WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.960 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.960 --> 00:00:03.960 align:middle line:84% --bookstore, and I'm sure she'd be happy to sign copies 00:00:03.960 --> 00:00:05.795 align:middle line:90% after the reading. 00:00:05.795 --> 00:00:07.170 align:middle line:84% And I would also hope that you'll 00:00:07.170 --> 00:00:09.180 align:middle line:84% join us for a reception following the reading. 00:00:09.180 --> 00:00:11.580 align:middle line:84% It should be just outside the auditorium. 00:00:11.580 --> 00:00:13.770 align:middle line:84% The next two readers on our schedule 00:00:13.770 --> 00:00:17.130 align:middle line:84% are Michael Collier on Wednesday, October 4, 00:00:17.130 --> 00:00:18.570 align:middle line:90% here in Modern Languages. 00:00:18.570 --> 00:00:21.990 align:middle line:84% And he is a graduate of the University of Arizona's MFA 00:00:21.990 --> 00:00:24.340 align:middle line:84% program and will be returning to Tucson. 00:00:24.340 --> 00:00:26.670 align:middle line:84% So I'm sure you won't [AUDIO OUT] that one. 00:00:26.670 --> 00:00:29.370 align:middle line:84% He will be followed by the fiction writer 00:00:29.370 --> 00:00:31.950 align:middle line:84% Jeffrey Eugenides, who is the author 00:00:31.950 --> 00:00:36.450 align:middle line:84% of an astounding first novel called The Virgin Suicides. 00:00:36.450 --> 00:00:40.530 align:middle line:84% And he will be reading on Wednesday, October 18, also here 00:00:40.530 --> 00:00:41.580 align:middle line:90% in Modern Languages. 00:00:41.580 --> 00:00:44.220 align:middle line:90% 00:00:44.220 --> 00:00:46.800 align:middle line:84% As I'm sure you know, the National Endowment for the Arts 00:00:46.800 --> 00:00:50.340 align:middle line:84% has suffered considerable setbacks and severe budget cuts 00:00:50.340 --> 00:00:51.990 align:middle line:90% in the last few months. 00:00:51.990 --> 00:00:56.190 align:middle line:84% And readings like the one you're at this evening are in jeopardy. 00:00:56.190 --> 00:00:59.550 align:middle line:84% The University of Arizona Poetry Center has, in the past, 00:00:59.550 --> 00:01:02.550 align:middle line:84% received funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. 00:01:02.550 --> 00:01:05.550 align:middle line:84% And they have helped to underwrite a portion 00:01:05.550 --> 00:01:07.020 align:middle line:90% of our reading series. 00:01:07.020 --> 00:01:08.730 align:middle line:84% I encourage you to become involved 00:01:08.730 --> 00:01:11.550 align:middle line:84% in a dialogue with our senators and representatives 00:01:11.550 --> 00:01:15.540 align:middle line:84% about the issue of funding for the arts, and the literary arts, 00:01:15.540 --> 00:01:17.070 align:middle line:90% in particular. 00:01:17.070 --> 00:01:20.070 align:middle line:84% There's information in the back, on one of the chairs set up 00:01:20.070 --> 00:01:24.360 align:middle line:84% in the back, from the Literary Network, which is an advocacy 00:01:24.360 --> 00:01:27.510 align:middle line:84% group that is doing work on behalf of American writers 00:01:27.510 --> 00:01:28.470 align:middle line:90% and readers. 00:01:28.470 --> 00:01:30.210 align:middle line:84% I encourage you to get in touch with them 00:01:30.210 --> 00:01:33.750 align:middle line:84% if you want more information or to call me at the Poetry Center, 00:01:33.750 --> 00:01:37.420 align:middle line:84% and I'd be happy to talk to you about it. 00:01:37.420 --> 00:01:41.200 align:middle line:84% Pattiann Rogers is the author of six books of poetry, 00:01:41.200 --> 00:01:44.770 align:middle line:84% the most recent of which is Firekeeper: New and Selected 00:01:44.770 --> 00:01:49.170 align:middle line:84% Poems, published by Milkweed Editions in 1994. 00:01:49.170 --> 00:01:52.590 align:middle line:84% Firekeeper was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one 00:01:52.590 --> 00:01:56.070 align:middle line:84% of the best books of poetry to be published in 1994, 00:01:56.070 --> 00:01:58.500 align:middle line:84% and received the Natalie Ornish Poetry Award 00:01:58.500 --> 00:02:00.750 align:middle line:84% from the Texas Institute of Letters, 00:02:00.750 --> 00:02:03.600 align:middle line:84% and which we learned just this week 00:02:03.600 --> 00:02:07.200 align:middle line:84% is a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize, which 00:02:07.200 --> 00:02:10.289 align:middle line:84% is given jointly by The Nation magazine and the Academy 00:02:10.289 --> 00:02:13.020 align:middle line:84% of American Poets for the best book of poems published 00:02:13.020 --> 00:02:14.885 align:middle line:90% in the past year. 00:02:14.885 --> 00:02:16.260 align:middle line:84% We're pleased to be able to share 00:02:16.260 --> 00:02:21.510 align:middle line:84% this time of great anticipation with Pattiann. 00:02:21.510 --> 00:02:25.020 align:middle line:84% Rogers' other awards have included two NEA fellowships, 00:02:25.020 --> 00:02:27.960 align:middle line:84% a Guggenheim fellowship, and a poetry fellowship 00:02:27.960 --> 00:02:30.180 align:middle line:90% from the Lannan Foundation. 