WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.780 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.780 --> 00:00:04.230 align:middle line:84% C.K. Williams' books include Lies, 00:00:04.230 --> 00:00:10.620 align:middle line:84% I Am the Bitter Name, With Ignorance, Tar, Flesh and Blood 00:00:10.620 --> 00:00:14.670 align:middle line:84% which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, Selected 00:00:14.670 --> 00:00:19.860 align:middle line:84% Poems, A Dream of Mind, and this year The Vigil, 00:00:19.860 --> 00:00:22.560 align:middle line:90% from which he will read tonight. 00:00:22.560 --> 00:00:26.730 align:middle line:84% In 1990, his translation of Euripides' The Bacchae was 00:00:26.730 --> 00:00:31.050 align:middle line:84% published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. 00:00:31.050 --> 00:00:33.930 align:middle line:84% Among his honors he's received the Morton Dauwen Zabel 00:00:33.930 --> 00:00:36.300 align:middle line:84% Award of the American Academy and Institute 00:00:36.300 --> 00:00:39.960 align:middle line:84% of Arts and Letters, a Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Award, 00:00:39.960 --> 00:00:44.310 align:middle line:84% and the Harriet Monroe Rrize from Poetry magazine. 00:00:44.310 --> 00:00:47.685 align:middle line:84% Tar came out when I was in graduate school. 00:00:47.685 --> 00:00:53.160 align:middle line:84% And it was one of those rare books that's like wildfire 00:00:53.160 --> 00:00:55.200 align:middle line:90% through the community. 00:00:55.200 --> 00:01:01.410 align:middle line:84% I think what excited us most was that his long line and inclusive 00:01:01.410 --> 00:01:04.860 align:middle line:84% sensibility said that anything could 00:01:04.860 --> 00:01:07.680 align:middle line:90% be grist for the poetry mill. 00:01:07.680 --> 00:01:12.210 align:middle line:84% That consciousness could be embodied in poetic form 00:01:12.210 --> 00:01:17.400 align:middle line:84% with a greater authenticity than we had ever imagined. 00:01:17.400 --> 00:01:21.960 align:middle line:84% Gertrude Stein once said that Picasso's gaze was so intense 00:01:21.960 --> 00:01:24.240 align:middle line:84% that after he had looked at something, 00:01:24.240 --> 00:01:29.160 align:middle line:84% she was surprised there was anything left in the room. 00:01:29.160 --> 00:01:32.580 align:middle line:84% After reading Williams' new book, The Vigil, 00:01:32.580 --> 00:01:36.060 align:middle line:84% I have the same feeling about his ability 00:01:36.060 --> 00:01:42.090 align:middle line:84% to study a dramatic moment, an emotion, a blip on the screen 00:01:42.090 --> 00:01:46.860 align:middle line:84% of domestic life, and transform it from mere incident 00:01:46.860 --> 00:01:52.140 align:middle line:84% to a manifestation of resonant inner life. 00:01:52.140 --> 00:01:55.680 align:middle line:84% In an article in APR --87, Williams 00:01:55.680 --> 00:01:57.900 align:middle line:84% wrote these words which I have had posted 00:01:57.900 --> 00:02:01.320 align:middle line:90% in my study for a decade now. 00:02:01.320 --> 00:02:06.660 align:middle line:84% Emotions I hold are in and of themselves neither pure, 00:02:06.660 --> 00:02:10.139 align:middle line:90% spontaneous, nor very clear. 00:02:10.139 --> 00:02:13.380 align:middle line:84% They require a stringent attentiveness 00:02:13.380 --> 00:02:18.660 align:middle line:84% and if the soul is to do justice to their turbulence and furor 00:02:18.660 --> 00:02:23.850 align:middle line:84% without belittling itself, it must indeed be educated, 00:02:23.850 --> 00:02:26.370 align:middle line:90% and rigorously so. 00:02:26.370 --> 00:02:31.200 align:middle line:84% It is my thesis that the most useful method we have devised 00:02:31.200 --> 00:02:34.560 align:middle line:90% for that education is poetry. 00:02:34.560 --> 00:02:36.585 align:middle line:90% Please welcome C.K. Williams. 00:02:36.585 --> 00:02:49.920 align:middle line:90% 00:02:49.920 --> 00:02:53.100 align:middle line:84% It's a pleasure to be back in Tucson. 00:02:53.100 --> 00:02:59.070 align:middle line:84% First time I was in Tucson was with Bruce McGrew and Fox McGrew 00:02:59.070 --> 00:03:02.310 align:middle line:90% in 1963 of all times. 00:03:02.310 --> 00:03:04.770 align:middle line:84% That was before the world was really born. 00:03:04.770 --> 00:03:08.730 align:middle line:90% 00:03:08.730 --> 00:03:13.940 align:middle line:84% The neighbor-- her five horrid, deformed, 00:03:13.940 --> 00:03:19.310 align:middle line:84% little dogs who incessantly yap on the roof under my window; 00:03:19.310 --> 00:03:24.260 align:middle line:84% her cats, God knows how many, who must piss on her rugs, 00:03:24.260 --> 00:03:29.270 align:middle line:84% her landings, a sickening reek; her shadow once, 00:03:29.270 --> 00:03:34.130 align:middle line:84% fumbling the chain on her door, then the door slamming fearfully 00:03:34.130 --> 00:03:37.880 align:middle line:84% shut, only the barking and the music-- 00:03:37.880 --> 00:03:44.880 align:middle line:84% jazz-- filtering, as it does day and night, into the hall. 00:03:44.880 --> 00:03:48.720 align:middle line:84% The time it was Chris Connor singing "Lush Life," how 00:03:48.720 --> 00:03:53.490 align:middle line:84% it brought back my college sweetheart, my first real love, 00:03:53.490 --> 00:03:57.600 align:middle line:84% who, till I left her, played the same record 00:03:57.600 --> 00:04:01.320 align:middle line:84% and, head on my shoulder, hand on my thigh, 00:04:01.320 --> 00:04:05.790 align:middle line:84% sang sweetly along of regrets and depletions 00:04:05.790 --> 00:04:09.600 align:middle line:84% she was too young for, as I was too young, 00:04:09.600 --> 00:04:12.300 align:middle line:90% later, to believe in her pain. 00:04:12.300 --> 00:04:17.750 align:middle line:84% It startled, then bored, then repelled me. 00:04:17.750 --> 00:04:20.600 align:middle line:84% My starting to fancy she'd ended up 00:04:20.600 --> 00:04:22.850 align:middle line:84% in this fire trap in the Village, 00:04:22.850 --> 00:04:25.910 align:middle line:84% that my neighbor was her, my thinking we'd 00:04:25.910 --> 00:04:30.260 align:middle line:84% meet, recognize one another, become friends, that I'd 00:04:30.260 --> 00:04:32.450 align:middle line:90% accomplish a penance. 00:04:32.450 --> 00:04:37.730 align:middle line:84% My seeing her, it wasn't her, at the mailbox. 00:04:37.730 --> 00:04:42.560 align:middle line:84% Gray yellow hair, army pants under a nightgown, 00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:47.540 align:middle line:84% her turning away hiding her ravaged face in her hands 00:04:47.540 --> 00:04:52.520 align:middle line:90% muttering an inappropriate hi. 00:04:52.520 --> 00:04:55.940 align:middle line:84% Sometimes there are frightening goings 00:04:55.940 --> 00:04:59.750 align:middle line:84% on in the stairwell, a man shouting shut up, 00:04:59.750 --> 00:05:02.390 align:middle line:84% the dogs frantically snarling, all 00:05:02.390 --> 00:05:06.110 align:middle line:84% claws scrabbling, then her her voice, 00:05:06.110 --> 00:05:11.840 align:middle line:84% hoarse, harsh, hollow, almost only a tone, incoherent, 00:05:11.840 --> 00:05:16.940 align:middle line:84% a note, a squawk, bone on metal, metal gone molten, 00:05:16.940 --> 00:05:20.150 align:middle line:84% calling them back: come back darlings, 00:05:20.150 --> 00:05:26.630 align:middle line:84% come back dear ones, my sweet angels, come back. 00:05:26.630 --> 00:05:31.040 align:middle line:84% Medea, she was next time I saw her-- sorceress, 00:05:31.040 --> 00:05:36.500 align:middle line:84% tranced, ecstatic, stuck still on the sidewalk, ragged coat 00:05:36.500 --> 00:05:41.840 align:middle line:84% hanging agape, passerbys flowing around her, her mouth torn 00:05:41.840 --> 00:05:45.080 align:middle line:84% suddenly open as though in a scream, 00:05:45.080 --> 00:05:49.610 align:middle line:84% silently, though, as though only in her brain or breast 00:05:49.610 --> 00:05:55.730 align:middle line:84% had it erupted, a cry so pure, practiced, detached, it 00:05:55.730 --> 00:06:01.460 align:middle line:84% had no need of a voice or could no longer bear one. 00:06:01.460 --> 00:06:06.050 align:middle line:84% These invisible links that allure these translations even 00:06:06.050 --> 00:06:08.300 align:middle line:90% of anguish that hold us. 00:06:08.300 --> 00:06:12.680 align:middle line:84% The girl, my old love, the last lost time 00:06:12.680 --> 00:06:15.410 align:middle line:84% I saw her when she came to find me 00:06:15.410 --> 00:06:20.060 align:middle line:84% at a party, her drunkenly stumbling, falling, sprawling, 00:06:20.060 --> 00:06:25.850 align:middle line:84% skirt hiked, eyes veined red, swollen with tears-- 00:06:25.850 --> 00:06:32.390 align:middle line:84% her shame, her dishonor, my ignorant, arrogant coarseness, 00:06:32.390 --> 00:06:37.900 align:middle line:84% my secret pride, my turning away. 00:06:37.900 --> 00:06:42.190 align:middle line:84% Still life on a rooftop, dead trees in barrels, 00:06:42.190 --> 00:06:47.050 align:middle line:84% a bench, broken, dogs, excrement, sky. 00:06:47.050 --> 00:06:49.540 align:middle line:90% What pathways through pain? 00:06:49.540 --> 00:06:52.060 align:middle line:90% What junctures of vulnerability? 