WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.640 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.640 --> 00:00:08.350 align:middle line:84% We have quite a few messages, announcements about events 00:00:08.350 --> 00:00:09.520 align:middle line:90% that are going on in town. 00:00:09.520 --> 00:00:14.680 align:middle line:84% So let me just open the evening with those. 00:00:14.680 --> 00:00:16.840 align:middle line:84% Leslie Marmon Silko is going to be reading 00:00:16.840 --> 00:00:21.610 align:middle line:84% from her new novel Gardens in the Dunes on Thursday, April 8 00:00:21.610 --> 00:00:24.820 align:middle line:84% in the social sciences building here on campus, 00:00:24.820 --> 00:00:28.210 align:middle line:90% room 100 at 7 o'clock. 00:00:28.210 --> 00:00:32.229 align:middle line:84% There will be a book signing following that event. 00:00:32.229 --> 00:00:35.320 align:middle line:84% I'm sure you know Silko's work from the two really stunning 00:00:35.320 --> 00:00:37.240 align:middle line:84% novels that precede this: Almanac 00:00:37.240 --> 00:00:39.940 align:middle line:90% of the Dead and Ceremony. 00:00:39.940 --> 00:00:46.600 align:middle line:84% Also, on Friday this week at the bookstore at noon, 00:00:46.600 --> 00:00:49.690 align:middle line:84% retiring professor in the Department of English John 00:00:49.690 --> 00:00:54.070 align:middle line:84% Harmon McElroy will be doing a book signing for his new book 00:00:54.070 --> 00:00:57.490 align:middle line:84% American Beliefs: What Keeps a Big Country and a Diverse 00:00:57.490 --> 00:00:59.410 align:middle line:90% People United. 00:00:59.410 --> 00:01:03.340 align:middle line:84% That's at the bookstore on campus on Friday. 00:01:03.340 --> 00:01:06.010 align:middle line:84% Our next reading will be next Wednesday, 00:01:06.010 --> 00:01:10.180 align:middle line:84% and it's the award winners of our annual poetry 00:01:10.180 --> 00:01:12.880 align:middle line:84% contest sponsored in collaboration with the Academy 00:01:12.880 --> 00:01:14.320 align:middle line:90% of American Poets. 00:01:14.320 --> 00:01:19.300 align:middle line:84% That contest has been won this year by Wendy Coulter. 00:01:19.300 --> 00:01:23.320 align:middle line:84% And the other winners are Charles Specht, Mong-Lan Pham, 00:01:23.320 --> 00:01:25.660 align:middle line:84% Alma Garcia, and Meredith Walters. 00:01:25.660 --> 00:01:29.500 align:middle line:84% They'll be reading here next Wednesday. 00:01:29.500 --> 00:01:31.450 align:middle line:84% The graduate student readings that you 00:01:31.450 --> 00:01:35.170 align:middle line:84% have seen on your schedule for April 7 00:01:35.170 --> 00:01:37.880 align:middle line:84% have been changed to be two readings. 00:01:37.880 --> 00:01:40.630 align:middle line:84% One on April 7 and one on April 13. 00:01:40.630 --> 00:01:44.290 align:middle line:84% We have a real bumper crop this year. 00:01:44.290 --> 00:01:47.407 align:middle line:84% A lot of graduate students completing their work, 00:01:47.407 --> 00:01:49.240 align:middle line:84% and we wanted to make sure that each of them 00:01:49.240 --> 00:01:53.720 align:middle line:84% had a really respectable amount of time to showcase their work. 00:01:53.720 --> 00:01:58.720 align:middle line:84% So there'll be two readings, one April 7 and one April 13. 00:01:58.720 --> 00:02:04.960 align:middle line:84% This weekend is the Tucson Poetry Festival, 00:02:04.960 --> 00:02:07.750 align:middle line:84% a wonderful gathering that happens 00:02:07.750 --> 00:02:11.530 align:middle line:84% every year organized by a grassroots community group. 00:02:11.530 --> 00:02:15.070 align:middle line:90% And the event spans the weekend. 00:02:15.070 --> 00:02:17.500 align:middle line:84% The theme is Poetry and the Sacred. 00:02:17.500 --> 00:02:20.590 align:middle line:84% There will be six poets visiting, giving readings, 00:02:20.590 --> 00:02:21.730 align:middle line:90% panels, and workshops. 00:02:21.730 --> 00:02:26.770 align:middle line:84% They include Charles Bernstein, David Shapiro, Jane Hirshfield, 00:02:26.770 --> 00:02:32.380 align:middle line:84% Robert Bly, Pat Mora, and Ramson Lomatewama, a Hopi poet 00:02:32.380 --> 00:02:33.250 align:middle line:90% from up north. 00:02:33.250 --> 00:02:37.780 align:middle line:84% So you can find information about it in the Weekly. 00:02:37.780 --> 00:02:39.340 align:middle line:84% The whole supplement in the Weekly 00:02:39.340 --> 00:02:42.400 align:middle line:84% is devoted to the Poetry Festival. 00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:45.430 align:middle line:90% So it's a great week for poetry. 00:02:45.430 --> 00:02:48.970 align:middle line:90% 00:02:48.970 --> 00:02:52.220 align:middle line:84% I should mention before the reading that tomorrow, 00:02:52.220 --> 00:02:55.360 align:middle line:84% Nancy Eimers and William Olsen will be giving an open question 00:02:55.360 --> 00:02:57.790 align:middle line:84% and answer session at the Poetry Center that's 00:02:57.790 --> 00:02:59.530 align:middle line:84% open to students or any other poets 00:02:59.530 --> 00:03:02.870 align:middle line:84% from the community who'd like an opportunity to discuss 00:03:02.870 --> 00:03:04.900 align:middle line:90% work of the poets with them. 00:03:04.900 --> 00:03:07.210 align:middle line:84% That's tomorrow afternoon at 3 o'clock 00:03:07.210 --> 00:03:12.690 align:middle line:84% at the Poetry Center, 1216 North Cherry. 00:03:12.690 --> 00:03:16.200 align:middle line:84% Tonight, we're delighted to continue a series of readings, 00:03:16.200 --> 00:03:21.510 align:middle line:84% celebrating and honoring some of the alums of our MFA program. 00:03:21.510 --> 00:03:25.170 align:middle line:84% In the past, we've hosted David Wojahn, David Rivard, 00:03:25.170 --> 00:03:29.010 align:middle line:84% Tony Hoagland, Michael Collier, all distinguished graduates 00:03:29.010 --> 00:03:32.280 align:middle line:84% of the University of Arizona creative writing program. 00:03:32.280 --> 00:03:34.260 align:middle line:84% And tonight, we continue that tradition 00:03:34.260 --> 00:03:37.180 align:middle line:90% with these two authors. 00:03:37.180 --> 00:03:40.750 align:middle line:90% Nancy is going to read first. 00:03:40.750 --> 00:03:43.540 align:middle line:84% Nancy Eimers received an MFA from the University 00:03:43.540 --> 00:03:47.770 align:middle line:84% of Arizona in 1982 and a PhD in creative writing 00:03:47.770 --> 00:03:50.830 align:middle line:84% from the University of Houston in 1988. 