24.370 --> 00:33:27.700 align:middle line:84% in the concourses-- the subway concourses. 00:33:27.700 --> 00:33:31.390 align:middle line:84% The title of the poem is "The Sleepers." 00:33:31.390 --> 00:33:33.640 align:middle line:84% And this is another of these poems-- 00:33:33.640 --> 00:33:36.880 align:middle line:84% I realize it's a lot of talk, other sort of debris 00:33:36.880 --> 00:33:41.350 align:middle line:84% of conversation that just gets picked up by consciousness. 00:33:41.350 --> 00:33:43.960 align:middle line:84% So this one is called "The Sleepers." 00:33:43.960 --> 00:33:46.780 align:middle line:84% "Morning light peaking on City Hall slants 00:33:46.780 --> 00:33:50.440 align:middle line:84% juicy wedges down the stairwells but can't seep this 00:33:50.440 --> 00:33:52.630 align:middle line:90% far underground. 00:33:52.630 --> 00:33:56.470 align:middle line:84% A man grabs air in his fists, panting. 00:33:56.470 --> 00:33:59.980 align:middle line:84% Vapors feather from his lips. 'Well fuck me, 00:33:59.980 --> 00:34:02.280 align:middle line:90% so then love is what?' 00:34:02.280 --> 00:34:06.870 align:middle line:84% Sniffing, weeping almost, from urine fumes, he and his friend, 00:34:06.870 --> 00:34:12.429 align:middle line:84% suits and ties, Hall attorneys maybe, turning to leave. 00:34:12.429 --> 00:34:14.889 align:middle line:84% The concourse squirms with sleepers 00:34:14.889 --> 00:34:18.820 align:middle line:84% twisted in cardboard cribs like children brought home late, 00:34:18.820 --> 00:34:21.130 align:middle line:90% pulling covers tighter. 00:34:21.130 --> 00:34:22.120 align:middle line:90% 'For her? 00:34:22.120 --> 00:34:25.300 align:middle line:84% She says, love, Jamie, what's love? 00:34:25.300 --> 00:34:28.370 align:middle line:84% I say I don't know what either of us is doing.' 00:34:28.370 --> 00:34:31.130 align:middle line:84% Subway cars scraping behind the tiled walls 00:34:31.130 --> 00:34:34.880 align:middle line:84% don't wake the breathing heaps of clothes. 00:34:34.880 --> 00:34:39.590 align:middle line:84% William Penn's chalky, sandblasted hat and face moon 00:34:39.590 --> 00:34:43.580 align:middle line:84% above the scaffold racks that hobble his legs. 00:34:43.580 --> 00:34:48.380 align:middle line:84% Two blocks away, a corporate center's chrome-trimmed seagreen 00:34:48.380 --> 00:34:53.659 align:middle line:84% glass rises higher than the pilgrim's crown. 00:34:53.659 --> 00:34:56.989 align:middle line:84% A woman rubs her gray head against the tiles-- 00:34:56.989 --> 00:35:02.090 align:middle line:84% the spot gleams when she totters away, called back to our life 00:35:02.090 --> 00:35:05.630 align:middle line:84% by a boombox thumping the corridor. 00:35:05.630 --> 00:35:09.860 align:middle line:84% Trashy, blood-clotted water oozing from the walls, 00:35:09.860 --> 00:35:12.710 align:middle line:84% streams across the floors and the sleepers 00:35:12.710 --> 00:35:16.330 align:middle line:90% are drowning without a cry. 00:35:16.330 --> 00:35:18.490 align:middle line:84% When I prowled here 20 years ago, 00:35:18.490 --> 00:35:21.970 align:middle line:84% I thought love's better part came from books, 00:35:21.970 --> 00:35:25.660 align:middle line:84% a word was desire's sulfur arc from breath 00:35:25.660 --> 00:35:31.090 align:middle line:84% to instinct's needy sound, an is or see that might take me out 00:35:31.090 --> 00:35:32.470 align:middle line:90% of this life. 00:35:32.470 --> 00:35:35.680 align:middle line:84% A dreamy, ignorant, woozy literalist, 00:35:35.680 --> 00:35:38.320 align:middle line:90% I wanted scenic hardware. 00:35:38.320 --> 00:35:42.880 align:middle line:84% Born here, I'd make my dripping underground love's pattern 00:35:42.880 --> 00:35:46.020 align:middle line:90% for a nice false heaven. 00:35:46.020 --> 00:35:49.170 align:middle line:84% Smoke films the greasy middle air. 00:35:49.170 --> 00:35:51.810 align:middle line:84% The harder I listen, the more Jamie's words 00:35:51.810 --> 00:35:55.590 align:middle line:84% bleed into echoing hoots, turnstile cranks, footsteps, 00:35:55.590 --> 00:35:56.370 align:middle line:90% whistles-- 00:35:56.370 --> 00:36:01.650 align:middle line:84% Wet larval streaks scribble then and now across the floors. 00:36:01.650 --> 00:36:05.370 align:middle line:84% Penn's statue, watertight, gleams 00:36:05.370 --> 00:36:11.220 align:middle line:84% above, custodial, second-tier in the skyline. 