00:06:52.060 --> 00:06:54.670 align:middle line:90% What crossings, encounterings? 00:06:54.670 --> 00:06:57.550 align:middle line:84% Too many lives in our lives already. 00:06:57.550 --> 00:07:00.130 align:middle line:90% Too many chances for sorrow. 00:07:00.130 --> 00:07:03.370 align:middle line:90% Too many unaccounted for pasts. 00:07:03.370 --> 00:07:08.620 align:middle line:84% Behold me, the God of frenzied, inexhaustible love 00:07:08.620 --> 00:07:15.480 align:middle line:84% says, rising in bloody splendor behold me. 00:07:15.480 --> 00:07:20.010 align:middle line:84% Her making her way down the littered vestibule stairs 00:07:20.010 --> 00:07:24.630 align:middle line:84% one agonized step at a time, my holding the door, 00:07:24.630 --> 00:07:29.160 align:middle line:84% her crossing the fragmented tiles, faltering at the step 00:07:29.160 --> 00:07:33.750 align:middle line:84% to the street, droning, not looking at me. 00:07:33.750 --> 00:07:35.760 align:middle line:90% Can you help me? 00:07:35.760 --> 00:07:40.680 align:middle line:84% Taking my arm, leaning lightly against me, 00:07:40.680 --> 00:07:45.390 align:middle line:84% her wavering step into the world, her whispering, 00:07:45.390 --> 00:07:50.190 align:middle line:84% "Thanks, love," lightly lightly against me. 00:07:50.190 --> 00:07:56.510 align:middle line:90% 00:07:56.510 --> 00:08:00.560 align:middle line:84% That poem was published in the magazine 00:08:00.560 --> 00:08:04.320 align:middle line:84% and a few weeks later, a week later, 00:08:04.320 --> 00:08:08.180 align:middle line:84% a letter came to the magazine and on the envelope was written, 00:08:08.180 --> 00:08:09.515 align:middle line:90% I'm the woman in the poem. 00:08:09.515 --> 00:08:14.000 align:middle line:90% 00:08:14.000 --> 00:08:19.700 align:middle line:84% And of course we were worried about which woman, 00:08:19.700 --> 00:08:23.230 align:middle line:84% it was my old college sweetheart. 00:08:23.230 --> 00:08:25.510 align:middle line:84% She said, now I know you really loved me. 00:08:25.510 --> 00:08:31.150 align:middle line:90% 00:08:31.150 --> 00:08:35.710 align:middle line:84% Dominion Depression I don't know what 00:08:35.710 --> 00:08:38.350 align:middle line:84% day or year of their secret cycle 00:08:38.350 --> 00:08:41.530 align:middle line:84% this blazing golden afternoon might be, 00:08:41.530 --> 00:08:46.510 align:middle line:84% but out in the field in a shrub, hundreds of pairs of locusts 00:08:46.510 --> 00:08:51.450 align:middle line:84% are locked in a slow sexual seizure. 00:08:51.450 --> 00:08:56.010 align:middle line:84% Hardly more animate than the few leaves they haven't devoured, 00:08:56.010 --> 00:09:01.110 align:middle line:84% they see like a single being, limbs, antennas and wings 00:09:01.110 --> 00:09:03.750 align:middle line:84% all tangled together as intricately 00:09:03.750 --> 00:09:06.660 align:middle line:90% as a layer of neurons. 00:09:06.660 --> 00:09:10.890 align:middle line:84% Always the neat, tight, gazeless helmet, 00:09:10.890 --> 00:09:14.880 align:middle line:84% the exoskeleton burnished like hardened glue, 00:09:14.880 --> 00:09:19.590 align:middle line:84% always the abdomen twitched deftly under or aside 00:09:19.590 --> 00:09:24.390 align:middle line:84% the skilled rider, the skillfully ridden. 00:09:24.390 --> 00:09:28.110 align:middle line:84% One male, though, has somehow severed a leg. 00:09:28.110 --> 00:09:31.860 align:middle line:84% It sways on the spike of a twig like a harp. 00:09:31.860 --> 00:09:36.450 align:middle line:84% He lunges after his female, tilts, falls. 00:09:36.450 --> 00:09:41.880 align:middle line:84% The mass horribly shudders, shifts, realigns. 00:09:41.880 --> 00:09:47.100 align:middle line:84% So dense, so hard, so immersed in their terrible need 00:09:47.100 --> 00:09:51.270 align:middle line:84% to endure, so unlike me but like me. 00:09:51.270 --> 00:09:54.220 align:middle line:90% Why do they seem such a denial? 00:09:54.220 --> 00:10:00.960 align:middle line:84% Why do I feel, if I plunged my hand in among them, I die? 00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:04.650 align:middle line:84% This must be what God thinks, beholding 00:10:04.650 --> 00:10:08.220 align:middle line:84% his ignorant obstinate libidinally maniacal 00:10:08.220 --> 00:10:12.090 align:middle line:84% offspring, wanting to stop them, to keep them 00:10:12.090 --> 00:10:16.830 align:middle line:84% from being so much an image of his impotence or his wit, 00:10:16.830 --> 00:10:20.370 align:middle line:84% how divided he is from his creation. 00:10:20.370 --> 00:10:25.470 align:middle line:84% Even here, near the end, he sees moving towards him 00:10:25.470 --> 00:10:31.230 align:middle line:84% a smaller, sharper, still more gleaming something, extracting 00:10:31.230 --> 00:10:34.890 align:middle line:90% moist matter from a skull. 00:10:34.890 --> 00:10:36.600 align:middle line:90% No more now. 00:10:36.600 --> 00:10:37.770 align:middle line:90% He waits. 00:10:37.770 --> 00:10:43.920 align:middle line:84% fistful of that mute oily crackling crystalline broil, 00:10:43.920 --> 00:10:47.250 align:middle line:84% then he feels at last the cool wing 00:10:47.250 --> 00:10:52.845 align:middle line:84% beat of the innocent void moving in again over the world. 00:10:52.845 --> 00:11:02.870 align:middle line:90% 00:11:02.870 --> 00:11:08.390 align:middle line:84% Instinct, although he's apparently 00:11:08.390 --> 00:11:11.870 align:middle line:84% the youngest (his little Rasta beard is barely 00:11:11.870 --> 00:11:15.830 align:middle line:84% down and feathers) most casually connected, 00:11:15.830 --> 00:11:19.100 align:middle line:84% he hardly glances at the girl he's with. 00:11:19.100 --> 00:11:22.670 align:middle line:84% She might be his wife, half sloshed-- 00:11:22.670 --> 00:11:24.350 align:middle line:90% or more than half-- 00:11:24.350 --> 00:11:29.600 align:middle line:84% on picnic whiskey teenaged father, when his little son-- 00:11:29.600 --> 00:11:33.710 align:middle line:84% two or so-- tumbles from the slide hard enough 00:11:33.710 --> 00:11:36.710 align:middle line:84% to scare himself, hard enough to make him 00:11:36.710 --> 00:11:41.090 align:middle line:84% cry, really cry, not partly cry, not 00:11:41.090 --> 00:11:45.650 align:middle line:84% pretend the fright for what must be some scarce attention, 00:11:45.650 --> 00:11:48.890 align:middle line:84% but really let it out, let loudly be 00:11:48.890 --> 00:11:54.260 align:middle line:84% revealed the fear of having been so close to real fear. 00:11:54.260 --> 00:11:58.100 align:middle line:84% He, the father, knows just how quickly 00:11:58.100 --> 00:12:00.800 align:middle line:84% he should pick the child up, then 00:12:00.800 --> 00:12:05.210 align:middle line:84% how firmly hold it, fit its head into the muscled socket 00:12:05.210 --> 00:12:10.050 align:middle line:84% of his shoulder, rub its back, croon and whisper to it, 00:12:10.050 --> 00:12:14.600 align:middle line:84% and finally pull away a little, about a heads length, looking, 00:12:14.600 --> 00:12:17.600 align:middle line:90% still concerned, into its eyes. 00:12:17.600 --> 00:12:21.920 align:middle line:84% Then smiling broadly, brightly, as though some [AUDIO OUT] 00:12:21.920 --> 00:12:24.740 align:middle line:84% been shared, something of importance, 00:12:24.740 --> 00:12:28.640 align:middle line:84% not dreadful or not very, not at least now 00:12:28.640 --> 00:12:32.270 align:middle line:84% that it's passed, but rather something funny. 00:12:32.270 --> 00:12:33.740 align:middle line:90% Funny, yes. 00:12:33.740 --> 00:12:37.490 align:middle line:84% It was funny, wasn't it, to fall and cry like that. 00:12:37.490 --> 00:12:40.100 align:middle line:84% Though one certainly can understand. 00:12:40.100 --> 00:12:43.820 align:middle line:84% We've all had glimpses of a premonition of the anguish 00:12:43.820 --> 00:12:44.840 align:middle line:90% out there. 00:12:44.840 --> 00:12:47.480 align:middle line:84% You're better now, though, aren't you? 00:12:47.480 --> 00:12:50.130 align:middle line:84% Why don't you go back and try again? 00:12:50.130 --> 00:12:51.230 align:middle line:90% I'll watch you. 00:12:51.230 --> 00:12:53.150 align:middle line:90% Maybe have another drink. 00:12:53.150 --> 00:12:56.150 align:middle line:90% Yes, my son, my love. 00:12:56.150 --> 00:12:58.940 align:middle line:90% I'll go back and be myself now. 00:12:58.940 --> 00:13:02.150 align:middle line:84% You go be the person you are too. 00:13:02.150 --> 00:13:04.760 align:middle line:90% 00:13:04.760 --> 00:13:05.820 align:middle line:90% That's all one sentence. 00:13:05.820 --> 00:13:08.000 align:middle line:84% I felt as though I was reading it all in one breath. 00:13:08.000 --> 00:13:14.340 align:middle line:90% 00:13:14.340 --> 00:13:14.840 align:middle line:90% Secrets. 