00:03:50.830 --> 00:03:54.040 align:middle line:84% She's received two NEA fellowships, the Nation 00:03:54.040 --> 00:03:57.850 align:middle line:84% Discovery Prize, an Academy of American Poets Prize, 00:03:57.850 --> 00:04:01.150 align:middle line:84% and most recently, the Whiting fellowship, 00:04:01.150 --> 00:04:03.580 align:middle line:90% among other distinctions. 00:04:03.580 --> 00:04:09.010 align:middle line:84% Her books are No Moon chosen by Ellen Bryant Voigt for the 1997 00:04:09.010 --> 00:04:13.480 align:middle line:84% Verna Emery Prize, and The Destroying Angel, 00:04:13.480 --> 00:04:17.860 align:middle line:84% published in 1991 by Wesleyan University Press. 00:04:17.860 --> 00:04:19.720 align:middle line:84% She's currently associate professor 00:04:19.720 --> 00:04:24.520 align:middle line:84% at Western University's State University in Kalamazoo. 00:04:24.520 --> 00:04:27.610 align:middle line:84% Nancy Eimers's poems display a rare combination 00:04:27.610 --> 00:04:31.300 align:middle line:84% of qualities, a largeness, given by having 00:04:31.300 --> 00:04:34.630 align:middle line:84% a keen and compassionate sense of history. 00:04:34.630 --> 00:04:39.490 align:middle line:84% Think Hiroshima, Bikini Atoll, the Gulf War. 00:04:39.490 --> 00:04:42.310 align:middle line:84% And an eye for the small image that 00:04:42.310 --> 00:04:46.480 align:middle line:84% conveys with clarity, the fragility, and trouble 00:04:46.480 --> 00:04:48.010 align:middle line:90% of existence. 00:04:48.010 --> 00:04:53.410 align:middle line:84% As well as a mind eager to make plausible such implausible 00:04:53.410 --> 00:04:58.240 align:middle line:84% associations as that between a gynecological exam 00:04:58.240 --> 00:05:02.080 align:middle line:90% and a job interview at the MLA. 00:05:02.080 --> 00:05:06.010 align:middle line:84% It sounds comic, but that poem opens 00:05:06.010 --> 00:05:09.580 align:middle line:84% into a compelling meditation on time 00:05:09.580 --> 00:05:14.440 align:middle line:84% and how it moves through us and we through it. 00:05:14.440 --> 00:05:19.450 align:middle line:84% She writes as she does in the voice of Anne Frank's mother, 00:05:19.450 --> 00:05:25.000 align:middle line:84% in answer to the knowledge that the everydayness of things 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:29.560 align:middle line:84% has a truer version we have to invent. 00:05:29.560 --> 00:05:31.630 align:middle line:90% Please welcome Nancy Eimers. 00:05:31.630 --> 00:05:35.060 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:05:35.060 --> 00:05:43.400 align:middle line:90% 00:05:43.400 --> 00:05:44.840 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:05:44.840 --> 00:05:47.063 align:middle line:84% We're really happy to be here and we're 00:05:47.063 --> 00:05:48.980 align:middle line:84% excited about the question and answer session, 00:05:48.980 --> 00:05:51.290 align:middle line:84% but we thought we were going to ask the questions. 00:05:51.290 --> 00:05:53.780 align:middle line:84% So we'll have to rethink a few things. 00:05:53.780 --> 00:05:57.110 align:middle line:84% I feel that my life is passing in front of my eyes. 00:05:57.110 --> 00:06:00.470 align:middle line:84% My parents are here, my brother and sister, 00:06:00.470 --> 00:06:04.580 align:middle line:84% and some of my most esteemed mentors and old friends, 00:06:04.580 --> 00:06:08.520 align:middle line:84% though, mostly old just in the chronological sense. 00:06:08.520 --> 00:06:11.030 align:middle line:84% So we're really-- this is really a thrill. 00:06:11.030 --> 00:06:14.140 align:middle line:90% 00:06:14.140 --> 00:06:16.510 align:middle line:84% The first two I noticed that I picked to read 00:06:16.510 --> 00:06:18.940 align:middle line:84% are poems that have to do with overhearing. 00:06:18.940 --> 00:06:20.950 align:middle line:84% And I think I'll just say that to introduce 00:06:20.950 --> 00:06:24.280 align:middle line:84% the first one, which is called "A Verb In This Mood." 00:06:24.280 --> 00:06:27.040 align:middle line:90% 00:06:27.040 --> 00:06:29.470 align:middle line:84% "Days when the wind blows verbs out 00:06:29.470 --> 00:06:34.330 align:middle line:84% of reach along the rise and fall of sentences when there's 00:06:34.330 --> 00:06:37.840 align:middle line:84% nothing to listen to but my backyard, 00:06:37.840 --> 00:06:42.130 align:middle line:84% and that way of calling an animal heard over a fence, 00:06:42.130 --> 00:06:48.340 align:middle line:84% peremptory and inside that, at odds, lost friends, 00:06:48.340 --> 00:06:51.430 align:middle line:84% lost articles, several children were 00:06:51.430 --> 00:06:54.520 align:middle line:90% reported lost in his voice. 00:06:54.520 --> 00:06:58.630 align:middle line:84% One of them a boy in a blizzard throwing snowballs 00:06:58.630 --> 00:07:02.920 align:middle line:84% into the falling snow and following them like a road. 00:07:02.920 --> 00:07:09.010 align:middle line:84% And then like a shrug, the boy gone, missing, forfeited. 00:07:09.010 --> 00:07:11.920 align:middle line:90% Why won't the dog obey? 00:07:11.920 --> 00:07:14.260 align:middle line:84% Is there even a dog out there [AUDIO OUT] weep 00:07:14.260 --> 00:07:16.960 align:middle line:90% of not being answered? 00:07:16.960 --> 00:07:20.080 align:middle line:84% After that silence drifting over the fence, 00:07:20.080 --> 00:07:25.030 align:middle line:84% is something else belonging to the boy, not lost, 00:07:25.030 --> 00:07:28.780 align:middle line:84% somewhere out of sight of whiteness, softness? 00:07:28.780 --> 00:07:35.620 align:middle line:84% Is the jotted down least part of no, refusal, not one more iota 00:07:35.620 --> 00:07:36.850 align:middle line:90% of this falling snow." 00:07:36.850 --> 00:07:39.700 align:middle line:90% 00:07:39.700 --> 00:07:42.820 align:middle line:84% We live in Kalamazoo, a very extremely snowy place 00:07:42.820 --> 00:07:47.260 align:middle line:84% and a lot of my poems are poems that 00:07:47.260 --> 00:07:51.610 align:middle line:84% seem to involve an extremely passive observer, listening 00:07:51.610 --> 00:07:53.860 align:middle line:84% to things going on in her neighborhood. 00:07:53.860 --> 00:07:57.970 align:middle line:84% But let's see the other thing I probably 00:07:57.970 --> 00:08:01.630 align:middle line:84% should say about this one called "Unplugged" 00:08:01.630 --> 00:08:04.510 align:middle line:84% is that it makes use of this song 00:08:04.510 --> 00:08:07.120 align:middle line:84% that I know from Bluegrass called "In the Pines." 