00:36:11.220 --> 00:36:14.430 align:middle line:84% Two bodies curl tight over steaming grates-- 00:36:14.430 --> 00:36:18.240 align:middle line:84% one foot withdrawn shyly under wraps-- 00:36:18.240 --> 00:36:21.960 align:middle line:84% while heels rap past their solemn heads. 00:36:21.960 --> 00:36:24.870 align:middle line:84% We step around the storm-drain seeps, 00:36:24.870 --> 00:36:28.770 align:middle line:84% the city weeping in our tunnels, leaving us alone." 00:36:28.770 --> 00:36:36.760 align:middle line:90% 00:36:36.760 --> 00:36:40.810 align:middle line:84% I went out to visit that mission, San Xavier, yesterday, 00:36:40.810 --> 00:36:44.650 align:middle line:84% and thought that I would, I don't know, 00:36:44.650 --> 00:36:50.500 align:middle line:84% try to give back that experience by reading this thing, which 00:36:50.500 --> 00:36:55.495 align:middle line:84% is about a mission in California called San Antonio de Padua. 00:36:55.495 --> 00:36:57.370 align:middle line:84% The really interesting missions in California 00:36:57.370 --> 00:37:00.250 align:middle line:84% are the more remote and more decrepit 00:37:00.250 --> 00:37:03.580 align:middle line:84% missions that don't live their lives for others, 00:37:03.580 --> 00:37:07.300 align:middle line:84% for the money, the money populations that tour. 00:37:07.300 --> 00:37:09.010 align:middle line:84% And San Antonio de Padua is one of them. 00:37:09.010 --> 00:37:12.580 align:middle line:84% It's a most strange place because a US 00:37:12.580 --> 00:37:15.520 align:middle line:84% military reservation has been built-- 00:37:15.520 --> 00:37:17.290 align:middle line:90% and is now run-- 00:37:17.290 --> 00:37:21.580 align:middle line:84% all around this mission, so that in order to get to the mission 00:37:21.580 --> 00:37:24.730 align:middle line:84% you have to pass through a military checkpoint. 00:37:24.730 --> 00:37:27.910 align:middle line:84% And you have the feeling of being 00:37:27.910 --> 00:37:30.340 align:middle line:84% in a military compound of some kind 00:37:30.340 --> 00:37:32.470 align:middle line:84% as you're driving toward the mission. 00:37:32.470 --> 00:37:36.850 align:middle line:84% There are strange names to roads and spots and arrows, 00:37:36.850 --> 00:37:39.370 align:middle line:90% everything seems to be in code. 00:37:39.370 --> 00:37:41.290 align:middle line:84% And before you get to the real mission, 00:37:41.290 --> 00:37:43.207 align:middle line:84% there's a building that looks like the mission 00:37:43.207 --> 00:37:45.940 align:middle line:90% but isn't the mission. 00:37:45.940 --> 00:37:49.690 align:middle line:84% And all this sort of figures in the poem. 00:37:49.690 --> 00:37:51.940 align:middle line:84% The two voices that you will hear briefly in the poem, 00:37:51.940 --> 00:37:53.500 align:middle line:90% one is a maid. 00:37:53.500 --> 00:37:57.038 align:middle line:84% I ask a question of a maid, and she answers. 00:37:57.038 --> 00:37:59.080 align:middle line:84% And then a little bit later, we hear a little bit 00:37:59.080 --> 00:38:02.620 align:middle line:84% of an old padre who works the garden at this mission. 00:38:02.620 --> 00:38:12.240 align:middle line:90% 00:38:12.240 --> 00:38:14.940 align:middle line:90% "San Antonio de Padua." 00:38:14.940 --> 00:38:17.970 align:middle line:84% "The soldier-- the only one in sight-- 00:38:17.970 --> 00:38:20.400 align:middle line:84% stroked his skeletal teenage mustache 00:38:20.400 --> 00:38:22.920 align:middle line:90% and waved me through the gate. 00:38:22.920 --> 00:38:26.610 align:middle line:84% A medical helicopter on its pad, open-eyed and dense 00:38:26.610 --> 00:38:28.380 align:middle line:90% like a housefly. 00:38:28.380 --> 00:38:32.190 align:middle line:84% Rows of tanks, half-tracks, other green vehicles. 00:38:32.190 --> 00:38:34.950 align:middle line:84% Rows of barracks with packs of new sports cars 00:38:34.950 --> 00:38:37.950 align:middle line:90% squared off on sunny lots. 00:38:37.950 --> 00:38:40.620 align:middle line:90% Basketball and tennis courts. 00:38:40.620 --> 00:38:45.860 align:middle line:84% Road signs point to code-named spots folded into the hills. 