00:13:14.840 --> 00:13:20.460 align:middle line:90% 00:13:20.460 --> 00:13:22.770 align:middle line:84% I didn't know that the burly, old man who 00:13:22.770 --> 00:13:26.190 align:middle line:84% lived in a small house like the block in Newark 00:13:26.190 --> 00:13:30.900 align:middle line:84% was a high up in the mob on the docks until I was grown 00:13:30.900 --> 00:13:34.530 align:middle line:90% and my father finally told me. 00:13:34.530 --> 00:13:37.410 align:middle line:84% Neither did it enter my mind until too 00:13:37.410 --> 00:13:43.350 align:middle line:84% much later that my superior that year at Neisner's, a dazzlingly 00:13:43.350 --> 00:13:46.740 align:middle line:84% bright Black man, would never in those days 00:13:46.740 --> 00:13:50.530 align:middle line:84% climb out of his mindless stockroom. 00:13:50.530 --> 00:13:54.040 align:middle line:84% The councilman on the take, the girl upstairs 00:13:54.040 --> 00:13:58.690 align:middle line:84% giving free oral sex, the loan sharks and addicts, 00:13:58.690 --> 00:14:00.790 align:middle line:90% it was all news to me. 00:14:00.790 --> 00:14:07.560 align:middle line:84% Do people hide things from me to protect me, do they mistrust me? 00:14:07.560 --> 00:14:12.090 align:middle line:84% Even when Sid Mizraki was found beaten to death in an alley 00:14:12.090 --> 00:14:15.240 align:middle line:90% I didn't hear until years later. 00:14:15.240 --> 00:14:20.310 align:middle line:84% Sid murdered, God, my God, was all I could say. 00:14:20.310 --> 00:14:25.260 align:middle line:84% Poor sad Sidney, poor hard luck Sid! 00:14:25.260 --> 00:14:28.770 align:middle line:84% I hadn't known Sidney that long but I liked him: 00:14:28.770 --> 00:14:33.030 align:middle line:84% plump, awkward, he was gentle, eager to please, 00:14:33.030 --> 00:14:36.000 align:middle line:84% the way unprepossessing people will be. 00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:40.110 align:middle line:84% We played ball, went to Chinatown with the guys. 00:14:40.110 --> 00:14:43.680 align:middle line:84% He had a bleak life, childhood in the streets, 00:14:43.680 --> 00:14:47.610 align:middle line:84% bad education, no women, irrelevant jobs. 00:14:47.610 --> 00:14:51.570 align:middle line:84% In those days he worked for the city, then stopped. 00:14:51.570 --> 00:14:56.400 align:middle line:84% I had no idea of his true tribulations. 00:14:56.400 --> 00:14:59.430 align:middle line:84% As the tale finally found me Sid had 00:14:59.430 --> 00:15:03.960 align:middle line:84% a boss who hated him, rode him, drove him insane, 00:15:03.960 --> 00:15:07.800 align:middle line:84% and Sid one drunk night in a bar bribed 00:15:07.800 --> 00:15:13.220 align:middle line:84% some burglars he knew to kill the creep for him. 00:15:13.220 --> 00:15:17.270 align:middle line:84% I can't conceive how you dream up something like that 00:15:17.270 --> 00:15:20.930 align:middle line:84% or how you'd know people like that but apparently Sid 00:15:20.930 --> 00:15:25.010 align:middle line:84% had access to tax rolls and rich people's addresses 00:15:25.010 --> 00:15:27.710 align:middle line:90% he was willing to trade. 00:15:27.710 --> 00:15:30.740 align:middle line:84% Then suddenly he was transferred, got a friendlier 00:15:30.740 --> 00:15:35.790 align:middle line:84% boss, forgot the whole witless affair, but a year or so later, 00:15:35.790 --> 00:15:39.410 align:middle line:84% the thieves were caught and as part of their plea bargain 00:15:39.410 --> 00:15:41.120 align:middle line:90% sold Sid. 00:15:41.120 --> 00:15:43.670 align:middle line:84% He got off with probation but was 00:15:43.670 --> 00:15:47.990 align:middle line:84% fired, of course and who'd hire him with that record. 00:15:47.990 --> 00:15:51.170 align:middle line:84% He worked as a bartender, went on relief, 00:15:51.170 --> 00:15:56.360 align:middle line:84% drifted got into drugs, some small time dealing then he 00:15:56.360 --> 00:16:00.230 align:middle line:84% married the plainest woman on Earth someone told me, 00:16:00.230 --> 00:16:04.460 align:middle line:84% but soon was divorced, more drugs, more dealing, 00:16:04.460 --> 00:16:07.580 align:middle line:84% runs in with cops, then his unthinkable 00:16:07.580 --> 00:16:10.930 align:middle line:90% Cavalry in that alley. 00:16:10.930 --> 00:16:15.850 align:middle line:84% It was never established who did it or why; no one but me 00:16:15.850 --> 00:16:18.220 align:middle line:90% was surprised it had happened. 00:16:18.220 --> 00:16:22.600 align:middle line:84% A bum found him bleeding, broken, inert. 00:16:22.600 --> 00:16:28.180 align:middle line:84% A friend from before said his torments are over. 00:16:28.180 --> 00:16:30.490 align:middle line:90% Well Sid what now? 00:16:30.490 --> 00:16:34.300 align:middle line:84% Shall I sing for you, celebrate some truth? 00:16:34.300 --> 00:16:38.380 align:middle line:84% Here's truth: add up what you didn't know, friend, 00:16:38.380 --> 00:16:43.520 align:middle line:84% and I don't, and you might have one conscious person. 00:16:43.520 --> 00:16:49.120 align:middle line:84% No, this has nothing to do with your omissions or sins or failed 00:16:49.120 --> 00:16:54.100 align:middle line:84% rectifications but mine: to come so close to a life 00:16:54.100 --> 00:16:56.830 align:middle line:84% and not comprehend it, acknowledge 00:16:56.830 --> 00:16:59.690 align:middle line:90% it, truly know it is life. 00:16:59.690 --> 00:17:02.440 align:middle line:84% How can I feel so clearly the shudder 00:17:02.440 --> 00:17:06.970 align:middle line:84% of blows, even the blessed oblivion breaking on you, 00:17:06.970 --> 00:17:11.859 align:middle line:84% and not really grasp what you were in yourself, to yourself? 00:17:11.859 --> 00:17:15.280 align:middle line:90% What secrets sustained you? 00:17:15.280 --> 00:17:20.380 align:middle line:84% So for once I know something: that if anyone's soul should 00:17:20.380 --> 00:17:24.190 align:middle line:90% be singing, Sidney, it's yours. 00:17:24.190 --> 00:17:29.950 align:middle line:84% Poor poet, you tell me, poor sheltered creature: 00:17:29.950 --> 00:17:34.015 align:middle line:84% if you can't open your eyes at least stay still. 00:17:34.015 --> 00:17:39.340 align:middle line:90% 00:17:39.340 --> 00:17:41.230 align:middle line:90% It is true that thing about-- 00:17:41.230 --> 00:17:43.920 align:middle line:84% some people-- I was talking with somebody 00:17:43.920 --> 00:17:45.670 align:middle line:84% about that the other day and something had 00:17:45.670 --> 00:17:49.510 align:middle line:84% been hidden from me again and it was something rather unpleasant. 00:17:49.510 --> 00:17:51.550 align:middle line:84% And I said, well, maybe it's not so bad to have 00:17:51.550 --> 00:17:55.200 align:middle line:90% some things hidden from you. 00:17:55.200 --> 00:17:57.330 align:middle line:84% But I don't quite know why it happens to me. 00:17:57.330 --> 00:18:06.760 align:middle line:90% 00:18:06.760 --> 00:18:10.240 align:middle line:84% This is a poem about the death of my mother 00:18:10.240 --> 00:18:11.990 align:middle line:90% for the death of my mother. 00:18:11.990 --> 00:18:13.405 align:middle line:90% My mother died two years ago. 00:18:13.405 --> 00:18:16.337 align:middle line:90% 00:18:16.337 --> 00:18:17.170 align:middle line:90% It's called "Grief." 00:18:17.170 --> 00:18:20.260 align:middle line:90% 00:18:20.260 --> 00:18:25.510 align:middle line:84% Gone now after the days of desperate unconscious gasping, 00:18:25.510 --> 00:18:29.600 align:middle line:84% the reflexive staying alive, tumorous lungs. 00:18:29.600 --> 00:18:33.790 align:middle line:84% tumorous blood, ruined, tumorous liver demanding 00:18:33.790 --> 00:18:38.080 align:middle line:84% to live, to go on, even the innocent bladder, 00:18:38.080 --> 00:18:44.200 align:middle line:84% its tense dull golden coin in the slack translucent bag. 00:18:44.200 --> 00:18:49.450 align:middle line:84% Gone now after the months of scanning, medication, nausea, 00:18:49.450 --> 00:18:54.400 align:middle line:84% hair loss and weight loss, remission, partial remission, 00:18:54.400 --> 00:19:00.400 align:middle line:84% gratitude, hope, lost hope, anxiety, anger, confusion, 00:19:00.400 --> 00:19:05.410 align:middle line:84% the hours and days of everyday life something like life 00:19:05.410 --> 00:19:08.440 align:middle line:90% but only as dying is like life. 00:19:08.440 --> 00:19:11.380 align:middle line:84% Gone the quiet at the end of dying, 00:19:11.380 --> 00:19:14.560 align:middle line:84% the mouth caught agape on its last bite 00:19:14.560 --> 00:19:18.190 align:middle line:84% at a breath, bare skull with its baby 00:19:18.190 --> 00:19:20.780 align:middle line:84% like growth of new hair thrown back 00:19:20.780 --> 00:19:23.740 align:middle line:90% to open the terrified larynx. 00:19:23.740 --> 00:19:27.580 align:middle line:84% The flesh given way but still of the world, 00:19:27.580 --> 00:19:32.680 align:middle line:84% lost but still in the world with the living, my hand on her face, 00:19:32.680 --> 00:19:36.880 align:middle line:84% on her brow, the sphere of her skull, her arm 00:19:36.880 --> 00:19:42.130 align:middle line:84% so thin, so wasted, gone, yet of us and with us, 00:19:42.130 --> 00:19:47.500 align:middle line:84% a person, not yet mere dream or imagination, then 00:19:47.500 --> 00:19:53.950 align:middle line:84% gone wholly under the Earth, cold Earth, cold grasses, 00:19:53.950 --> 00:19:58.930 align:middle line:84% cold winter wind, freezing eternity, cold forever. 