00:08:07.120 --> 00:08:10.250 align:middle line:84% And then a few years ago, we heard it by Nirvana 00:08:10.250 --> 00:08:12.550 align:middle line:84% in a completely different version 00:08:12.550 --> 00:08:16.540 align:middle line:84% that seemed appropriate for my neighborhood in Kalamazoo. 00:08:16.540 --> 00:08:18.640 align:middle line:84% Called "Unplugged" after that album 00:08:18.640 --> 00:08:22.270 align:middle line:84% where they put their electric guitars down. 00:08:22.270 --> 00:08:28.660 align:middle line:84% "To live inside was the simple first idea behind a house. 00:08:28.660 --> 00:08:33.880 align:middle line:84% A noun, but soft inside, lined by down. 00:08:33.880 --> 00:08:37.570 align:middle line:84% My husband is playing Nirvana "Unplugged," 00:08:37.570 --> 00:08:42.940 align:middle line:84% Cobain's wail stripped down to the wood: is wood. 00:08:42.940 --> 00:08:49.570 align:middle line:84% Wild, mad, akin to the Germanic Hwaet for rage. 00:08:49.570 --> 00:08:53.920 align:middle line:84% His In the Pines so bare each unplugged 00:08:53.920 --> 00:08:57.490 align:middle line:90% guitars a door slammed home. 00:08:57.490 --> 00:09:01.840 align:middle line:84% And then a little while, all softnesses that line 00:09:01.840 --> 00:09:04.300 align:middle line:90% a human nest are gone. 00:09:04.300 --> 00:09:08.560 align:middle line:84% Low voices, the velvet art of sleeping faces, 00:09:08.560 --> 00:09:13.540 align:middle line:84% long breaths to sleep, and the long breaths back again. 00:09:13.540 --> 00:09:16.570 align:middle line:90% Home gone down. 00:09:16.570 --> 00:09:20.680 align:middle line:84% In the pines, in the pines where the sun don't ever shine, 00:09:20.680 --> 00:09:23.440 align:middle line:90% Jesus, they're fighting again. 00:09:23.440 --> 00:09:24.730 align:middle line:90% Who? 00:09:24.730 --> 00:09:25.900 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 00:09:25.900 --> 00:09:28.300 align:middle line:90% Everybody, everybody. 00:09:28.300 --> 00:09:32.710 align:middle line:84% The woman and man in the song, my husband and me. 00:09:32.710 --> 00:09:37.990 align:middle line:84% Sometimes next door a father shouts at his son, 13, 00:09:37.990 --> 00:09:42.940 align:middle line:84% who sobs tightly from the frail shoulders all the way down. 00:09:42.940 --> 00:09:48.250 align:middle line:84% Wood mad, ready to clobber his bigger father. 00:09:48.250 --> 00:09:50.740 align:middle line:90% Oh, yeah, as if. 00:09:50.740 --> 00:09:56.230 align:middle line:84% To live inside a tidy box, wasn't that the idea? 00:09:56.230 --> 00:09:57.790 align:middle line:90% I will shiver. 00:09:57.790 --> 00:10:01.870 align:middle line:84% And the trees have snuck out of their skeletons again. 00:10:01.870 --> 00:10:03.070 align:middle line:90% It's late. 00:10:03.070 --> 00:10:06.190 align:middle line:84% The khaki green of a house across the street 00:10:06.190 --> 00:10:11.800 align:middle line:84% spills from its military square the whole night through. 00:10:11.800 --> 00:10:15.760 align:middle line:84% In the Bluegrass version, Bill Monroe's high whine 00:10:15.760 --> 00:10:20.620 align:middle line:84% mimics the blue and gray edges of wind sawing back and forth 00:10:20.620 --> 00:10:23.320 align:middle line:90% in the deepening gray and pines. 00:10:23.320 --> 00:10:29.650 align:middle line:84% But Cobain's is all black, shriek, an act of erasure. 00:10:29.650 --> 00:10:33.190 align:middle line:84% Someone is rubbing the paper hard, 00:10:33.190 --> 00:10:37.000 align:middle line:90% lead bleeds, the paper tears. 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:39.160 align:middle line:90% No color for that. 00:10:39.160 --> 00:10:43.240 align:middle line:84% My girl, my girl, don't lie to me. 00:10:43.240 --> 00:10:48.640 align:middle line:84% A soft black wind is rubbing out her part in the song. 00:10:48.640 --> 00:10:50.020 align:middle line:90% Poor little girl. 00:10:50.020 --> 00:10:51.820 align:middle line:90% She has no home. 00:10:51.820 --> 00:10:55.540 align:middle line:90% She has no voice but the pines. 00:10:55.540 --> 00:11:01.450 align:middle line:84% The common night hawk lays its eggs on a gravel roof, no nest. 00:11:01.450 --> 00:11:04.180 align:middle line:84% The killdeer burrows in a cinder bed. 00:11:04.180 --> 00:11:08.710 align:middle line:84% Its eggs are spotted, scrawled on, blotched, buff, 00:11:08.710 --> 00:11:11.620 align:middle line:90% and black to look like trash. 00:11:11.620 --> 00:11:15.010 align:middle line:84% I'm going where the cold wind blows. 00:11:15.010 --> 00:11:16.570 align:middle line:90% Who says that? 00:11:16.570 --> 00:11:20.620 align:middle line:84% No one says that mouth less howl. 00:11:20.620 --> 00:11:22.690 align:middle line:90% Where are we going? 00:11:22.690 --> 00:11:26.770 align:middle line:84% Unplug the lights in the houses what becomes of us. 00:11:26.770 --> 00:11:30.580 align:middle line:84% Killdeer may even nest in broken glass between the ties 00:11:30.580 --> 00:11:36.010 align:middle line:84% of railroad tracks still in use, but we unplug our houses, 00:11:36.010 --> 00:11:38.500 align:middle line:90% and how dark do we become? 00:11:38.500 --> 00:11:42.760 align:middle line:84% I can hear the neighbor boy still sobbing madly 00:11:42.760 --> 00:11:45.460 align:middle line:84% onto the breast of the family station wagon." 00:11:45.460 --> 00:11:53.260 align:middle line:90% 00:11:53.260 --> 00:11:55.740 align:middle line:84% I even recognize some of those coughs. 00:11:55.740 --> 00:11:56.240 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:11:56.240 --> 00:11:58.450 align:middle line:90% That's great. 00:11:58.450 --> 00:11:59.260 align:middle line:90% And that left. 00:11:59.260 --> 00:12:02.230 align:middle line:90% 00:12:02.230 --> 00:12:05.860 align:middle line:84% This is the Exam poem that Alison made reference to. 00:12:05.860 --> 00:12:08.690 align:middle line:84% Bill and I lived in Cornwall for about eight months. 00:12:08.690 --> 00:12:13.330 align:middle line:84% And under the theory that going to an idyllically beautiful 00:12:13.330 --> 00:12:14.920 align:middle line:90% place with very few-- 00:12:14.920 --> 00:12:17.980 align:middle line:84% and no 7-Elevens and ancient houses 00:12:17.980 --> 00:12:20.230 align:middle line:84% would make for a really great writing life. 00:12:20.230 --> 00:12:24.310 align:middle line:84% And it did in a way, but one thing that I found 00:12:24.310 --> 00:12:27.190 align:middle line:84% was that without sort of human interaction, 00:12:27.190 --> 00:12:29.963 align:middle line:84% without [AUDIO OUT] and relationships. 