00:38:45.860 --> 00:38:48.830 align:middle line:84% In the Valley of the Oaks, the first to answer Father Serra's 00:38:48.830 --> 00:38:51.020 align:middle line:84% mission bell brought others, and others, 00:38:51.020 --> 00:38:53.930 align:middle line:84% until 10,000 sheep grazed valley-wide 00:38:53.930 --> 00:38:57.020 align:middle line:84% around this hub of vineyards, workshops, tannery, 00:38:57.020 --> 00:38:59.180 align:middle line:90% the church and plaza. 00:38:59.180 --> 00:39:01.580 align:middle line:84% Hot wind running in the irrigation ditches 00:39:01.580 --> 00:39:04.580 align:middle line:84% brings smells of sage and live oak. 00:39:04.580 --> 00:39:06.920 align:middle line:84% By the Church door, an olive tree 00:39:06.920 --> 00:39:09.470 align:middle line:90% stands taller than the facade. 00:39:09.470 --> 00:39:11.870 align:middle line:90% Wind turns its leaves. 00:39:11.870 --> 00:39:14.510 align:middle line:90% Dried grasses stir. 00:39:14.510 --> 00:39:17.480 align:middle line:84% A red convertible squirts down the road, 00:39:17.480 --> 00:39:21.590 align:middle line:84% its engine whine soaked up by the wind. 00:39:21.590 --> 00:39:24.920 align:middle line:84% I came hoping to find something left over 00:39:24.920 --> 00:39:27.770 align:middle line:84% from that collaboration on divinity, 00:39:27.770 --> 00:39:31.950 align:middle line:84% the Roman God planted in our sun. 00:39:31.950 --> 00:39:36.470 align:middle line:84% Despite the sentry's word, I stopped a half-mile short 00:39:36.470 --> 00:39:41.210 align:middle line:84% at an unmarked Mission Style building off the road. 00:39:41.210 --> 00:39:43.910 align:middle line:84% The Mexican cleaning woman, the only person there, 00:39:43.910 --> 00:39:47.360 align:middle line:84% said it was, or used to be, the officer's club-- 00:39:47.360 --> 00:39:51.440 align:middle line:84% I saw a kitchenette stacked with whiskey cartons-- 00:39:51.440 --> 00:39:54.740 align:middle line:84% the rooms modeled after friars' cells, 00:39:54.740 --> 00:39:59.430 align:middle line:84% but the real mission is down the road. 00:39:59.430 --> 00:40:04.540 align:middle line:84% 'Where is everyone?' 'Oh,' she said. 00:40:04.540 --> 00:40:07.620 align:middle line:90% 'They're all here.' 00:40:07.620 --> 00:40:10.900 align:middle line:84% In the garden, I name what I can remember. 00:40:10.900 --> 00:40:15.940 align:middle line:84% Agave, wisteria, yucca, persimmon and fig, 00:40:15.940 --> 00:40:19.750 align:middle line:84% 'cactus' for the dozen kinds I count, when a voice behind me 00:40:19.750 --> 00:40:22.010 align:middle line:90% says it's always water. 00:40:22.010 --> 00:40:25.790 align:middle line:84% An old padre in coolie hat and smock points to open trenches 00:40:25.790 --> 00:40:28.130 align:middle line:84% cut crosswise up and down the garden, 00:40:28.130 --> 00:40:30.200 align:middle line:90% like the Church floorplan. 00:40:30.200 --> 00:40:34.940 align:middle line:84% 'New pipes, but what good when there's no rain for five years? 00:40:34.940 --> 00:40:38.760 align:middle line:90% We always need more water.' 00:40:38.760 --> 00:40:41.670 align:middle line:84% The cross blazed on a treetrunk two centuries ago 00:40:41.670 --> 00:40:46.830 align:middle line:84% now lies exposed, complete, grown over in the oak flesh. 00:40:46.830 --> 00:40:50.640 align:middle line:84% A pomegranate tree, the only plant from mission days, 00:40:50.640 --> 00:40:56.040 align:middle line:84% bears small, waxy, Baby Jesus fruit. 00:40:56.040 --> 00:41:01.160 align:middle line:84% Outside, I trace my map to crumbling beehive ovens, 00:41:01.160 --> 00:41:04.910 align:middle line:84% then the massive irrigation system slaves dug. 00:41:04.910 --> 00:41:07.160 align:middle line:90% The helicopter passes. 00:41:07.160 --> 00:41:10.640 align:middle line:84% Church walls drenched in ochre, collapsed kilns 00:41:10.640 --> 00:41:13.700 align:middle line:84% for firing tiles, tens of thousands of tiles-- 00:41:13.700 --> 00:41:17.870 align:middle line:84% fire and dirt seem to enclose, include, everything. 00:41:17.870 --> 00:41:21.080 align:middle line:84% I know an abstract painter who justifies his work 00:41:21.080 --> 00:41:25.190 align:middle line:84% because even before our early ones painted shapes of deer, 00:41:25.190 --> 00:41:31.070 align:middle line:84% bison, hands and spears, they painted their own bodies, as 00:41:31.070 --> 00:41:35.720 align:middle line:84% if to pull earth over us to protect us from heaven, 00:41:35.720 --> 00:41:39.900 align:middle line:84% or to prepare us to make images of this world. 