00:19:58.930 --> 00:20:01.750 align:middle line:90% 00:20:01.750 --> 00:20:03.760 align:middle line:90% Is this grief? 00:20:03.760 --> 00:20:06.460 align:middle line:90% Tears took me, then seized. 00:20:06.460 --> 00:20:10.420 align:middle line:84% The wish to die, too, may have fled through me, 00:20:10.420 --> 00:20:13.900 align:middle line:84% but not more than with any moment's despair, 00:20:13.900 --> 00:20:19.030 align:middle line:84% the old surging wish to be freed, finished. 00:20:19.030 --> 00:20:22.780 align:middle line:84% I feel pain, pain for her, pain for her 00:20:22.780 --> 00:20:26.230 align:middle line:84% having to know she was going, that we must, 00:20:26.230 --> 00:20:29.350 align:middle line:84% pain for the pain of my daughter and son, 00:20:29.350 --> 00:20:33.970 align:middle line:84% for my wife, whose despair for her own mother returned, 00:20:33.970 --> 00:20:39.670 align:middle line:84% pain for all human beings who know they will go and still go 00:20:39.670 --> 00:20:43.990 align:middle line:84% as though they knew nothing, even pain for myself, 00:20:43.990 --> 00:20:51.040 align:middle line:84% my intention, my fear of stories never begun, now never ending. 00:20:51.040 --> 00:20:55.360 align:middle line:84% But, still, is this grief, waking too early, 00:20:55.360 --> 00:20:59.950 align:middle line:84% tiring too quickly, distracted, impatient, abrupt, 00:20:59.950 --> 00:21:03.760 align:middle line:84% but still waking, still thinking and working? 00:21:03.760 --> 00:21:05.760 align:middle line:90% Is this what grief is? 00:21:05.760 --> 00:21:08.170 align:middle line:90% Is this sorrow enough? 00:21:08.170 --> 00:21:09.850 align:middle line:90% I go to the mirror. 00:21:09.850 --> 00:21:14.560 align:middle line:84% Someone who might have once felt something merely regards me: 00:21:14.560 --> 00:21:18.820 align:middle line:84% eyes telling nothing, mouth saying nothing, nothing 00:21:18.820 --> 00:21:23.110 align:middle line:84% reflected but the things of the world, nothing told, 00:21:23.110 --> 00:21:27.310 align:middle line:84% not of any weeks, no, already 10 days now, 00:21:27.310 --> 00:21:30.130 align:middle line:90% any 10 days' normal doings. 00:21:30.130 --> 00:21:32.980 align:middle line:84% Shouldn't the face evidence anguish? 00:21:32.980 --> 00:21:37.150 align:middle line:84% Shouldn't its loving sadness and loss be revealed? 00:21:37.150 --> 00:21:40.480 align:middle line:84% Ineffable, vague, elusive, uncertain, 00:21:40.480 --> 00:21:44.740 align:middle line:84% distracted, shouldn't grief have a form of its own, 00:21:44.740 --> 00:21:49.930 align:middle line:84% and shouldn't mind know past its vague uncertain distraction 00:21:49.930 --> 00:21:52.090 align:middle line:90% the sureness of sorrow? 00:21:52.090 --> 00:21:56.890 align:middle line:84% Shouldn't soul flinch, as we're taught proper souls are supposed 00:21:56.890 --> 00:21:59.650 align:middle line:90% to, in reverence and fear? 00:21:59.650 --> 00:22:02.800 align:middle line:84% Shouldn't grief be pure and complete, 00:22:02.800 --> 00:22:08.740 align:middle line:84% reshaping the world in itself, in grief for itself? 00:22:08.740 --> 00:22:14.110 align:middle line:84% 80, dying in bed, tubes in her chest, 00:22:14.110 --> 00:22:17.050 align:middle line:84% my mother puts on her morning makeup, 00:22:17.050 --> 00:22:20.470 align:middle line:84% the broad death strokes of foundation, 00:22:20.470 --> 00:22:25.720 align:middle line:84% the blended-in rouge, powder, eye shadow, lipstick, 00:22:25.720 --> 00:22:27.910 align:middle line:84% that concentration with which you 00:22:27.910 --> 00:22:34.120 align:middle line:84% must gaze at yourself, that ravenous, unfaltering focus. 00:22:34.120 --> 00:22:36.850 align:middle line:84% Grief, for my mother, for whatever 00:22:36.850 --> 00:22:41.530 align:middle line:84% she thought her face had to be to be made every morning, 00:22:41.530 --> 00:22:45.430 align:middle line:84% grief for my mother-in-law and her last declining, 00:22:45.430 --> 00:22:48.880 align:middle line:84% destroying dementia, getting it wrong, 00:22:48.880 --> 00:22:53.230 align:middle line:84% the thick ropes of rouge, garish, green paint on her lips, 00:22:53.230 --> 00:22:56.740 align:middle line:90% mad, misplaced slash of mascara. 00:22:56.740 --> 00:23:00.070 align:middle line:84% Grief for all women's faces, applied, 00:23:00.070 --> 00:23:05.020 align:middle line:84% created, trying to manifest what the soul seeks to be, 00:23:05.020 --> 00:23:10.240 align:middle line:84% grief for the faces of all human beings, our own faces telling us 00:23:10.240 --> 00:23:15.460 align:middle line:84% so much and no more, offering pain to all who behold them, 00:23:15.460 --> 00:23:20.870 align:middle line:84% but which when they turn to themselves petrify, pose. 00:23:20.870 --> 00:23:24.800 align:middle line:84% Grief for the faces of adults who must gaze in their eyes 00:23:24.800 --> 00:23:28.520 align:middle line:84% deeply so as not to glimpse death and grief 00:23:28.520 --> 00:23:32.120 align:middle line:84% for the young who see only their own relentless 00:23:32.120 --> 00:23:34.700 align:middle line:90% and grievous longing for love. 00:23:34.700 --> 00:23:38.000 align:middle line:84% Grief for my own eyes that try to seek 00:23:38.000 --> 00:23:45.910 align:middle line:84% truth even of pain, of grief, but find only approximation. 00:23:45.910 --> 00:23:51.940 align:middle line:84% My face beneath your face, face of grief, countenance of loss, 00:23:51.940 --> 00:23:57.430 align:middle line:84% of fear, irrevocable extinction, matrix laid upon matrix, 00:23:57.430 --> 00:24:03.130 align:middle line:84% mystery on mystery, guise upon guise, semblance, effigy, 00:24:03.130 --> 00:24:04.510 align:middle line:90% likeness. 00:24:04.510 --> 00:24:07.840 align:middle line:84% Oh, to put the face of grief on in the morning-- 00:24:07.840 --> 00:24:12.400 align:middle line:84% the tinting, smoothing, shining, and shaping, and at the end 00:24:12.400 --> 00:24:15.730 align:middle line:84% of the day to remove it, detach it, 00:24:15.730 --> 00:24:19.120 align:middle line:90% emerge from the sorrowful mask. 00:24:19.120 --> 00:24:22.720 align:middle line:84% Stripped, now, of its raiment, the mouth, 00:24:22.720 --> 00:24:25.600 align:middle line:84% caught in its last labored breath, 00:24:25.600 --> 00:24:30.580 align:middle line:84% finds last resolution, all the flesh now stripped 00:24:30.580 --> 00:24:35.560 align:middle line:84% of its guises, moved towards its face in the peace of the Earth, 00:24:35.560 --> 00:24:39.550 align:middle line:84% grief for the Earth, accepting the grief of the flesh 00:24:39.550 --> 00:24:42.760 align:middle line:84% and the grief of our grieving forever, grief 00:24:42.760 --> 00:24:45.790 align:middle line:84% for the flesh and the body and face, 00:24:45.790 --> 00:24:50.350 align:middle line:84% for the eyes that can see only into the world and the mind that 00:24:50.350 --> 00:24:53.350 align:middle line:84% can only think and feel what the world gives 00:24:53.350 --> 00:24:55.450 align:middle line:90% it to think and to feel. 00:24:55.450 --> 00:25:00.820 align:middle line:84% Grief of the mind gone, the flesh gone, the imperfect pain 00:25:00.820 --> 00:25:04.090 align:middle line:84% that must stay for its moment, and grief 00:25:04.090 --> 00:25:07.270 align:middle line:84% for the moment, its partial beauties, 00:25:07.270 --> 00:25:12.340 align:middle line:84% its imperfect affections, all severed, all torn. 00:25:12.340 --> 00:25:21.950 align:middle line:90% 00:25:21.950 --> 00:25:26.620 align:middle line:84% I'll read some shorter, softer poems. 00:25:26.620 --> 00:25:30.500 align:middle line:90% It's a series called "Symbols." 00:25:30.500 --> 00:25:33.350 align:middle line:90% The first one is "Wind." 00:25:33.350 --> 00:25:34.550 align:middle line:90% Night. 00:25:34.550 --> 00:25:39.650 align:middle line:84% A wildly lashing deluge driving in great gusts over the blind 00:25:39.650 --> 00:25:43.820 align:middle line:84% defeated fields, the usually stoical larches 00:25:43.820 --> 00:25:47.690 align:middle line:84% and pines only the mewling of their suddenly malleable 00:25:47.690 --> 00:25:49.160 align:middle line:90% branches. 00:25:49.160 --> 00:25:52.160 align:middle line:84% A wind like a knife that never ceased 00:25:52.160 --> 00:25:57.170 align:middle line:84% shrieking except during the stunning volleys of thunder. 00:25:57.170 --> 00:26:02.450 align:middle line:84% By morning 100 pullets in the hen house had massed in a corner 00:26:02.450 --> 00:26:06.440 align:middle line:84% and smothered, an inert intricate structure 00:26:06.440 --> 00:26:10.010 align:middle line:84% of dulled iridescence and still distracted, 00:26:10.010 --> 00:26:13.820 align:middle line:84% still frenzied eyes, the vivid sapphire 00:26:13.820 --> 00:26:20.120 align:middle line:84% of daybreak tainted by a vaporous, gorge swelling fetor. 00:26:20.120 --> 00:26:23.900 align:middle line:84% The tribe of survivors compulsively hammered 00:26:23.900 --> 00:26:28.070 align:middle line:84% their angular faces as usual into the trough: 00:26:28.070 --> 00:26:31.010 align:middle line:84% nothing in the world, they were saying, 00:26:31.010 --> 00:26:35.510 align:middle line:84% not carnage or dissolution, can bear reflection. 