00:12:29.963 --> 00:12:32.380 align:middle line:84% There was an element missing, even though I looked forward 00:12:32.380 --> 00:12:33.820 align:middle line:90% to the privacy so much. 00:12:33.820 --> 00:12:36.940 align:middle line:84% And what I found was that human interaction 00:12:36.940 --> 00:12:39.520 align:middle line:84% came in the form of a visit to the gynecologist 00:12:39.520 --> 00:12:44.740 align:middle line:84% that I unexpectedly had to take and out of it came a poetry. 00:12:44.740 --> 00:12:48.160 align:middle line:84% And it was the only thing that enabled me to write-- 00:12:48.160 --> 00:12:52.720 align:middle line:84% the first thing that enabled me to write when we were there. 00:12:52.720 --> 00:12:54.385 align:middle line:90% So this is the poem "Exam." 00:12:54.385 --> 00:12:58.200 align:middle line:90% 00:12:58.200 --> 00:13:01.380 align:middle line:84% "Had any children, the doctor asks? 00:13:01.380 --> 00:13:05.670 align:middle line:90% I say, no and close my lips. 00:13:05.670 --> 00:13:08.040 align:middle line:90% The other half of the answer. 00:13:08.040 --> 00:13:10.800 align:middle line:84% If this were a party, I'd feel I had 00:13:10.800 --> 00:13:14.490 align:middle line:84% to go on, even if the other person hadn't asked, why 00:13:14.490 --> 00:13:18.180 align:middle line:84% not or are you planning on having any? 00:13:18.180 --> 00:13:21.990 align:middle line:84% They feel free to ask and almost always, 00:13:21.990 --> 00:13:26.160 align:middle line:84% I explain something about wanting them, but not enough. 00:13:26.160 --> 00:13:30.300 align:middle line:84% Or how I wish I had two lives and one of them 00:13:30.300 --> 00:13:32.730 align:middle line:90% I'd have by now. 00:13:32.730 --> 00:13:36.870 align:middle line:84% But it's no good; not doing something never 00:13:36.870 --> 00:13:39.900 align:middle line:90% sounds as real as doing it. 00:13:39.900 --> 00:13:44.880 align:middle line:84% I seem to stand in for reserve, my life keeping back 00:13:44.880 --> 00:13:49.200 align:middle line:84% a state of being not in active service. 00:13:49.200 --> 00:13:51.900 align:middle line:84% But I meant to talk here about time, 00:13:51.900 --> 00:13:54.370 align:middle line:84% the way it passes us at different rates. 00:13:54.370 --> 00:13:58.440 align:middle line:84% The two people in the same room, parent and non parent, 00:13:58.440 --> 00:14:02.430 align:middle line:84% or doctor and patient in an examining room, just big enough 00:14:02.430 --> 00:14:06.480 align:middle line:84% for a desk, a table and a curtain between them, 00:14:06.480 --> 00:14:09.060 align:middle line:90% quite a squeeze with a nurse. 00:14:09.060 --> 00:14:12.930 align:middle line:84% For me, the moment has slowed to simple sentences 00:14:12.930 --> 00:14:14.940 align:middle line:90% in present tense. 00:14:14.940 --> 00:14:19.110 align:middle line:90% He asks, I answer, I lie back. 00:14:19.110 --> 00:14:20.850 align:middle line:90% She comes in. 00:14:20.850 --> 00:14:22.320 align:middle line:90% They look inside. 00:14:22.320 --> 00:14:25.260 align:middle line:90% I answer, no one asked. 00:14:25.260 --> 00:14:29.070 align:middle line:84% For him, the moment probably speeds along. 00:14:29.070 --> 00:14:32.340 align:middle line:84% A paragraph of questions, then another paragraph 00:14:32.340 --> 00:14:33.780 align:middle line:90% of looking for the flight. 00:14:33.780 --> 00:14:37.800 align:middle line:84% Then, a paragraph of silent writing down. 00:14:37.800 --> 00:14:41.070 align:middle line:84% This doctor doesn't say much with his face. 00:14:41.070 --> 00:14:43.290 align:middle line:90% I'm worried, he's evasive. 00:14:43.290 --> 00:14:47.100 align:middle line:84% It's his job to stay just out of reach. 00:14:47.100 --> 00:14:49.950 align:middle line:84% And crazily, there comes into my head 00:14:49.950 --> 00:14:54.150 align:middle line:84% a job interview I was on once in a hotel room, a row 00:14:54.150 --> 00:14:56.790 align:middle line:90% of professors sitting on a bed. 00:14:56.790 --> 00:14:59.550 align:middle line:84% One of them smiles and asks me, why 00:14:59.550 --> 00:15:03.210 align:middle line:84% do you think so many fiction writers use the present tense 00:15:03.210 --> 00:15:04.710 align:middle line:90% these days? 00:15:04.710 --> 00:15:07.920 align:middle line:84% Some answer that the teaching job depends on 00:15:07.920 --> 00:15:11.760 align:middle line:84% hangs in a cloud of thought inside his head. 00:15:11.760 --> 00:15:12.840 align:middle line:90% I can't think. 00:15:12.840 --> 00:15:14.970 align:middle line:90% I make something stupid up. 00:15:14.970 --> 00:15:18.660 align:middle line:84% Maybe I should have told him, I was terrified to find myself 00:15:18.660 --> 00:15:19.770 align:middle line:90% in that moment. 00:15:19.770 --> 00:15:23.010 align:middle line:84% Present tense stuck in a simple sentence, 00:15:23.010 --> 00:15:26.580 align:middle line:84% having to ride it out by talking and gesturing, 00:15:26.580 --> 00:15:29.490 align:middle line:84% hearing my voice and my ears, which 00:15:29.490 --> 00:15:33.850 align:middle line:84% sounds like it doesn't know what it thinks it's talking about. 00:15:33.850 --> 00:15:38.550 align:middle line:84% And my hands move awkwardly in the gloves of hands. 00:15:38.550 --> 00:15:41.910 align:middle line:84% I think that man despised the present tense. 00:15:41.910 --> 00:15:45.210 align:middle line:84% And the fiction writers who those days were using it 00:15:45.210 --> 00:15:48.510 align:middle line:84% despise the shortsightedness of the moment. 00:15:48.510 --> 00:15:52.050 align:middle line:84% Any foolish groping in a tiny dark. 00:15:52.050 --> 00:15:56.070 align:middle line:84% I close my eyes and still feel this cold table, 00:15:56.070 --> 00:15:57.900 align:middle line:90% long as my life. 00:15:57.900 --> 00:16:01.260 align:middle line:84% And the doctor is gone except for his gloved hands 00:16:01.260 --> 00:16:06.300 align:middle line:84% and the ice cold unseen instrument holding me open. 00:16:06.300 --> 00:16:10.470 align:middle line:84% Gone the ceiling and walls, just me and the table. 00:16:10.470 --> 00:16:13.590 align:middle line:84% Me inside the top half of my clothes, 00:16:13.590 --> 00:16:17.310 align:middle line:84% bra and over it the blouse, buttoned up to the top 00:16:17.310 --> 00:16:19.410 align:middle line:90% to keep me safe at home. 00:16:19.410 --> 00:16:22.230 align:middle line:84% And the opening of me between my legs, 00:16:22.230 --> 00:16:24.750 align:middle line:84% and the tiny beam of the flashlight he 00:16:24.750 --> 00:16:27.390 align:middle line:90% plays around in me. 00:16:27.390 --> 00:16:29.460 align:middle line:90% He's in the dark too, I guess. 