00:41:39.900 --> 00:41:44.490 align:middle line:84% Pink wash aureoled around the windows, turquoise window 00:41:44.490 --> 00:41:49.740 align:middle line:84% frames, red arches painted around arches, stencilled oak 00:41:49.740 --> 00:41:51.210 align:middle line:90% leaves-- 00:41:51.210 --> 00:41:55.110 align:middle line:84% Inside the cool church, above the altar, 00:41:55.110 --> 00:41:59.070 align:middle line:84% old pudgy, white, misshapen stars 00:41:59.070 --> 00:42:02.580 align:middle line:84% tumble across the blue wood firmament." 00:42:02.580 --> 00:42:14.404 align:middle line:90% 00:42:14.404 --> 00:42:15.280 align:middle line:90% This is prose. 00:42:15.280 --> 00:42:19.804 align:middle line:90% 00:42:19.804 --> 00:42:21.550 align:middle line:84% I have written a couple of these things, 00:42:21.550 --> 00:42:24.610 align:middle line:84% and I don't quite understand them, but they seem right. 00:42:24.610 --> 00:42:27.950 align:middle line:90% 00:42:27.950 --> 00:42:30.170 align:middle line:84% And both of them are prose things. 00:42:30.170 --> 00:42:32.180 align:middle line:84% And both of them had the same origins 00:42:32.180 --> 00:42:36.290 align:middle line:84% in somebody else's poems, in poems 00:42:36.290 --> 00:42:39.860 align:middle line:84% by a 19th-century Italian poet, Giacomo Leopardi. 00:42:39.860 --> 00:42:45.110 align:middle line:84% And this poem has its origins in a poem of his 00:42:45.110 --> 00:42:47.870 align:middle line:90% called "La Ginestra"-- 00:42:47.870 --> 00:42:50.700 align:middle line:84% the broom, or the flower of the desert. 00:42:50.700 --> 00:42:57.020 align:middle line:84% And this sort of got started in that, but became this. 00:42:57.020 --> 00:42:59.105 align:middle line:84% And the broom that I speak of here 00:42:59.105 --> 00:43:04.040 align:middle line:84% is Scotch broom, which is a very common plant that 00:43:04.040 --> 00:43:06.290 align:middle line:84% blooms beautifully and everywhere 00:43:06.290 --> 00:43:11.050 align:middle line:90% in northern California in March. 00:43:11.050 --> 00:43:12.800 align:middle line:84% And the title of the poem is "Windy Hill." 00:43:12.800 --> 00:43:14.630 align:middle line:84% Windy Hill was a spot not far from where 00:43:14.630 --> 00:43:18.930 align:middle line:84% I live where I liked to walk, though it's not 00:43:18.930 --> 00:43:20.520 align:middle line:90% windy in the poem. 00:43:20.520 --> 00:43:23.110 align:middle line:90% 00:43:23.110 --> 00:43:25.300 align:middle line:84% And anyway, all different times and places 00:43:25.300 --> 00:43:27.490 align:middle line:90% tumble together in all this. 00:43:27.490 --> 00:43:28.990 align:middle line:90% Everything all at once. 00:43:28.990 --> 00:43:29.950 align:middle line:90% "Windy Hill." 00:43:29.950 --> 00:43:31.810 align:middle line:84% "The Scotch broom beside the road 00:43:31.810 --> 00:43:35.050 align:middle line:84% softens the winter greens, greener 00:43:35.050 --> 00:43:38.800 align:middle line:84% now after the rainstorms, eager headstrong green 00:43:38.800 --> 00:43:41.890 align:middle line:84% with those fragrant plants bristling under the eucalyptus, 00:43:41.890 --> 00:43:45.850 align:middle line:84% though the wind is so still we can barely smell them. 00:43:45.850 --> 00:43:49.150 align:middle line:84% A few bushes straggle this far up the trail 00:43:49.150 --> 00:43:51.760 align:middle line:84% where last year, one year ago in fact, we 00:43:51.760 --> 00:43:54.880 align:middle line:84% saw rootless, astral mistletoe draining 00:43:54.880 --> 00:43:59.080 align:middle line:84% from our favorite live oak tree that cracked the depth of space 00:43:59.080 --> 00:44:02.860 align:middle line:84% behind us-- we felt dizzy, fallen out of context. 00:44:02.860 --> 00:44:05.890 align:middle line:84% We remember, who was it, told us about someone 00:44:05.890 --> 00:44:09.640 align:middle line:84% who has kept herself alive with mistletoe treatments for cancer 00:44:09.640 --> 00:44:13.930 align:middle line:84% that doctors 10 years ago swore would kill her in a year. 00:44:13.930 --> 00:44:16.570 align:middle line:84% Washed out in sunlight, Orion's lines 00:44:16.570 --> 00:44:19.900 align:middle line:84% run clear and pure somewhere up there 00:44:19.900 --> 00:44:23.480 align:middle line:84% in front of the galaxies, those snakes' nests. 