00:26:35.510 --> 00:26:39.150 align:middle line:84% The simplest acts of being, they were saying, 00:26:39.150 --> 00:26:41.120 align:middle line:90% can obliterate all-- 00:26:41.120 --> 00:26:45.883 align:middle line:90% all madness, all mourning. 00:26:45.883 --> 00:26:47.300 align:middle line:84% It's funny that's an image, that's 00:26:47.300 --> 00:26:50.840 align:middle line:84% something happened to me when I was probably about 11. 00:26:50.840 --> 00:26:54.800 align:middle line:84% And I started thinking of a way to write about it. 00:26:54.800 --> 00:26:58.910 align:middle line:84% As soon as I started writing, I knew that it was something 00:26:58.910 --> 00:27:00.650 align:middle line:84% that I wanted to do something with 00:27:00.650 --> 00:27:03.290 align:middle line:84% and it took decades and decades before I 00:27:03.290 --> 00:27:07.335 align:middle line:90% could make it shape itself. 00:27:07.335 --> 00:27:08.210 align:middle line:90% This is called "Owl." 00:27:08.210 --> 00:27:10.790 align:middle line:90% 00:27:10.790 --> 00:27:13.430 align:middle line:84% The just fledged baby owl a waiter 00:27:13.430 --> 00:27:17.420 align:middle line:84% has captured under a tree near the island restaurant 00:27:17.420 --> 00:27:22.670 align:middle line:84% seems strangely unfazed to be on display on a Formica table, 00:27:22.670 --> 00:27:27.260 align:middle line:84% though she tilts ludicrously, all her weight on one leg, 00:27:27.260 --> 00:27:32.640 align:middle line:84% as though she had merely paused in her lift towards departure. 00:27:32.640 --> 00:27:35.420 align:middle line:84% Immobile except for her constantly 00:27:35.420 --> 00:27:39.710 align:middle line:84% swiveling head she unpredictably fixes her gaze, 00:27:39.710 --> 00:27:45.470 align:middle line:84% clicking from one far focus to another: sea, tree, sky, 00:27:45.470 --> 00:27:50.420 align:middle line:84% sometimes, it seems, even star, but never on hand or eye, 00:27:50.420 --> 00:27:56.670 align:middle line:84% no matter how all in the circle around her chirp and cajole. 00:27:56.670 --> 00:27:58.860 align:middle line:90% Thus the gods once. 00:27:58.860 --> 00:28:02.880 align:middle line:84% Thus still perhaps gods: that scrutiny 00:28:02.880 --> 00:28:06.840 align:middle line:84% densely grained as the rotation calibrated 00:28:06.840 --> 00:28:12.870 align:middle line:84% on chromium bearings, dilation, contraction, wrath, disdain, 00:28:12.870 --> 00:28:16.560 align:middle line:84% and remove, but oh to be slipping 00:28:16.560 --> 00:28:21.990 align:middle line:84% ever backwards in time, the savage memories, the withheld 00:28:21.990 --> 00:28:24.330 align:middle line:90% cry. 00:28:24.330 --> 00:28:30.570 align:middle line:84% That takes place in Greece and of course in Greece Athena, 00:28:30.570 --> 00:28:33.690 align:middle line:84% her symbol is the owl and that's how 00:28:33.690 --> 00:28:35.910 align:middle line:90% the poem sort of came together. 00:28:35.910 --> 00:28:38.160 align:middle line:84% Little secrets of the depths there. 00:28:38.160 --> 00:28:42.060 align:middle line:90% 00:28:42.060 --> 00:28:45.060 align:middle line:84% "Dog"-- they're all little series 00:28:45.060 --> 00:28:47.730 align:middle line:84% of poems that take one little image like that 00:28:47.730 --> 00:28:49.520 align:middle line:84% and then try to do something with it. 00:28:49.520 --> 00:28:50.460 align:middle line:90% "Dog." 00:28:50.460 --> 00:28:56.040 align:middle line:84% Howl after pitiful, aching howl, an enormous, efficiently 00:28:56.040 --> 00:28:59.580 align:middle line:84% muscular Doberman Pinscher has trapped itself 00:28:59.580 --> 00:29:04.710 align:middle line:84% in an old-fashioned phone booth, the door closed firmly upon it. 00:29:04.710 --> 00:29:07.710 align:middle line:84% But when someone approaches to try to [AUDIO OUT] it, 00:29:07.710 --> 00:29:10.710 align:middle line:90% the howl quickens and descends. 00:29:10.710 --> 00:29:15.690 align:middle line:84% And if someone in pity dares anyway lean on and crack open 00:29:15.690 --> 00:29:19.590 align:middle line:84% and inch the obstinate hinge, the quickened howl 00:29:19.590 --> 00:29:23.070 align:middle line:84% is a snarl, the snarl of blade lathed 00:29:23.070 --> 00:29:25.530 align:middle line:84% and the scarlet gape of the gullet. 00:29:25.530 --> 00:29:30.510 align:middle line:84% And the creature powers itself towards that sinister slit, 00:29:30.510 --> 00:29:34.920 align:middle line:84% eyes flattened, fangs flashing, the way, 00:29:34.920 --> 00:29:39.480 align:middle line:84% caught in the deepest, most unknowing cell of itself, 00:29:39.480 --> 00:29:45.090 align:middle line:84% heart's secret, heart's wound, decorous usually, seemly, 00:29:45.090 --> 00:29:50.970 align:middle line:84% though starving now, desperate, will turn, nonetheless, raging, 00:29:50.970 --> 00:29:57.120 align:middle line:84% ready to kill or die to stay where it is, to maintain itself 00:29:57.120 --> 00:29:58.800 align:middle line:90% just as it is-- 00:29:58.800 --> 00:30:00.410 align:middle line:90% decorous, seemly. 00:30:00.410 --> 00:30:04.550 align:middle line:90% 00:30:04.550 --> 00:30:07.190 align:middle line:90% "Fire." 00:30:07.190 --> 00:30:09.950 align:middle line:84% The plaster had been burnt from the studs. 00:30:09.950 --> 00:30:15.800 align:middle line:84% 2 by 4 joists were eaten with char, ceiling smoke blackened, 00:30:15.800 --> 00:30:21.770 align:middle line:84% glass fragments and foul soaked rags of old rug underfoot. 00:30:21.770 --> 00:30:24.260 align:middle line:84% Even the paint on the outside brick 00:30:24.260 --> 00:30:29.510 align:middle line:84% had bubbled and scabbed and blistered and melted away. 00:30:29.510 --> 00:30:32.060 align:middle line:84% Though the fire was ostensibly out, 00:30:32.060 --> 00:30:36.110 align:middle line:84% smoke still drifted up through cracks in the floor 00:30:36.110 --> 00:30:39.530 align:middle line:84% and sometimes a window sill or a door frame 00:30:39.530 --> 00:30:45.170 align:middle line:84% would erupt in pale insidious flames, subtle in the darkness, 00:30:45.170 --> 00:30:49.760 align:middle line:84% their malignancies masked in blushes of temperate violet 00:30:49.760 --> 00:30:52.070 align:middle line:90% and rose. 00:30:52.070 --> 00:30:54.320 align:middle line:90% Like love, it was. 00:30:54.320 --> 00:30:57.860 align:middle line:84% Love ill and soiled like offend-- 00:30:57.860 --> 00:31:03.530 align:middle line:84% affection, affinity, passion misused and consumed, 00:31:03.530 --> 00:31:08.150 align:middle line:84% warmth betrayed, patience exhausted, distorted, 00:31:08.150 --> 00:31:12.740 align:middle line:84% all evidence of kindness now unkindness, 00:31:12.740 --> 00:31:15.980 align:middle line:84% still the hulk, the gutted carcass, 00:31:15.980 --> 00:31:22.940 align:middle line:84% fuming ash and ember misery and shame. 00:31:22.940 --> 00:31:26.160 align:middle line:84% The way that one was written was that when I was a young poet 00:31:26.160 --> 00:31:28.340 align:middle line:84% and one did things like this I was walking 00:31:28.340 --> 00:31:31.550 align:middle line:90% by a building that was on fire. 00:31:31.550 --> 00:31:33.980 align:middle line:84% And the firemen were all there putting out the fire; 00:31:33.980 --> 00:31:36.710 align:middle line:84% it was a row house in Philadelphia. 00:31:36.710 --> 00:31:40.670 align:middle line:84% And I just walked in, I thought that's the kind of thing 00:31:40.670 --> 00:31:44.030 align:middle line:84% I thought you're supposed to do if you're a poet. 00:31:44.030 --> 00:31:46.550 align:middle line:84% And I walked in and I just wandered through the house 00:31:46.550 --> 00:31:48.770 align:middle line:84% and the firemen obviously thought that there was 00:31:48.770 --> 00:31:51.290 align:middle line:90% some reason for my being there. 00:31:51.290 --> 00:31:54.110 align:middle line:84% And I was gathering the images for this poem that 00:31:54.110 --> 00:31:56.525 align:middle line:90% happened a long time later. 00:31:56.525 --> 00:31:59.480 align:middle line:90% 00:31:59.480 --> 00:32:02.000 align:middle line:90% "Wig." 00:32:02.000 --> 00:32:05.270 align:middle line:84% The bus that won't arrive this freezing bleak pre 00:32:05.270 --> 00:32:08.990 align:middle line:84% Sabbath afternoon must be Messiah. 00:32:08.990 --> 00:32:14.240 align:middle line:84% The be-wigged woman pacing the sidewalk, furious, seething, 00:32:14.240 --> 00:32:18.030 align:middle line:84% can be only the mystic Shekinah, the presence of God 00:32:18.030 --> 00:32:24.140 align:middle line:84% torn from Godhead, chagrined, abandoned, longing to rejoin, 00:32:24.140 --> 00:32:25.940 align:middle line:90% reunite. 00:32:25.940 --> 00:32:29.270 align:middle line:84% The husband and his beard and black hat 00:32:29.270 --> 00:32:31.820 align:middle line:84% pushing a stroller a step behind her 00:32:31.820 --> 00:32:35.780 align:middle line:84% as she stalks the human spirit which 00:32:35.780 --> 00:32:40.250 align:middle line:84% must slog through such degrading tracks of slush and street 00:32:40.250 --> 00:32:43.430 align:middle line:84% filth, bound forever to its other 00:32:43.430 --> 00:32:46.340 align:middle line:84% no matter how incensed she may be, 00:32:46.340 --> 00:32:50.450 align:middle line:90% how obliviously self-absorbed. 