00:16:29.460 --> 00:16:32.190 align:middle line:90% He just moves through it faster. 00:16:32.190 --> 00:16:35.760 align:middle line:84% You're probably fine, but let's have an X-ray, just in case. 00:16:35.760 --> 00:16:38.430 align:middle line:84% Make sure nothing sinister is going on. 00:16:38.430 --> 00:16:41.850 align:middle line:84% He smiled then to soften the sinister 00:16:41.850 --> 00:16:44.550 align:middle line:84% or maybe just downshifting for an instant 00:16:44.550 --> 00:16:47.490 align:middle line:90% into his natural personality. 00:16:47.490 --> 00:16:51.480 align:middle line:84% As for me, I don't understand anything about time. 00:16:51.480 --> 00:16:54.450 align:middle line:84% How it passes from your parents into you, 00:16:54.450 --> 00:16:57.480 align:middle line:84% then into your children if you have any, 00:16:57.480 --> 00:17:00.480 align:middle line:84% or where it goes to if you don't. 00:17:00.480 --> 00:17:03.720 align:middle line:84% Keep me going, Doc, I almost say. 00:17:03.720 --> 00:17:06.359 align:middle line:90% And don't say, but he knows. 00:17:06.359 --> 00:17:10.410 align:middle line:84% And God knows what inwardly, he answers. 00:17:10.410 --> 00:17:12.510 align:middle line:90% Then, his smile vanishes. 00:17:12.510 --> 00:17:14.760 align:middle line:90% It is no longer possible. 00:17:14.760 --> 00:17:16.710 align:middle line:90% He draws the curtain around me. 00:17:16.710 --> 00:17:19.530 align:middle line:84% I put on the bottom half of my clothes, 00:17:19.530 --> 00:17:24.359 align:middle line:84% trying to rustle as little as I can, while on the other side, 00:17:24.359 --> 00:17:28.109 align:middle line:84% he goes and sits down at his desk and writes. 00:17:28.109 --> 00:17:29.520 align:middle line:90% I can hear it. 00:17:29.520 --> 00:17:32.730 align:middle line:90% Another paragraph, my paragraph. 00:17:32.730 --> 00:17:34.395 align:middle line:90% The one I'm rushing through." 00:17:34.395 --> 00:17:46.890 align:middle line:90% 00:17:46.890 --> 00:17:48.960 align:middle line:84% This is another Cornwall poem, and I'm 00:17:48.960 --> 00:17:51.990 align:middle line:84% going to read it for Beckian, because she mentioned it. 00:17:51.990 --> 00:17:56.610 align:middle line:84% The title is stolen I frankly admit from Basho's haiku-- 00:17:56.610 --> 00:17:57.570 align:middle line:90% the chrysanthemum. 00:17:57.570 --> 00:18:00.930 align:middle line:90% It's called "Sad Beauty." 00:18:00.930 --> 00:18:05.040 align:middle line:84% "At twilight when I walk the neighbor's dog through fields 00:18:05.040 --> 00:18:08.760 align:middle line:84% of mangled cow shit blossoms down to the sea, 00:18:08.760 --> 00:18:11.430 align:middle line:90% the bushes jump at our approach. 00:18:11.430 --> 00:18:14.640 align:middle line:84% A hare leaps out and sprints away, 00:18:14.640 --> 00:18:19.440 align:middle line:84% vanished almost before the leap begins to register. 00:18:19.440 --> 00:18:22.630 align:middle line:90% This happens again and again. 00:18:22.630 --> 00:18:27.030 align:middle line:84% And every time it does, I can believe in the changing light, 00:18:27.030 --> 00:18:30.150 align:middle line:90% trust passage is that easy. 00:18:30.150 --> 00:18:35.100 align:middle line:84% Things begin and end in each other wholly and naturally. 00:18:35.100 --> 00:18:40.530 align:middle line:84% Bush to rabbit, rabbit to air and thus, fulfill themselves. 00:18:40.530 --> 00:18:44.250 align:middle line:84% A process with no memory of beginning and end. 00:18:44.250 --> 00:18:46.980 align:middle line:84% But [AUDIO OUT] old gentleman greyhound 00:18:46.980 --> 00:18:50.940 align:middle line:84% knows something still partly rabbit in the air, 00:18:50.940 --> 00:18:55.320 align:middle line:84% tastes or smells some trace of blood or breath, 00:18:55.320 --> 00:18:59.820 align:middle line:84% and yearns against obedience into an even longer, 00:18:59.820 --> 00:19:04.110 align:middle line:84% thinner dog, wanting so hugely to be gone. 00:19:04.110 --> 00:19:07.740 align:middle line:84% He's not so much a dog as a flickering. 00:19:07.740 --> 00:19:10.110 align:middle line:90% Dog that doesn't need a leash. 00:19:10.110 --> 00:19:13.620 align:middle line:84% You can tell he was beaten by somebody habitually. 00:19:13.620 --> 00:19:17.070 align:middle line:84% The way he'll visit suddenly, just there, 00:19:17.070 --> 00:19:20.910 align:middle line:84% having stepped inside your door and standing now 00:19:20.910 --> 00:19:26.070 align:middle line:84% with four white paws exactly on the rug, irresolute, 00:19:26.070 --> 00:19:29.610 align:middle line:84% a glide about to rush back out or stretch 00:19:29.610 --> 00:19:32.760 align:middle line:84% his legs into a lying down that ends 00:19:32.760 --> 00:19:35.400 align:middle line:90% just where your patience ends. 00:19:35.400 --> 00:19:40.230 align:middle line:84% Begins with this dog and ends at such sad beauty. 00:19:40.230 --> 00:19:43.060 align:middle line:84% Basho found it in the morning glory, 00:19:43.060 --> 00:19:45.870 align:middle line:90% even when it's painted badly. 00:19:45.870 --> 00:19:50.280 align:middle line:84% Today, a mist hangs over the world from my cottage window, 00:19:50.280 --> 00:19:54.420 align:middle line:84% Bronze Age stone walls crisscross up and over 00:19:54.420 --> 00:19:57.630 align:middle line:84% the hills, and I wonder where they are taking us: 00:19:57.630 --> 00:19:59.880 align:middle line:90% forward or back? 00:19:59.880 --> 00:20:02.700 align:middle line:84% Curves of the road from Zennor to St. Ives that 00:20:02.700 --> 00:20:06.930 align:middle line:84% show up in the mist are getting nowhere one by one. 00:20:06.930 --> 00:20:09.190 align:middle line:90% No bus on Sunday. 00:20:09.190 --> 00:20:13.740 align:middle line:84% So many people live here without cars, no one getting anywhere. 00:20:13.740 --> 00:20:16.800 align:middle line:84% The story stays exactly where it was 00:20:16.800 --> 00:20:22.560 align:middle line:84% on dreary days 3,000 or 4,000 years ago, the Bronze Age. 00:20:22.560 --> 00:20:26.430 align:middle line:84% Yellow flowers bloom across the moors and shine, 00:20:26.430 --> 00:20:30.630 align:middle line:84% even through mist, as if the sun could force its way to Earth 00:20:30.630 --> 00:20:34.680 align:middle line:84% through dark green, sharp tongued gorse. 00:20:34.680 --> 00:20:37.950 align:middle line:84% A little frightening, that passage into speech. 