00:44:23.480 --> 00:44:26.490 align:middle line:90% Halfway up, we're more exposed. 00:44:26.490 --> 00:44:29.940 align:middle line:84% Fewer trees, tall motionless grass. 00:44:29.940 --> 00:44:33.390 align:middle line:84% 20 years ago, after our insomniac concierge 00:44:33.390 --> 00:44:36.300 align:middle line:84% kept us awake half the night breaking bottles 00:44:36.300 --> 00:44:38.790 align:middle line:84% in the courtyard below, and after we 00:44:38.790 --> 00:44:42.390 align:middle line:84% watched the greasy Bay of Naples greening the rockwall, 00:44:42.390 --> 00:44:46.380 align:middle line:84% we took the bus and walked through the imagined ash 00:44:46.380 --> 00:44:48.660 align:middle line:90% of Pompeii. 00:44:48.660 --> 00:44:52.850 align:middle line:84% The couple caught in bed, the mother arbored 00:44:52.850 --> 00:44:59.190 align:middle line:84% over her child, the panicked dog, and those leafy wakeful 00:44:59.190 --> 00:45:02.630 align:middle line:84% faces painted or mosaicked on the walls. 00:45:02.630 --> 00:45:06.030 align:middle line:84% An army streaming from its anthill up the glassy madrone 00:45:06.030 --> 00:45:10.500 align:middle line:84% bark reminds us that when the big aftershock wobbled telephone 00:45:10.500 --> 00:45:12.990 align:middle line:84% poles several days after the earthquake, 00:45:12.990 --> 00:45:16.620 align:middle line:84% we were in the balcony, swaying in the tree 00:45:16.620 --> 00:45:20.610 align:middle line:84% while Aida sang triumph down in her tomb. 00:45:20.610 --> 00:45:22.440 align:middle line:90% Nobody panicked. 00:45:22.440 --> 00:45:26.070 align:middle line:84% At the top, we'll be just above the skyline road. 00:45:26.070 --> 00:45:29.340 align:middle line:84% The broom is still flowering somewhere near freeway ramps, 00:45:29.340 --> 00:45:33.030 align:middle line:84% by ditch water, at the edges of pastures and artichoke fields. 00:45:33.030 --> 00:45:35.520 align:middle line:84% We remember to separate them from other yellows. 00:45:35.520 --> 00:45:37.080 align:middle line:90% Not mustard flowers. 00:45:37.080 --> 00:45:38.460 align:middle line:90% Not sourgrass. 00:45:38.460 --> 00:45:41.610 align:middle line:84% Those plaster casts in the ruins remind us 00:45:41.610 --> 00:45:44.910 align:middle line:84% of the crooked groundswells in Mathew Brady's photographs, 00:45:44.910 --> 00:45:47.970 align:middle line:84% though I think as much about the portrait of a woman 00:45:47.970 --> 00:45:51.810 align:middle line:84% holding up a stylus and wax tablet like trophies 00:45:51.810 --> 00:45:56.430 align:middle line:84% or captions, a writer, like the woman with cancer. 00:45:56.430 --> 00:46:02.400 align:middle line:84% In the end we want a passion for form, not for efficient mastery. 00:46:02.400 --> 00:46:05.940 align:middle line:84% Plots in starlines, origins in dirt, 00:46:05.940 --> 00:46:11.940 align:middle line:84% an African princess singing above the pit [AUDIO OUT] 00:46:11.940 --> 00:46:15.480 align:middle line:84% --gray ocean we can't see, where gray whales and their calves 00:46:15.480 --> 00:46:18.900 align:middle line:90% are swimming north again." 00:46:18.900 --> 00:46:21.270 align:middle line:84% That poem is a hallucination, I think. 00:46:21.270 --> 00:46:22.140 align:middle line:90% That's what it is. 00:46:22.140 --> 00:46:29.957 align:middle line:90% 00:46:29.957 --> 00:46:31.040 align:middle line:90% I don't know what to read. 00:46:31.040 --> 00:46:34.250 align:middle line:90% I don't write poems-- 00:46:34.250 --> 00:46:35.480 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:46:35.480 --> 00:46:42.230 align:middle line:84% I don't lack a sense of humor, and I write poems which I hope 00:46:42.230 --> 00:46:45.890 align:middle line:84% are not humorless, but the humor does not sort of spill out 00:46:45.890 --> 00:46:47.420 align:middle line:90% at you, I guess. 00:46:47.420 --> 00:46:51.080 align:middle line:90% 00:46:51.080 --> 00:46:52.080 align:middle line:90% How much time do I have? 00:46:52.080 --> 00:46:53.750 align:middle line:90% I don't want to go on and on. 00:46:53.750 --> 00:46:56.900 align:middle line:90% I'll read just a couple. 00:46:56.900 --> 00:47:00.560 align:middle line:84% This is called "Story Corner at the Point Breeze Branch," 00:47:00.560 --> 00:47:02.960 align:middle line:90% and it's a branch library. 