00:32:50.450 --> 00:32:56.780 align:middle line:84% And the child asleep, serene, uncaring, and the crank and roar 00:32:56.780 --> 00:33:02.360 align:middle line:84% of traffic, his cheeks afire, ladders of snowy light leaping 00:33:02.360 --> 00:33:08.870 align:middle line:84% and swirling above him, is what else but psyche, holy psyche, 00:33:08.870 --> 00:33:14.300 align:middle line:84% always only now just born, always only now 00:33:14.300 --> 00:33:19.690 align:middle line:84% just waking to the ancient truths of knowledge, suffering, 00:33:19.690 --> 00:33:20.190 align:middle line:90% loss. 00:33:20.190 --> 00:33:24.730 align:middle line:90% 00:33:24.730 --> 00:33:26.140 align:middle line:90% The next one is called "Garden." 00:33:26.140 --> 00:33:27.925 align:middle line:84% It's a little different from the rest. 00:33:27.925 --> 00:33:30.730 align:middle line:90% 00:33:30.730 --> 00:33:34.080 align:middle line:84% A garden I usually never would visit-- 00:33:34.080 --> 00:33:37.590 align:middle line:90% oaks, roses, the scent of roses. 00:33:37.590 --> 00:33:40.290 align:middle line:84% I usually wouldn't remark, but do 00:33:40.290 --> 00:33:45.540 align:middle line:84% now, in a moment, for no reason, suddenly unlike any other-- 00:33:45.540 --> 00:33:51.090 align:middle line:84% numinous, limpid, abundant, whose serenity lifts and enfolds 00:33:51.090 --> 00:33:57.470 align:middle line:84% me as a swirl of breeze lifts the leaves and enfolds them. 00:33:57.470 --> 00:34:01.460 align:middle line:84% Nothing ever like this, not even love, . 00:34:01.460 --> 00:34:03.650 align:middle line:84% Though there's no need to measure, 00:34:03.650 --> 00:34:08.270 align:middle line:84% no need to compare, for once not to be waiting, 00:34:08.270 --> 00:34:12.949 align:middle line:84% to be in the world as time moves through and across me, 00:34:12.949 --> 00:34:16.070 align:middle line:84% to exalt in this fragrant light given 00:34:16.070 --> 00:34:21.980 align:middle line:84% to me in this flow of warmth given to me and the world. 00:34:21.980 --> 00:34:26.900 align:middle line:84% Then, on my hand beside me on the bench, something-- 00:34:26.900 --> 00:34:30.199 align:middle line:84% I thought somebody else's hand alighted. 00:34:30.199 --> 00:34:35.360 align:middle line:84% I flinched it off and saw sorrow, a warbler-- 00:34:35.360 --> 00:34:40.639 align:middle line:84% gray, black, yellow-- in flight already away. 00:34:40.639 --> 00:34:43.880 align:middle line:84% It stopped near me in a shrub, though, 00:34:43.880 --> 00:34:48.770 align:middle line:84% and waited as though unstartled, as though unafraid, 00:34:48.770 --> 00:34:52.310 align:middle line:84% as though to tell me my reflex of fear 00:34:52.310 --> 00:34:56.870 align:middle line:84% was no failure, that if I believed I had lost something, 00:34:56.870 --> 00:35:01.760 align:middle line:84% I was wrong because nothing can be lost of the self, 00:35:01.760 --> 00:35:05.930 align:middle line:84% of a lifetime, of bringing forth selves. 00:35:05.930 --> 00:35:11.030 align:middle line:84% Then it was gone, its branch springing back empty. 00:35:11.030 --> 00:35:13.130 align:middle line:90% Still oak, though. 00:35:13.130 --> 00:35:14.900 align:middle line:90% Still rose. 00:35:14.900 --> 00:35:16.085 align:middle line:90% Still world. 00:35:16.085 --> 00:35:25.480 align:middle line:90% 00:35:25.480 --> 00:35:28.700 align:middle line:90% That was a very nice morning. 00:35:28.700 --> 00:35:29.200 align:middle line:90% "Storm." 00:35:29.200 --> 00:35:32.150 align:middle line:90% 00:35:32.150 --> 00:35:35.060 align:middle line:84% This is one of my ecological poems. 00:35:35.060 --> 00:35:36.440 align:middle line:90% Being in Tucson for-- 00:35:36.440 --> 00:35:40.280 align:middle line:84% having been here 35 years ago and being back now makes you 00:35:40.280 --> 00:35:44.390 align:middle line:90% think seriously of such things. 00:35:44.390 --> 00:35:47.870 align:middle line:84% As what we're doing to the planet. 00:35:47.870 --> 00:35:51.537 align:middle line:84% Storm-- this doesn't take place in Tucson, 00:35:51.537 --> 00:35:53.120 align:middle line:84% you'll see there's a lot of rain in it 00:35:53.120 --> 00:35:55.370 align:middle line:90% so we know it's not Tucson. 00:35:55.370 --> 00:35:57.050 align:middle line:90% Storm. 00:35:57.050 --> 00:36:00.590 align:middle line:84% Another burst of the interminable intermittently 00:36:00.590 --> 00:36:03.890 align:middle line:84% torrential dark afternoon downpour 00:36:03.890 --> 00:36:08.330 align:middle line:84% and the dozens of tirelessly garrulous courtyard sparrows 00:36:08.330 --> 00:36:11.060 align:middle line:84% stop hectoring each other and rush 00:36:11.060 --> 00:36:15.260 align:middle line:84% to park under a length of cornice endearingly soiled 00:36:15.260 --> 00:36:18.680 align:middle line:90% with decades of wing grease. 00:36:18.680 --> 00:36:23.450 align:middle line:84% The worst summer in memory, thermal inversion, smog, 00:36:23.450 --> 00:36:27.440 align:middle line:84% swelter, intimations of global warming, 00:36:27.440 --> 00:36:30.860 align:middle line:84% though the plain trees still thrust forth buds 00:36:30.860 --> 00:36:35.090 align:middle line:84% as though innocent April were just blooming, last week's 00:36:35.090 --> 00:36:39.080 align:middle line:84% tentative pre-green leaflings were already 00:36:39.080 --> 00:36:43.790 align:middle line:84% woefully charred with heat and pollution. 00:36:43.790 --> 00:36:50.600 align:middle line:84% Thunder far off, benign, then closer slashes of lightning, 00:36:50.600 --> 00:36:55.250 align:middle line:84% a massive concussive scrolling, an answering tremor 00:36:55.250 --> 00:37:01.190 align:middle line:84% in the breast, the exaltation at sharing a planet with this, then 00:37:01.190 --> 00:37:04.520 align:middle line:84% sorrow that we really might strip it 00:37:04.520 --> 00:37:11.680 align:middle line:84% of all but the bare wounded rock lumbering down its rote rail. 00:37:11.680 --> 00:37:16.900 align:middle line:84% A denser veil of clouds now, another darkening down lash, 00:37:16.900 --> 00:37:22.570 align:middle line:84% the wind rises, the sparrows scatter, the leaves quake, 00:37:22.570 --> 00:37:28.930 align:middle line:84% and oh I throw myself this way, the trees say then that way. 00:37:28.930 --> 00:37:32.140 align:middle line:84% I tremble, I moan, and still you don't 00:37:32.140 --> 00:37:35.590 align:middle line:84% understand the absence I'll be in the void 00:37:35.590 --> 00:37:39.410 align:middle line:90% of unredeemable time. 00:37:39.410 --> 00:37:43.220 align:middle line:90% 12 suns, the prophecies promise. 00:37:43.220 --> 00:37:46.790 align:middle line:84% 12 vast suns of purification will 00:37:46.790 --> 00:37:52.340 align:middle line:84% mount the horizon to scorch, sear, burn away, 00:37:52.340 --> 00:37:59.120 align:middle line:84% then 12 cosmic cycles of rain, no tree left, no birdsong, 00:37:59.120 --> 00:38:05.150 align:middle line:84% only the vigilant acid waves vindictively scouring themselves 00:38:05.150 --> 00:38:09.790 align:middle line:90% again and again on no shore. 00:38:09.790 --> 00:38:14.530 align:middle line:84% Imagine then the emergence: oh, this way, 00:38:14.530 --> 00:38:20.560 align:middle line:84% the sky streaked, oh, that way, with miraculous brightness. 00:38:20.560 --> 00:38:25.780 align:middle line:84% Imagine us beginning again, timid and tender, 00:38:25.780 --> 00:38:29.950 align:middle line:84% with a million years more this time to evolve, 00:38:29.950 --> 00:38:34.660 align:middle line:84% an epoch more on all fours, stricken with shame 00:38:34.660 --> 00:38:38.520 align:middle line:84% and repentance before we fire our forges. 00:38:38.520 --> 00:38:51.370 align:middle line:90% 00:38:51.370 --> 00:38:51.870 align:middle line:90% "The Heart." 00:38:51.870 --> 00:38:55.050 align:middle line:90% 00:38:55.050 --> 00:38:58.920 align:middle line:84% When I saw my son's heart blown up in bland black 00:38:58.920 --> 00:39:04.440 align:middle line:84% and white on the sonogram screen in amoebic jelly like mass, 00:39:04.440 --> 00:39:09.000 align:middle line:84% barely contained by invisible layers of membrane, 00:39:09.000 --> 00:39:11.390 align:middle line:90% I felt faint. 00:39:11.390 --> 00:39:16.040 align:middle line:84% Eight years old, Jed lay, apparently unafraid, 00:39:16.040 --> 00:39:20.150 align:middle line:84% wires strung from him into the clicking machine 00:39:20.150 --> 00:39:25.040 align:middle line:84% as the doctor showed us a pliable, silvery lid 00:39:25.040 --> 00:39:29.510 align:middle line:84% he explained was the valve benignly prolapsed, 00:39:29.510 --> 00:39:34.940 align:middle line:84% which to me looked like some lost lunar creature biting, too 00:39:34.940 --> 00:39:39.740 align:middle line:84% avid, urgently at an alien air, the tiniest 00:39:39.740 --> 00:39:44.630 align:middle line:84% part of that essence I'd always allowed myself to believe 00:39:44.630 --> 00:39:47.750 align:middle line:90% could stand for the soul. 00:39:47.750 --> 00:39:51.470 align:middle line:84% Revealed now in the nakedness nearly not 00:39:51.470 --> 00:39:56.000 align:middle line:84% to be looked upon as the muscular ghost of itself. 