00:20:37.950 --> 00:20:42.810 align:middle line:84% The yellow not acting docile as it would on sunny days. 00:20:42.810 --> 00:20:44.550 align:middle line:90% Yesterday it was sunny. 00:20:44.550 --> 00:20:47.190 align:middle line:84% From this porch I could see practically 00:20:47.190 --> 00:20:52.440 align:middle line:84% to infinity, where on a hill, a tiny colored cow cut out 00:20:52.440 --> 00:20:55.200 align:middle line:84% exactly with a pair of manicure scissors 00:20:55.200 --> 00:20:58.860 align:middle line:84% grazed on a field of golf course green. 00:20:58.860 --> 00:21:03.300 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, I wonder about those Bronze Age Sundays or days 00:21:03.300 --> 00:21:05.340 align:middle line:90% when nothing helps. 00:21:05.340 --> 00:21:07.800 align:middle line:84% And you know the gale winds and standing 00:21:07.800 --> 00:21:12.960 align:middle line:84% stones are interchangeable, call and response, whisper 00:21:12.960 --> 00:21:14.070 align:middle line:90% and listening. 00:21:14.070 --> 00:21:16.710 align:middle line:84% And you know the ends, the beginning. 00:21:16.710 --> 00:21:20.220 align:middle line:84% A pair of crows atop the first stone wall. 00:21:20.220 --> 00:21:23.460 align:middle line:84% The first and last thing you can see from here. 00:21:23.460 --> 00:21:25.320 align:middle line:84% The intermingling and the passage." 00:21:25.320 --> 00:21:36.870 align:middle line:90% 00:21:36.870 --> 00:21:37.635 align:middle line:90% Let's see. 00:21:37.635 --> 00:21:39.020 align:middle line:90% This is a newer one-- 00:21:39.020 --> 00:21:41.720 align:middle line:84% another neighborhood poem and I ought 00:21:41.720 --> 00:21:45.770 align:middle line:84% to explain that in the midst of a very quiet neighborhood, 00:21:45.770 --> 00:21:48.170 align:middle line:84% there's a school on the corner that 00:21:48.170 --> 00:21:51.290 align:middle line:84% welcomes each day preschool children 00:21:51.290 --> 00:21:55.430 align:middle line:84% and, well, the euphemism, I think is developmentally 00:21:55.430 --> 00:21:56.550 align:middle line:90% disabled adults. 00:21:56.550 --> 00:22:00.530 align:middle line:84% And so you see entourages going past the house 00:22:00.530 --> 00:22:02.930 align:middle line:90% at various times in the day. 00:22:02.930 --> 00:22:05.660 align:middle line:84% And it's a cheery sound, but this one 00:22:05.660 --> 00:22:08.915 align:middle line:84% is observing one of them and it's called "Passing Things." 00:22:08.915 --> 00:22:11.510 align:middle line:90% 00:22:11.510 --> 00:22:14.180 align:middle line:84% "When I hear the sound of someone talking, 00:22:14.180 --> 00:22:16.110 align:middle line:90% I go to the window. 00:22:16.110 --> 00:22:18.500 align:middle line:90% That's how quiet my house is. 00:22:18.500 --> 00:22:21.710 align:middle line:84% Everything-- excuse me, everything holding still 00:22:21.710 --> 00:22:25.610 align:middle line:84% like a rabbit hidden so deep inside itself, 00:22:25.610 --> 00:22:28.790 align:middle line:84% you could miss it trembling at the edge of the lawn, 00:22:28.790 --> 00:22:33.230 align:middle line:84% while outside the rabbit sound goes pretty quietly 00:22:33.230 --> 00:22:34.730 align:middle line:90% about its business. 00:22:34.730 --> 00:22:37.970 align:middle line:84% A house finch singing its tangled string of song 00:22:37.970 --> 00:22:41.630 align:middle line:84% up in one of the many thought cloud trees. 00:22:41.630 --> 00:22:46.100 align:middle line:84% And when a helicopter rips along like a roofer shucking tiles 00:22:46.100 --> 00:22:50.990 align:middle line:84% or a jet unravels a sadness knit of steel wool, 00:22:50.990 --> 00:22:53.450 align:middle line:90% these are passing things. 00:22:53.450 --> 00:22:56.690 align:middle line:84% These are things taken out of a box of stars 00:22:56.690 --> 00:22:59.060 align:middle line:90% and put back again. 00:22:59.060 --> 00:23:02.210 align:middle line:84% The cat across the street like a pale orange ghost 00:23:02.210 --> 00:23:05.990 align:middle line:84% or a puff of smoke drifts in and out of bushes 00:23:05.990 --> 00:23:09.530 align:middle line:84% and stalks the difference between what is private 00:23:09.530 --> 00:23:11.660 align:middle line:90% and what is a secret. 00:23:11.660 --> 00:23:14.420 align:middle line:84% The mole and the 13 lined ground squirrel 00:23:14.420 --> 00:23:18.980 align:middle line:84% tried all night to be secrets, even from themselves. 00:23:18.980 --> 00:23:22.370 align:middle line:84% But sometimes, you have to live in the public eye, which 00:23:22.370 --> 00:23:26.150 align:middle line:84% could be lonely or simply frightening. 00:23:26.150 --> 00:23:31.400 align:middle line:84% A man, a tall man looks back talking over his shoulder 00:23:31.400 --> 00:23:34.970 align:middle line:84% to a woman pushing a baby in a stroller. 00:23:34.970 --> 00:23:39.080 align:middle line:84% But something is wrong with the picture in this coloring book. 00:23:39.080 --> 00:23:44.360 align:middle line:84% No door in a tree trunk or a bird upside down in the sky. 00:23:44.360 --> 00:23:45.320 align:middle line:90% No. 00:23:45.320 --> 00:23:50.960 align:middle line:84% I mean, their pace is erratic, their gestures too wide, free 00:23:50.960 --> 00:23:52.520 align:middle line:90% and open to the public. 00:23:52.520 --> 00:23:55.490 align:middle line:84% The two of them walking single file, 00:23:55.490 --> 00:23:57.890 align:middle line:84% the way he's calling back to her. 00:23:57.890 --> 00:24:02.030 align:middle line:84% And how she [AUDIO OUT] the stroller over a rut and shrieks 00:24:02.030 --> 00:24:07.100 align:middle line:84% lifting the baby, oh, so carefully by its foot. 00:24:07.100 --> 00:24:10.700 align:middle line:84% Then the man stares at me, me at my window, 00:24:10.700 --> 00:24:12.230 align:middle line:90% bringing up the rear. 00:24:12.230 --> 00:24:13.280 align:middle line:90% I see them. 00:24:13.280 --> 00:24:14.660 align:middle line:90% He isn't the father. 00:24:14.660 --> 00:24:16.760 align:middle line:90% The child is a doll. 00:24:16.760 --> 00:24:20.450 align:middle line:84% Its blank eyes and smile and hard cheekbones 00:24:20.450 --> 00:24:22.400 align:middle line:90% preset to happiness. 00:24:22.400 --> 00:24:25.340 align:middle line:84% Its hair spun yellow like the hank 00:24:25.340 --> 00:24:29.240 align:middle line:84% of what fills the room of a fairy tale by morning light. 00:24:29.240 --> 00:24:33.410 align:middle line:90% Once straw, now simmering gold. 00:24:33.410 --> 00:24:38.930 align:middle line:84% She lowers it back down into the stroller as if into bathwater. 