00:47:02.960 --> 00:47:09.620 align:middle line:84% And I had things turning in my head when I was writing this. 00:47:09.620 --> 00:47:13.160 align:middle line:84% This really was meant to be a poem about poetry 00:47:13.160 --> 00:47:15.770 align:middle line:84% as derangement-- poetry tries to make a story 00:47:15.770 --> 00:47:17.420 align:middle line:90% as a kind of derangement. 00:47:17.420 --> 00:47:21.650 align:middle line:84% And the voice I started to hear was a voice somebody 00:47:21.650 --> 00:47:24.440 align:middle line:84% who's like-- does a story corner at a local library 00:47:24.440 --> 00:47:27.830 align:middle line:84% and is speaking to children and starts 00:47:27.830 --> 00:47:35.260 align:middle line:84% coming undone in the attempt just to tell consciousness. 00:47:35.260 --> 00:47:39.590 align:middle line:84% And I was struggling with it, and I was reading some Ruskin 00:47:39.590 --> 00:47:41.120 align:middle line:84% at the time, and Ruskin was talking 00:47:41.120 --> 00:47:44.720 align:middle line:84% about the golden apples of the Hesperides 00:47:44.720 --> 00:47:46.370 align:middle line:84% and his understanding of that story. 00:47:46.370 --> 00:47:49.077 align:middle line:90% 00:47:49.077 --> 00:47:50.660 align:middle line:84% And I was struggling a lot, and then I 00:47:50.660 --> 00:47:53.630 align:middle line:84% got a telephone call, which is in the poem 00:47:53.630 --> 00:47:55.250 align:middle line:84% because the telephone call helped 00:47:55.250 --> 00:47:58.400 align:middle line:84% me pull everything-- everything somehow came together. 00:47:58.400 --> 00:48:01.280 align:middle line:84% It's a very strange experience with something completely 00:48:01.280 --> 00:48:04.860 align:middle line:90% outside you and fortuitous. 00:48:04.860 --> 00:48:08.980 align:middle line:84% Makes the structure for you, for what structure there is. 00:48:08.980 --> 00:48:11.740 align:middle line:84% It helps knowing I went to a Jesuit college, 00:48:11.740 --> 00:48:16.660 align:middle line:84% and the commencement address that we listened to in 1969 00:48:16.660 --> 00:48:23.770 align:middle line:84% was just unthinkable, just unthinkable. 00:48:23.770 --> 00:48:26.575 align:middle line:90% So this is this person. 00:48:26.575 --> 00:48:30.330 align:middle line:90% 00:48:30.330 --> 00:48:34.350 align:middle line:84% Me-- my consciousness here is telling the story 00:48:34.350 --> 00:48:35.580 align:middle line:90% to these children. 00:48:35.580 --> 00:48:38.610 align:middle line:84% "Story Corner at the Point Breeze Branch." 00:48:38.610 --> 00:48:42.700 align:middle line:84% "For the dragon who guards the golden apples of the Hesperides 00:48:42.700 --> 00:48:45.850 align:middle line:84% never sleeps, for he keeps the reckless fruit 00:48:45.850 --> 00:48:50.710 align:middle line:84% rolled in his coils, and it is said he mocks human voices-- 00:48:50.710 --> 00:48:54.940 align:middle line:84% ship's captain, queen, shepherd, and priest. 00:48:54.940 --> 00:48:58.270 align:middle line:84% And it is the sleepless dragon of the horde who speaks now 00:48:58.270 --> 00:49:04.360 align:middle line:84% to you in these thousand scaly leather skins of words in time. 00:49:04.360 --> 00:49:08.020 align:middle line:84% Curious George is barking up the wrong tree. 00:49:08.020 --> 00:49:12.880 align:middle line:84% And do we know what means to bark up a tree, 00:49:12.880 --> 00:49:16.510 align:middle line:84% or between the devil and the deep blue sea? 00:49:16.510 --> 00:49:19.090 align:middle line:84% Before the Green Giant leaves Arthur's hall, 00:49:19.090 --> 00:49:20.410 align:middle line:90% he lifts the lantern-- 00:49:20.410 --> 00:49:25.180 align:middle line:84% his talking head-- to the fat, feckless bourgeoisie. 00:49:25.180 --> 00:49:26.650 align:middle line:84% Though heir to righteousness, I am 00:49:26.650 --> 00:49:29.680 align:middle line:84% king to fish, fish in the deep blue sea. 00:49:29.680 --> 00:49:32.230 align:middle line:84% For I, too, am eaten by Leviathan 00:49:32.230 --> 00:49:34.420 align:middle line:84% and childed in the dragon's heart. 00:49:34.420 --> 00:49:36.010 align:middle line:90% And who can sleep? 00:49:36.010 --> 00:49:37.300 align:middle line:90% So many scenes. 