00:39:56.000 --> 00:39:59.390 align:middle line:84% It majestically swelled and contracted 00:39:59.390 --> 00:40:04.550 align:middle line:84% while I stood trembling before it, in love, in dread. 00:40:04.550 --> 00:40:12.180 align:middle line:90% 00:40:12.180 --> 00:40:15.540 align:middle line:84% This is a poem about movie making. 00:40:15.540 --> 00:40:19.350 align:middle line:84% I live in Paris part of the time and I noticed at one point 00:40:19.350 --> 00:40:21.690 align:middle line:84% they had closed down a street to make a movie 00:40:21.690 --> 00:40:24.540 align:middle line:84% and I realized that any place in the world where you set up 00:40:24.540 --> 00:40:27.750 align:middle line:84% enough cameras and enough trucks, everything 00:40:27.750 --> 00:40:29.850 align:middle line:84% will stop and get out of your way 00:40:29.850 --> 00:40:33.420 align:middle line:90% so that you can make your movie. 00:40:33.420 --> 00:40:35.370 align:middle line:90% And this is the poem I got out-- 00:40:35.370 --> 00:40:37.740 align:middle line:84% it's called "Exterior: Day" which 00:40:37.740 --> 00:40:41.850 align:middle line:84% is the way they describe shots in the script. 00:40:41.850 --> 00:40:44.160 align:middle line:84% Two actors are awkwardly muscling 00:40:44.160 --> 00:40:49.140 align:middle line:84% a coffin out of a doorway draped in black funeral hangings. 00:40:49.140 --> 00:40:52.530 align:middle line:84% A third sobs-- unconvincingly though. 00:40:52.530 --> 00:40:57.790 align:middle line:84% The director cries cut and they set up again. 00:40:57.790 --> 00:41:04.180 align:middle line:84% Just then an old woman blind turns the corner guiding herself 00:41:04.180 --> 00:41:06.220 align:middle line:90% down the side of the building. 00:41:06.220 --> 00:41:10.600 align:middle line:84% She touches the velvet awning and visibly startles: 00:41:10.600 --> 00:41:15.340 align:middle line:84% has someone died and she not been told? 00:41:15.340 --> 00:41:19.870 align:middle line:84% You can almost see her, in her mind, move through the entrance 00:41:19.870 --> 00:41:23.410 align:middle line:84% and feel her way up the stairs, knocking, trying 00:41:23.410 --> 00:41:25.750 align:middle line:90% doors, who might be missing. 00:41:25.750 --> 00:41:29.650 align:middle line:90% But out here, everything holds. 00:41:29.650 --> 00:41:33.400 align:middle line:84% For a long moment, no one knows what to do. 00:41:33.400 --> 00:41:35.080 align:middle line:90% The actors fidget. 00:41:35.080 --> 00:41:37.570 align:middle line:90% The cameraman looks away. 00:41:37.570 --> 00:41:42.100 align:middle line:84% The woman must be aware that the street is unduly quiet, 00:41:42.100 --> 00:41:44.890 align:middle line:90% but she still doesn't move. 00:41:44.890 --> 00:41:49.540 align:middle line:84% It begins to seem like a contest, an agon, illusion 00:41:49.540 --> 00:41:50.560 align:middle line:90% and truth-- 00:41:50.560 --> 00:41:55.840 align:middle line:84% crew, onlookers, and woman, her hand still raised, 00:41:55.840 --> 00:42:01.840 align:middle line:84% caught in the cloth, her vast, uninhabited gaze sweeping 00:42:01.840 --> 00:42:04.420 align:middle line:90% across us. 00:42:04.420 --> 00:42:06.070 align:middle line:84% That's what happened that day in Paris. 00:42:06.070 --> 00:42:10.710 align:middle line:90% 00:42:10.710 --> 00:42:11.265 align:middle line:90% "The Game." 00:42:11.265 --> 00:42:13.800 align:middle line:90% 00:42:13.800 --> 00:42:19.650 align:middle line:84% This is a riddle that's answered halfway through. 00:42:19.650 --> 00:42:22.680 align:middle line:84% I used to offer $5 to any student who 00:42:22.680 --> 00:42:27.810 align:middle line:84% could guess what the game was before we got there. 00:42:27.810 --> 00:42:33.990 align:middle line:84% But then somebody won once, so I don't do it. 00:42:33.990 --> 00:42:36.030 align:middle line:90% The Game. 00:42:36.030 --> 00:42:40.020 align:middle line:84% Water was her answer, and I fell instantly 00:42:40.020 --> 00:42:45.000 align:middle line:84% and I knew self destructively in love with her, had to have her, 00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:48.540 align:middle line:84% would, I knew someday, I didn't care how, 00:42:48.540 --> 00:42:52.440 align:middle line:84% and soon, too, have her, though I guessed already 00:42:52.440 --> 00:42:56.220 align:middle line:84% it would have to end badly, though not so disastrously 00:42:56.220 --> 00:42:58.110 align:middle line:90% as it did. 00:42:58.110 --> 00:43:02.910 align:middle line:84% My answer, lion or eagle, wasn't important. 00:43:02.910 --> 00:43:06.810 align:middle line:84% The truth would have been anything but myself. 00:43:06.810 --> 00:43:10.020 align:middle line:84% The game of that first fateful evening 00:43:10.020 --> 00:43:14.130 align:middle line:84% was what you'd want to come back as after you died. 00:43:14.130 --> 00:43:18.240 align:middle line:84% It wasn't the last life or death contest we'd have, 00:43:18.240 --> 00:43:23.110 align:middle line:84% only the least erotically driven and dangerous. 00:43:23.110 --> 00:43:26.940 align:middle line:84% What difference if she was married and perhaps mad-- 00:43:26.940 --> 00:43:30.390 align:middle line:84% both only a little, I thought, wrongly. 00:43:30.390 --> 00:43:34.680 align:middle line:84% There was only my jealous glimpse of her genius, then 00:43:34.680 --> 00:43:38.640 align:middle line:84% my vision of vengeance, midnight, morning-- 00:43:38.640 --> 00:43:42.120 align:middle line:84% beneath me a planet possessed, cycles 00:43:42.120 --> 00:43:46.560 align:middle line:84% of transfiguration and soaring, storms cross-- 00:43:46.560 --> 00:43:54.180 align:middle line:90% 00:43:54.180 --> 00:43:59.770 align:middle line:84% This is a love poem, "Grace" it's called. 00:43:59.770 --> 00:44:01.900 align:middle line:84% Almost as good as her passion, I'll 00:44:01.900 --> 00:44:07.090 align:middle line:84% think, almost as good as her presence or physical grace, 00:44:07.090 --> 00:44:10.660 align:middle line:84% almost as good as making love with her, 00:44:10.660 --> 00:44:15.730 align:middle line:84% I'll think in my last aching breath before last, 00:44:15.730 --> 00:44:18.760 align:middle line:84% my glimpse before last of the light, 00:44:18.760 --> 00:44:22.840 align:middle line:84% were her goodwill and good wit, the steadiness 00:44:22.840 --> 00:44:25.520 align:middle line:90% of her affections. 00:44:25.520 --> 00:44:30.680 align:middle line:84% Almost, I'll think, sliding away on my sleigh of departure, 00:44:30.680 --> 00:44:34.340 align:middle line:84% the rind of my consciousness thinning, 00:44:34.340 --> 00:44:39.770 align:middle line:84% the fear of losing myself of worse, losing her, 00:44:39.770 --> 00:44:43.850 align:middle line:84% subsiding, as I think, hope it must. 00:44:43.850 --> 00:44:47.780 align:middle line:84% Almost as good as her beauty, her glow, 00:44:47.780 --> 00:44:52.790 align:middle line:84% was the music of her voice and laughter. 00:44:52.790 --> 00:44:57.500 align:middle line:84% Almost as good as kissing her, being kissed back, 00:44:57.500 --> 00:45:00.470 align:middle line:84% I hope I'll have strength still to think, 00:45:00.470 --> 00:45:03.530 align:middle line:84% was watching her as she worked or read, 00:45:03.530 --> 00:45:07.200 align:middle line:84% was beholding her selfless sympathy for son, 00:45:07.200 --> 00:45:12.050 align:middle line:84% friend, sister, even was feeling her anger sometimes, 00:45:12.050 --> 00:45:18.650 align:middle line:84% rarely lift against me, then be forgotten, put aside. 00:45:18.650 --> 00:45:23.960 align:middle line:84% Almost, I'll think, as good as our unlikely coming together 00:45:23.960 --> 00:45:27.830 align:middle line:84% was our constant mostly unspoken debate 00:45:27.830 --> 00:45:32.750 align:middle line:84% as to whether good in the world was good in itself or-- 00:45:32.750 --> 00:45:36.590 align:middle line:84% my side-- only the absence of evil. 00:45:36.590 --> 00:45:39.920 align:middle line:84% No need to say how much how we lived 00:45:39.920 --> 00:45:45.140 align:middle line:84% was shaped by her bright spirit, her humor and hope. 00:45:45.140 --> 00:45:49.730 align:middle line:84% Almost as good as living it, all improbable gift, 00:45:49.730 --> 00:45:54.050 align:middle line:84% was watching her once cross our room, the reflections of night 00:45:54.050 --> 00:45:57.560 align:middle line:84% rain she'd risen to, closed the window against, 00:45:57.560 --> 00:46:01.400 align:middle line:84% flaring across her, doubling her light; then 00:46:01.400 --> 00:46:06.770 align:middle line:84% feeling her come back to bed, reaching to find and embrace me 00:46:06.770 --> 00:46:09.830 align:middle line:84% as I hope she'll be there to embrace me 00:46:09.830 --> 00:46:14.750 align:middle line:84% as I sail away on that last voyage out of myself, 00:46:14.750 --> 00:46:18.980 align:middle line:84% that last sorrowful passage out of her presence, 00:46:18.980 --> 00:46:23.510 align:middle line:84% though her presence, I think, will endure as firmly. 