00:24:38.930 --> 00:24:43.580 align:middle line:84% And the loud patient voice of the man keeps herding her on, 00:24:43.580 --> 00:24:49.190 align:middle line:84% but no, she stopped and stays stopped as a mother bending 00:24:49.190 --> 00:24:50.900 align:middle line:90% over a stroller. 00:24:50.900 --> 00:24:53.510 align:middle line:84% For all the world to see, she leans 00:24:53.510 --> 00:24:57.650 align:middle line:84% into the task required of a woman attended down 00:24:57.650 --> 00:25:01.100 align:middle line:84% a public street, to tuck the secret in, 00:25:01.100 --> 00:25:03.620 align:middle line:84% to [AUDIO OUT] worthy, to smother it." 00:25:03.620 --> 00:25:08.930 align:middle line:90% 00:25:08.930 --> 00:25:11.330 align:middle line:84% Kalamazoo has three shopping malls. 00:25:11.330 --> 00:25:14.690 align:middle line:84% I don't know how many Tucson has anymore, but two are alive 00:25:14.690 --> 00:25:16.490 align:middle line:90% and one is dead. 00:25:16.490 --> 00:25:17.810 align:middle line:90% Except for a movie theater. 00:25:17.810 --> 00:25:22.190 align:middle line:84% And the only people I really can ever go shopping with 00:25:22.190 --> 00:25:23.570 align:middle line:90% are my mother and sister. 00:25:23.570 --> 00:25:26.280 align:middle line:84% I just can't shop with anybody else in the world. 00:25:26.280 --> 00:25:30.320 align:middle line:84% And so when I go to the malls, I feel all this hope 00:25:30.320 --> 00:25:35.120 align:middle line:84% and I don't know why, but I can't shop with other people. 00:25:35.120 --> 00:25:36.440 align:middle line:90% It's too private somehow. 00:25:36.440 --> 00:25:38.825 align:middle line:90% So this is "Crossroads Mall." 00:25:38.825 --> 00:25:41.418 align:middle line:90% 00:25:41.418 --> 00:25:43.460 align:middle line:84% And you'll recognize some of the stores, I think. 00:25:43.460 --> 00:25:46.340 align:middle line:84% "If I close my eyes, I can picture 00:25:46.340 --> 00:25:48.890 align:middle line:90% how it looks in the dark. 00:25:48.890 --> 00:25:53.450 align:middle line:84% Rustic benches, sunglass, hut, gazebo 00:25:53.450 --> 00:25:57.110 align:middle line:84% of the nape of the neck and bend of the knee. 00:25:57.110 --> 00:26:01.070 align:middle line:84% Pet shop window of kittens draped softly 00:26:01.070 --> 00:26:03.920 align:middle line:84% over and under each other, sleeping 00:26:03.920 --> 00:26:06.890 align:middle line:90% as deep as bedroom slippers. 00:26:06.890 --> 00:26:10.880 align:middle line:84% This is the living mall, the one with the carousel where 00:26:10.880 --> 00:26:14.910 align:middle line:84% in the daytime horses ride, but not up and down. 00:26:14.910 --> 00:26:17.270 align:middle line:84% They just ride around and around. 00:26:17.270 --> 00:26:20.180 align:middle line:90% Happiness put out to pasture. 00:26:20.180 --> 00:26:24.830 align:middle line:84% The faces of the riders are not the faces of children anymore. 00:26:24.830 --> 00:26:28.940 align:middle line:84% This one looks embarrassed, that one looks strained. 00:26:28.940 --> 00:26:31.850 align:middle line:84% But at night in bed, the spookiness 00:26:31.850 --> 00:26:36.950 align:middle line:84% comes back and restores them to themselves and they sleep. 00:26:36.950 --> 00:26:40.370 align:middle line:84% At Abercrombie and Fitch, the mannequin on skis 00:26:40.370 --> 00:26:43.100 align:middle line:90% has Little Orphan Annie eyes. 00:26:43.100 --> 00:26:46.070 align:middle line:84% At the Limited, there are rows of torsos, 00:26:46.070 --> 00:26:50.510 align:middle line:84% sweater girls without their heads, the nipples hard. 00:26:50.510 --> 00:26:53.360 align:middle line:84% On the other side of town is the ghost mall, 00:26:53.360 --> 00:26:58.250 align:middle line:84% the Department of Public Safety, a movie house busy on weekends, 00:26:58.250 --> 00:27:02.540 align:middle line:84% dead on oceanic weekday afternoons, stores 00:27:02.540 --> 00:27:07.340 align:middle line:84% and stores of emptiness and at its epicenter statues: three 00:27:07.340 --> 00:27:11.570 align:middle line:84% women in Grecian drapery, each one as rapt as somebody 00:27:11.570 --> 00:27:12.980 align:middle line:90% who isn't there. 00:27:12.980 --> 00:27:18.170 align:middle line:84% Each head untended, resounding like an empty dare. 00:27:18.170 --> 00:27:22.640 align:middle line:84% Sometimes after a movie, I walk around them in circles, 00:27:22.640 --> 00:27:25.280 align:middle line:84% stand in the path of their forsaken eyes 00:27:25.280 --> 00:27:28.130 align:middle line:90% to sober up from all that dark. 00:27:28.130 --> 00:27:32.060 align:middle line:84% But the mall of the living, the ruin built out of someone's 00:27:32.060 --> 00:27:36.410 align:middle line:84% recovered memory of a castle, parking lot of forgetting all 00:27:36.410 --> 00:27:37.460 align:middle line:90% around it. 00:27:37.460 --> 00:27:41.450 align:middle line:84% I could walk through, up, and back, criss and cross 00:27:41.450 --> 00:27:42.770 align:middle line:90% with my eyes closed. 00:27:42.770 --> 00:27:45.110 align:middle line:84% The crossroads of my days and nights 00:27:45.110 --> 00:27:49.010 align:middle line:84% marked out for me like the lines on my palm. 00:27:49.010 --> 00:27:51.710 align:middle line:84% I ride the escalator down to see my mother 00:27:51.710 --> 00:27:54.260 align:middle line:90% riding up opposite me. 00:27:54.260 --> 00:27:56.540 align:middle line:90% Her face turned away from me. 00:27:56.540 --> 00:27:59.510 align:middle line:90% It is the underside of a leaf. 00:27:59.510 --> 00:28:02.090 align:middle line:84% I hear my sister's voice behind the curtain 00:28:02.090 --> 00:28:05.150 align:middle line:90% of the tabernacle next to mine. 00:28:05.150 --> 00:28:08.960 align:middle line:84% Then in my abode, I clothe my soul in haste 00:28:08.960 --> 00:28:12.620 align:middle line:84% with a pair of jeans and a V-neck tunic sweater. 00:28:12.620 --> 00:28:15.320 align:middle line:84% But when I look in the mirror, it is too late. 00:28:15.320 --> 00:28:19.010 align:middle line:84% I am drowning in it and my sister has departed from me. 00:28:19.010 --> 00:28:22.820 align:middle line:84% Shirts and pants and dresses shed like skins, 00:28:22.820 --> 00:28:25.400 align:middle line:84% and tossed on the little bench, and floating 00:28:25.400 --> 00:28:28.580 align:middle line:84% across the dead seas up a stream to a flood 00:28:28.580 --> 00:28:31.190 align:middle line:84% plain littered with straight pins. 00:28:31.190 --> 00:28:33.560 align:middle line:84% Wherever she has taken her body, it 00:28:33.560 --> 00:28:35.870 align:middle line:84% must be lighter than it was in the instant 00:28:35.870 --> 00:28:39.800 align:middle line:84% ago of our former life, into the ether 00:28:39.800 --> 00:28:43.370 align:middle line:84% into the upper regions of the mall where Christmas lights are 00:28:43.370 --> 00:28:44.420 align:middle line:90% strung. 