00:49:37.300 --> 00:49:40.420 align:middle line:84% Lemon oil rubbed on oak tables, flashcards 00:49:40.420 --> 00:49:44.230 align:middle line:84% stapled to the wall, spines and dust. 00:49:44.230 --> 00:49:51.670 align:middle line:84% My lifestream's glossary-- tin, cellar, anagram, endocrinology, 00:49:51.670 --> 00:49:56.530 align:middle line:84% boogie-woogie, suture, ruby, saxophone, cantaloupe. 00:49:56.530 --> 00:49:58.540 align:middle line:90% America and its lists-- 00:49:58.540 --> 00:50:01.060 align:middle line:84% voting rolls, Washington's wall of names, 00:50:01.060 --> 00:50:04.030 align:middle line:84% death's chiseled registers, like the first writing, 00:50:04.030 --> 00:50:07.840 align:middle line:84% wherein we learned how much an Assyrian landowner paid 00:50:07.840 --> 00:50:09.370 align:middle line:90% for tomb materials. 00:50:09.370 --> 00:50:11.530 align:middle line:90% What slaves did that work? 00:50:11.530 --> 00:50:14.650 align:middle line:90% In 1969-- commencement-- 00:50:14.650 --> 00:50:21.100 align:middle line:84% Father Guido McGintley, SJ, LLD, commended us to country, 00:50:21.100 --> 00:50:23.710 align:middle line:84% that some may die as others before us 00:50:23.710 --> 00:50:26.550 align:middle line:90% in the Holy Spirit's name. 00:50:26.550 --> 00:50:28.930 align:middle line:90% That was our dragon's voice. 00:50:28.930 --> 00:50:32.650 align:middle line:90% Not, next to me, lanky Eddie's. 00:50:32.650 --> 00:50:33.610 align:middle line:90% Shit. 00:50:33.610 --> 00:50:34.510 align:middle line:90% Oh, shit. 00:50:34.510 --> 00:50:36.550 align:middle line:90% What blessing was that? 00:50:36.550 --> 00:50:38.290 align:middle line:90% Jesuiticality, yo. 00:50:38.290 --> 00:50:40.910 align:middle line:90% 00:50:40.910 --> 00:50:42.920 align:middle line:90% For whom I make this spiel-- 00:50:42.920 --> 00:50:45.020 align:middle line:84% because after 20 years, he phoned 00:50:45.020 --> 00:50:47.780 align:middle line:84% to commemorate our lost or misplaced friends. 00:50:47.780 --> 00:50:54.050 align:middle line:84% In sleep, sightless, mud-paste shades reel and tilt behind you, 00:50:54.050 --> 00:50:57.710 align:middle line:84% for in dream story we see with eyes at the back of our heads. 00:50:57.710 --> 00:51:03.710 align:middle line:84% Imagination convenes us there, makes us a one and us. 00:51:03.710 --> 00:51:06.620 align:middle line:84% Once, driving across the Bay Bridge, 00:51:06.620 --> 00:51:09.020 align:middle line:84% between the flashing girders I saw 00:51:09.020 --> 00:51:12.530 align:middle line:84% figures scissored into being out of the misted light. 00:51:12.530 --> 00:51:17.570 align:middle line:84% My unreal company, permanent visitant, fierce into me. 00:51:17.570 --> 00:51:22.280 align:middle line:84% So remember, the golden fruit coiled in the finny arms 00:51:22.280 --> 00:51:25.340 align:middle line:84% was Juno's wedding gift from Earth 00:51:25.340 --> 00:51:28.520 align:middle line:84% when she married heaven's dictator president. 00:51:28.520 --> 00:51:32.210 align:middle line:84% For the dragon does not change or move. 00:51:32.210 --> 00:51:37.280 align:middle line:84% Wordless, paying attention, wrapped in ventriloquist flame 00:51:37.280 --> 00:51:38.240 align:middle line:90% and whirlwind. 00:51:38.240 --> 00:51:41.620 align:middle line:84% Tell your parents what you learned today-- 00:51:41.620 --> 00:51:45.610 align:middle line:84% that it's been raining, weeds waist-high and the river rising. 00:51:45.610 --> 00:51:47.140 align:middle line:90% Take care going home. 00:51:47.140 --> 00:51:49.240 align:middle line:84% The way is perilous, and you'll hear 00:51:49.240 --> 00:51:52.435 align:middle line:84% voices call to you-- voices from the sewer traps." 00:51:52.435 --> 00:51:58.700 align:middle line:90% 00:51:58.700 --> 00:52:01.115 align:middle line:90% And I'll read another. 00:52:01.115 --> 00:52:05.950 align:middle line:90% 00:52:05.950 --> 00:52:08.170 align:middle line:90% I'll read one more poem. 00:52:08.170 --> 00:52:14.760 align:middle line:84% And the title of the poem is also-- 00:52:14.760 --> 00:52:18.290 align:middle line:84% it just spills into the beginning of the poem. 00:52:18.290 --> 00:52:22.850 align:middle line:84% And it treats a character I once met who called himself 00:52:22.850 --> 00:52:25.760 align:middle line:90% the Original Rhinestone Cowboy. 