00:46:23.510 --> 00:46:39.900 align:middle line:90% 00:46:39.900 --> 00:46:43.200 align:middle line:84% Oh those are the-- poets, you will 00:46:43.200 --> 00:46:47.040 align:middle line:84% know what it is, the rest-- it's just a very complicated form 00:46:47.040 --> 00:46:49.290 align:middle line:90% that we use as repetitions. 00:46:49.290 --> 00:46:52.500 align:middle line:84% It's called "The Villanelle of the Suicide's Mother." 00:46:52.500 --> 00:46:58.470 align:middle line:84% My wife and I met a woman whose young daughter had just 00:46:58.470 --> 00:47:02.190 align:middle line:84% committed suicide and she had a long conversation with. 00:47:02.190 --> 00:47:05.220 align:middle line:84% The two refrain lines are things she said in the poem 00:47:05.220 --> 00:47:07.770 align:middle line:90% she said to us at the time. 00:47:07.770 --> 00:47:10.410 align:middle line:84% It was very upsetting of course and I tried for a long time 00:47:10.410 --> 00:47:12.120 align:middle line:84% to figure out a way to write the poem 00:47:12.120 --> 00:47:14.370 align:middle line:84% and finally the villanelle came and it 00:47:14.370 --> 00:47:16.320 align:middle line:90% seemed to be the right way. 00:47:16.320 --> 00:47:20.120 align:middle line:84% Villanelle of the Suicide's Mother. 00:47:20.120 --> 00:47:24.730 align:middle line:84% Sometimes I almost go hours without crying. 00:47:24.730 --> 00:47:29.180 align:middle line:84% Then I feel if I don't, I'll go insane. 00:47:29.180 --> 00:47:33.320 align:middle line:84% It can seem her whole life was her dying. 00:47:33.320 --> 00:47:37.730 align:middle line:84% She tried so hard, then she was tired of trying; 00:47:37.730 --> 00:47:42.740 align:middle line:84% now I'm tired too, of trying to explain. 00:47:42.740 --> 00:47:47.510 align:middle line:84% Sometimes I almost go hours without crying. 00:47:47.510 --> 00:47:50.960 align:middle line:84% The anxiety, the rage, the denying-- 00:47:50.960 --> 00:47:54.020 align:middle line:84% though I never blamed her for my pain. 00:47:54.020 --> 00:47:58.460 align:middle line:84% It can seem her whole life was her dying, and mine, struggling 00:47:58.460 --> 00:48:01.940 align:middle line:90% to save her, prying, conniving. 00:48:01.940 --> 00:48:05.180 align:middle line:84% It was the chemistry in her brain. 00:48:05.180 --> 00:48:10.380 align:middle line:84% Sometimes I almost go hours without crying. 00:48:10.380 --> 00:48:13.710 align:middle line:84% If I said she was easy I'd be lying. 00:48:13.710 --> 00:48:17.190 align:middle line:84% The lens between her and the world was stained. 00:48:17.190 --> 00:48:20.340 align:middle line:84% It can seem her whole life was her dying, 00:48:20.340 --> 00:48:24.540 align:middle line:90% but the fact is stupefying. 00:48:24.540 --> 00:48:29.620 align:middle line:84% Her absence tears at me like a chain. 00:48:29.620 --> 00:48:34.180 align:middle line:84% Sometimes I almost go hours without crying. 00:48:34.180 --> 00:48:37.435 align:middle line:84% It can seem her whole life was her dying. 00:48:37.435 --> 00:48:47.610 align:middle line:90% 00:48:47.610 --> 00:48:48.150 align:middle line:90% "Old Man." 00:48:48.150 --> 00:48:51.790 align:middle line:90% 00:48:51.790 --> 00:48:54.340 align:middle line:90% Special: big tits! 00:48:54.340 --> 00:48:57.640 align:middle line:84% says the advertisement for a soft-core magazine 00:48:57.640 --> 00:49:01.780 align:middle line:84% on our neighborhood newsstand but forget [AUDIO OUT] 00:49:01.780 --> 00:49:07.180 align:middle line:84% a lush fresh lip, blonde skin glowing gold, 00:49:07.180 --> 00:49:10.720 align:middle line:90% sprawls there resplendent. 00:49:10.720 --> 00:49:15.370 align:middle line:84% 60 nearly, yet these hardly tangible, hardly better 00:49:15.370 --> 00:49:19.280 align:middle line:90% than harlots can still stir me. 00:49:19.280 --> 00:49:23.660 align:middle line:84% Maybe coming of age in the American sensual darkness, 00:49:23.660 --> 00:49:28.640 align:middle line:84% never seeing an unsmudged nipple, an uncensored vagina, 00:49:28.640 --> 00:49:33.080 align:middle line:84% has left me forever infected with an unquenchable lust 00:49:33.080 --> 00:49:34.400 align:middle line:90% of the eye. 00:49:34.400 --> 00:49:37.280 align:middle line:90% Always that erotic murmur. 00:49:37.280 --> 00:49:44.330 align:middle line:84% I'm hardly myself if I'm not in a state of incipient desire. 00:49:44.330 --> 00:49:49.580 align:middle line:84% God knows though there are worse twists your obsessions can take. 00:49:49.580 --> 00:49:55.490 align:middle line:84% Last year in Israel a young ultra-orthodox rabbi guiding 00:49:55.490 --> 00:49:58.970 align:middle line:84% some teenage girls through the shrine of the Shoah 00:49:58.970 --> 00:50:03.470 align:middle line:84% forbade them to look in one room because there were images in it 00:50:03.470 --> 00:50:06.030 align:middle line:90% were licentious. 00:50:06.030 --> 00:50:10.800 align:middle line:84% The display was a photo: men and women stripped naked, 00:50:10.800 --> 00:50:13.350 align:middle line:84% some trying to cover their genitals, 00:50:13.350 --> 00:50:17.730 align:middle line:84% others too frightened to bother, lined up in snow, 00:50:17.730 --> 00:50:21.540 align:middle line:84% waiting to be shot and thrown in a ditch. 00:50:21.540 --> 00:50:25.800 align:middle line:84% The girls, to my horror, averted their gaze. 00:50:25.800 --> 00:50:31.080 align:middle line:84% What carnal mistrust had their teacher taught them? 00:50:31.080 --> 00:50:34.920 align:middle line:84% Even that, though, another confession. 00:50:34.920 --> 00:50:37.950 align:middle line:84% Once in a book on pre-war Poland, 00:50:37.950 --> 00:50:42.510 align:middle line:84% a studio portrait, an absolute angel with tormented, 00:50:42.510 --> 00:50:44.190 align:middle line:90% tormenting eyes. 00:50:44.190 --> 00:50:46.950 align:middle line:84% I kept finding myself at her page. 00:50:46.950 --> 00:50:49.890 align:middle line:84% That she died in the camps made her-- 00:50:49.890 --> 00:50:52.320 align:middle line:90% I didn't dare wonder why-- 00:50:52.320 --> 00:50:56.710 align:middle line:90% more present, more precious. 00:50:56.710 --> 00:50:58.990 align:middle line:90% Died in the camps-- 00:50:58.990 --> 00:51:02.950 align:middle line:84% that, too, people-- or Jews, anyway-- 00:51:02.950 --> 00:51:05.500 align:middle line:84% kept from their children back then. 00:51:05.500 --> 00:51:09.580 align:middle line:84% But it was like it didn't have to be told. 00:51:09.580 --> 00:51:13.990 align:middle line:84% Sex and death: how close they can seem. 00:51:13.990 --> 00:51:18.460 align:middle line:84% So constantly conscious now of death moving towards me, 00:51:18.460 --> 00:51:21.220 align:middle line:84% sometimes I think I confound them. 00:51:21.220 --> 00:51:24.700 align:middle line:84% My wife's loveliness almost consumes me. 00:51:24.700 --> 00:51:28.420 align:middle line:84% My passion for her goes beyond reasonable bounds. 00:51:28.420 --> 00:51:32.380 align:middle line:84% When we make love, her holding me everywhere, 00:51:32.380 --> 00:51:35.920 align:middle line:84% all around me, I'm there and not there. 00:51:35.920 --> 00:51:41.260 align:middle line:84% My mind teems, jumbles of faces, voices, impressions. 00:51:41.260 --> 00:51:45.940 align:middle line:84% I live my life over as though I were drowning. 00:51:45.940 --> 00:51:50.080 align:middle line:84% Then I am drowning in despair at having 00:51:50.080 --> 00:51:57.130 align:middle line:84% to leave her, this, everything, all, unbearable, awful. 00:51:57.130 --> 00:52:02.230 align:middle line:84% Still, to be able to die with no special contrition, 00:52:02.230 --> 00:52:05.380 align:middle line:84% not having been slaughtered or enslaved, 00:52:05.380 --> 00:52:10.300 align:middle line:84% and not having to know history's next mad rage ration-- 00:52:10.300 --> 00:52:13.120 align:middle line:90% it might be a relief. 00:52:13.120 --> 00:52:14.380 align:middle line:90% No. 00:52:14.380 --> 00:52:16.120 align:middle line:90% Again, no. 00:52:16.120 --> 00:52:18.830 align:middle line:90% I don't mean that for a moment. 00:52:18.830 --> 00:52:22.990 align:middle line:84% What I mean is the world holds me so tightly, 00:52:22.990 --> 00:52:26.110 align:middle line:84% the good and the bad, my own follies 00:52:26.110 --> 00:52:30.940 align:middle line:84% and weakness, that even this counterfeit Venus, with her sham 00:52:30.940 --> 00:52:36.520 align:middle line:84% heat and her bosom probably plumped with gel, so moves me. 00:52:36.520 --> 00:52:39.100 align:middle line:90% My breath catches. 00:52:39.100 --> 00:52:43.450 align:middle line:84% Vamp, siren, seductress-- how much more 00:52:43.450 --> 00:52:47.650 align:middle line:84% she reveals in her glare of ink than she knows, 00:52:47.650 --> 00:52:52.930 align:middle line:84% how she incarnates our desperate human need for regard, 00:52:52.930 --> 00:52:57.760 align:middle line:84% our passion to live in beauty, to be beauty, 00:52:57.760 --> 00:53:03.370 align:middle line:84% to be cherished by glances, if by no more, of something 00:53:03.370 --> 00:53:07.630 align:middle line:90% like love, or love. 00:53:07.630 --> 00:53:09.450 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:53:09.450 --> 00:53:24.000 align:middle line:90%