00:28:44.420 --> 00:28:47.450 align:middle line:84% Maybe she is one of the lights a child cradled 00:28:47.450 --> 00:28:52.490 align:middle line:84% in the arms of Santa looks up at tearily, the face of her mother 00:28:52.490 --> 00:28:55.190 align:middle line:90% snuffed by Santa's beard. 00:28:55.190 --> 00:28:58.550 align:middle line:84% Sometimes I come here just to be a lost mariner, 00:28:58.550 --> 00:29:00.470 align:middle line:90% but I am never lost. 00:29:00.470 --> 00:29:03.770 align:middle line:84% There are the snowflakes frozen to the porthole of a jewelry 00:29:03.770 --> 00:29:04.490 align:middle line:90% store. 00:29:04.490 --> 00:29:08.600 align:middle line:84% Here is the treasure chest open to a single pearl laid 00:29:08.600 --> 00:29:10.430 align:middle line:90% on a velvet slab. 00:29:10.430 --> 00:29:12.800 align:middle line:84% There is the flashing of faces in the eye 00:29:12.800 --> 00:29:16.190 align:middle line:84% and the row of lockers stuffed with the coats and hats 00:29:16.190 --> 00:29:17.840 align:middle line:90% of the drowned. 00:29:17.840 --> 00:29:20.180 align:middle line:84% My mother has picked up one of the kittens 00:29:20.180 --> 00:29:23.420 align:middle line:84% and walks away with it in the crook of her arm. 00:29:23.420 --> 00:29:26.130 align:middle line:84% My sister is trying out the rowing machine, 00:29:26.130 --> 00:29:27.960 align:middle line:90% but she isn't getting anywhere. 00:29:27.960 --> 00:29:30.680 align:middle line:84% And so the only way I will ever find 00:29:30.680 --> 00:29:34.970 align:middle line:84% them is if everyone else holds still and shuts their eyes 00:29:34.970 --> 00:29:37.700 align:middle line:84% and we disappear and it is night. 00:29:37.700 --> 00:29:40.760 align:middle line:84% And the moon rose over the gentle waters 00:29:40.760 --> 00:29:41.720 align:middle line:90% of the parking lot." 00:29:41.720 --> 00:29:44.600 align:middle line:90% 00:29:44.600 --> 00:29:47.120 align:middle line:90% Just read one more. 00:29:47.120 --> 00:29:50.480 align:middle line:84% And this is for and about my brother and sister, 00:29:50.480 --> 00:29:52.670 align:middle line:90% who visited me in Cornwall. 00:29:52.670 --> 00:29:57.650 align:middle line:84% And it's about the fact that we were trying to-- well, we, 00:29:57.650 --> 00:29:59.555 align:middle line:84% in fact, did witness an eclipse of the-- 00:29:59.555 --> 00:30:00.680 align:middle line:90% let's see how does this go. 00:30:00.680 --> 00:30:02.810 align:middle line:84% An eclipse of the moon by the Earth. 00:30:02.810 --> 00:30:06.213 align:middle line:84% So that means that the Earth's shadow covers the moon. 00:30:06.213 --> 00:30:07.880 align:middle line:84% So that when you're looking at the moon, 00:30:07.880 --> 00:30:10.310 align:middle line:84% you're actually looking at your own shadow, basically. 00:30:10.310 --> 00:30:13.520 align:middle line:84% And we're standing there in the pitch dark looking at that 00:30:13.520 --> 00:30:15.110 align:middle line:84% and also trying to find the comet, 00:30:15.110 --> 00:30:17.960 align:middle line:84% which we completely unable to find and so is x'ed out 00:30:17.960 --> 00:30:18.780 align:middle line:90% of the poem. 00:30:18.780 --> 00:30:21.050 align:middle line:90% So I wanted it in there. 00:30:21.050 --> 00:30:25.250 align:middle line:84% And the stone circles that pop up in here 00:30:25.250 --> 00:30:27.860 align:middle line:84% are stone circles that are all over the Cornish Peninsula 00:30:27.860 --> 00:30:32.880 align:middle line:84% that were left from Neolithic times for dubious purposes. 00:30:32.880 --> 00:30:36.110 align:middle line:90% So "Lunar Eclipse." 00:30:36.110 --> 00:30:40.370 align:middle line:84% "Tonight as the merest ghost of us passes over the moon 00:30:40.370 --> 00:30:43.350 align:middle line:84% and washes its face a dirty orange, 00:30:43.350 --> 00:30:47.240 align:middle line:84% we have to try and spot the instant of eclipse. 00:30:47.240 --> 00:30:50.810 align:middle line:84% Though some change moves at the speed of flowers, 00:30:50.810 --> 00:30:53.870 align:middle line:84% not of something counted into the hand. 00:30:53.870 --> 00:30:57.440 align:middle line:84% So maybe all we'll see is all we ever see, 00:30:57.440 --> 00:30:59.900 align:middle line:84% what's happened and is done with us. 00:30:59.900 --> 00:31:02.990 align:middle line:84% Bygones be bygones, hands washed, 00:31:02.990 --> 00:31:05.300 align:middle line:90% period, end of the line. 00:31:05.300 --> 00:31:10.400 align:middle line:84% A copper moon, then a dun moon and a pumpkin moon, fed up 00:31:10.400 --> 00:31:14.790 align:middle line:84% and sickly moons whose parent moon is still a mystery. 00:31:14.790 --> 00:31:17.330 align:middle line:84% We, the puzzled look on its face, 00:31:17.330 --> 00:31:20.870 align:middle line:84% dead seas line to our own faces, deaf 00:31:20.870 --> 00:31:23.150 align:middle line:84% to what stone circles want to ask, 00:31:23.150 --> 00:31:26.960 align:middle line:84% an ancient smile drawn with a stick in the dust. 00:31:26.960 --> 00:31:29.930 align:middle line:84% Our breaths cartoon clouds whispering 00:31:29.930 --> 00:31:32.630 align:middle line:84% Earth, where yellow streetlights are 00:31:32.630 --> 00:31:35.120 align:middle line:84% the dotted lines that hold streets 00:31:35.120 --> 00:31:37.970 align:middle line:90% true to their course all night. 00:31:37.970 --> 00:31:42.380 align:middle line:84% Our voices, one voice high and low tones in the dark, 00:31:42.380 --> 00:31:45.170 align:middle line:84% waking Marcus, the pony at the fence. 00:31:45.170 --> 00:31:48.050 align:middle line:84% Feet shuffling to walk the long way 00:31:48.050 --> 00:31:53.270 align:middle line:84% back to sleep, along the lane beyond the glow of Carbis Bay. 00:31:53.270 --> 00:31:57.830 align:middle line:84% Over the stars, around Knill's Monument and up the tors, 00:31:57.830 --> 00:32:01.160 align:middle line:84% where it will finally be black whether our eyes are 00:32:01.160 --> 00:32:03.380 align:middle line:90% open or closed." 00:32:03.380 --> 00:32:04.340 align:middle line:90% Thanks a lot. 00:32:04.340 --> 00:32:07.690 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:32:07.690 --> 00:32:09.457 align:middle line:90%