00:52:25.760 --> 00:52:29.900 align:middle line:84% And it's set in southern Mississippi, near the Gulf 00:52:29.900 --> 00:52:32.720 align:middle line:84% there, and that figures into it a little bit. 00:52:32.720 --> 00:52:35.510 align:middle line:90% 00:52:35.510 --> 00:52:37.910 align:middle line:84% And he talks, I talk, and they spill together. 00:52:37.910 --> 00:52:40.520 align:middle line:90% 00:52:40.520 --> 00:52:42.530 align:middle line:84% "The Original Rhinestone Cowboy is 00:52:42.530 --> 00:52:46.110 align:middle line:84% saying, moments after the rainstorm, 00:52:46.110 --> 00:52:50.220 align:middle line:84% that he can ignite ruby and sapphire scales, gemstone 00:52:50.220 --> 00:52:55.530 align:middle line:84% chips of every kind, by picking his guitar, 00:52:55.530 --> 00:52:58.530 align:middle line:84% filling his fist with notes, then tossing a wedding 00:52:58.530 --> 00:53:00.630 align:middle line:90% arcade over all our heads-- 00:53:00.630 --> 00:53:02.940 align:middle line:84% I'm dreaming jewels for you people. 00:53:02.940 --> 00:53:05.220 align:middle line:90% Here they go! 00:53:05.220 --> 00:53:09.090 align:middle line:84% His knobby hands conduct the burger stand's neon buzz, 00:53:09.090 --> 00:53:12.840 align:middle line:84% the day's last light, green and violet sparks-- 00:53:12.840 --> 00:53:16.410 align:middle line:84% take them!-- fluttering down last-ditch yellow, 00:53:16.410 --> 00:53:19.350 align:middle line:84% delta red marbled under our car wheels, 00:53:19.350 --> 00:53:24.040 align:middle line:84% in oil-slick backwater we can see offshore. 00:53:24.040 --> 00:53:26.470 align:middle line:90% He tells this dream with fact. 00:53:26.470 --> 00:53:28.750 align:middle line:90% He is the original only one. 00:53:28.750 --> 00:53:30.700 align:middle line:90% Accept no imitations. 00:53:30.700 --> 00:53:35.440 align:middle line:84% He is homeless, plain unhoused, but glad to be. 00:53:35.440 --> 00:53:38.800 align:middle line:84% His benediction, falling on us who paused to hear, 00:53:38.800 --> 00:53:42.280 align:middle line:84% tips our ears and lashes, returns us 00:53:42.280 --> 00:53:46.060 align:middle line:84% to the Garden, our idea of it at least. 00:53:46.060 --> 00:53:48.700 align:middle line:84% We can already taste the finite shudderings 00:53:48.700 --> 00:53:50.800 align:middle line:90% of what was left to us. 00:53:50.800 --> 00:53:55.600 align:middle line:84% His guitar, he says, is a democracy of good intent, 00:53:55.600 --> 00:54:00.200 align:middle line:84% and if some nights it's not so good, that's all right too. 00:54:00.200 --> 00:54:05.010 align:middle line:84% Cars swing into the lot, nick bags from the pickup window 00:54:05.010 --> 00:54:06.990 align:middle line:90% and slide away. 00:54:06.990 --> 00:54:09.900 align:middle line:84% The headlights prick tintype sequins 00:54:09.900 --> 00:54:12.330 align:middle line:90% dripping from his buckskin. 00:54:12.330 --> 00:54:19.470 align:middle line:84% He gestures down the strip, to Frosty, U-Haul, fried chicken, 00:54:19.470 --> 00:54:22.050 align:middle line:90% crystal used-car domes-- 00:54:22.050 --> 00:54:26.130 align:middle line:84% I want you all to dream of being commonwealth, united 00:54:26.130 --> 00:54:31.590 align:middle line:84% in a rhinestone resurrection, proud, for we're all Americans 00:54:31.590 --> 00:54:35.380 align:middle line:90% and have worse things in store. 00:54:35.380 --> 00:54:39.580 align:middle line:84% Trucks grinding toward the interstate toot twice for luck. 00:54:39.580 --> 00:54:43.390 align:middle line:84% He waves-- I'm someone who's not going someplace else, 00:54:43.390 --> 00:54:47.170 align:middle line:84% I'm an original, I don't travel too well. 00:54:47.170 --> 00:54:52.030 align:middle line:84% To the rain-smeared cars, the strip, the truckers, to us, 00:54:52.030 --> 00:54:55.900 align:middle line:84% he confers the rest of nothing's colors in his hands-- 00:54:55.900 --> 00:54:57.910 align:middle line:90% Bless you children. 00:54:57.910 --> 00:54:59.380 align:middle line:90% Fear not the rain. 00:54:59.380 --> 00:55:01.750 align:middle line:90% I say bless you all. 00:55:01.750 --> 00:55:05.830 align:middle line:90% The O.R.C. says just you wait." 00:55:05.830 --> 00:55:07.330 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:55:07.330 --> 00:55:10.980 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:55:10.980 --> 00:55:17.107 align:middle line:90%