00:02:30.180 --> 00:02:32.940 align:middle line:84% She teaches semesters in the creative writing program 00:02:32.940 --> 00:02:35.340 align:middle line:84% at the University of Arkansas and is currently 00:02:35.340 --> 00:02:40.080 align:middle line:84% on the faculty of American University in St. Louis. 00:02:40.080 --> 00:02:44.040 align:middle line:84% Pattiann Rogers is engaged in what the poet Louise Glück has 00:02:44.040 --> 00:02:49.270 align:middle line:84% referred to as the steady upward labor of being a poet. 00:02:49.270 --> 00:02:52.380 align:middle line:84% She is a writer at work, taking, as her subject, 00:02:52.380 --> 00:02:56.580 align:middle line:84% no less than science and the natural world, religion, 00:02:56.580 --> 00:03:00.030 align:middle line:84% in as much as any careful study of nature 00:03:00.030 --> 00:03:04.170 align:middle line:84% is religious in its exactitude, and the human experience, 00:03:04.170 --> 00:03:08.610 align:middle line:84% as seen through the refractory lens of the material world. 00:03:08.610 --> 00:03:12.600 align:middle line:84% Rogers finds meaning and poetry under rocks, 00:03:12.600 --> 00:03:16.230 align:middle line:84% inside saguaro cactus, or in the aura 00:03:16.230 --> 00:03:21.480 align:middle line:84% and mythology we create around enigmatic natural figures, 00:03:21.480 --> 00:03:24.540 align:middle line:84% such as the white deer or Steller's jays avoiding 00:03:24.540 --> 00:03:27.960 align:middle line:84% the death site of one of their own. 00:03:27.960 --> 00:03:31.020 align:middle line:84% Rogers has produced some of the most stunning lyric moments 00:03:31.020 --> 00:03:33.570 align:middle line:84% about nature and has been lauded by her [AUDIO OUT] 00:03:33.570 --> 00:03:37.110 align:middle line:84% for her loving dedication to earthly space. 00:03:37.110 --> 00:03:40.350 align:middle line:84% Terry Tempest Williams has called Rogers' poems, quote, 00:03:40.350 --> 00:03:43.140 align:middle line:84% "translations of our dreaming life." 00:03:43.140 --> 00:03:46.890 align:middle line:84% And nature writer Barry Lopez has said, quote, 00:03:46.890 --> 00:03:51.630 align:middle line:84% "if angels were to agree upon a language to describe creation, 00:03:51.630 --> 00:03:55.230 align:middle line:84% a tone of voice, and a point of view that would adequately 00:03:55.230 --> 00:03:58.560 align:middle line:84% celebrate the divine, these would be the poems they would 00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:01.020 align:middle line:90% write." 00:04:01.020 --> 00:04:03.240 align:middle line:84% Pattiann Rogers takes her place among what 00:04:03.240 --> 00:04:06.450 align:middle line:84% has evolved as a distinctly American genre that 00:04:06.450 --> 00:04:10.170 align:middle line:84% features writers grappling with issues of humanity's place 00:04:10.170 --> 00:04:13.020 align:middle line:84% in the natural world, a world defined 00:04:13.020 --> 00:04:17.760 align:middle line:84% by the actual and metaphorical existence of the frontier, 00:04:17.760 --> 00:04:22.470 align:middle line:84% from Emerson to Thoreau, Edwin Muir and Willa Cather, Marianne 00:04:22.470 --> 00:04:25.200 align:middle line:84% Moore and Amy Clampitt, and on to Rogers 00:04:25.200 --> 00:04:26.850 align:middle line:90% and her contemporaries. 00:04:26.850 --> 00:04:31.260 align:middle line:84% Rogers does as her predecessors have done and explores 00:04:31.260 --> 00:04:34.440 align:middle line:84% the very fabric of what it means to be alive, 00:04:34.440 --> 00:04:38.130 align:middle line:84% to be breathing and thinking [INAUDIBLE] world. 00:04:38.130 --> 00:04:40.997 align:middle line:84% It's my pleasure to introduce Pattiann Rogers. 00:04:40.997 --> 00:04:49.780 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:04:49.780 --> 00:04:51.530 align:middle line:84% That was a beautiful introduction. 00:04:51.530 --> 00:04:53.420 align:middle line:90% Thank you very much. 00:04:53.420 --> 00:04:55.660 align:middle line:84% I'm happy to be here and proud to have 00:04:55.660 --> 00:05:01.510 align:middle line:84% become a part of the tradition of the Poetry Center here. 00:05:01.510 --> 00:05:03.700 align:middle line:84% I give a lot of readings, or I have, 00:05:03.700 --> 00:05:06.250 align:middle line:90% over the past several years. 00:05:06.250 --> 00:05:08.740 align:middle line:84% But it seems like I'm always going somewhere 00:05:08.740 --> 00:05:09.860 align:middle line:90% I've never been before. 00:05:09.860 --> 00:05:11.920 align:middle line:90% So a big country. 00:05:11.920 --> 00:05:14.260 align:middle line:84% Anyway, I've never been to Tucson before, 00:05:14.260 --> 00:05:20.020 align:middle line:84% so I'm glad to be here and to take part in-- 00:05:20.020 --> 00:05:21.790 align:middle line:90% Gary Nabhan is here. 00:05:21.790 --> 00:05:25.450 align:middle line:84% I was just going to say, the stinking-hot desert, right? 00:05:25.450 --> 00:05:27.280 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:05:27.280 --> 00:05:30.820 align:middle line:90% But that's not my phrase. 00:05:30.820 --> 00:05:31.900 align:middle line:90% I didn't make that up. 00:05:31.900 --> 00:05:37.300 align:middle line:90% 00:05:37.300 --> 00:05:42.920 align:middle line:84% All the poems I'm going to read are from the Firekeeper. 00:05:42.920 --> 00:05:46.700 align:middle line:84% I like to go back to earlier poems 00:05:46.700 --> 00:05:50.030 align:middle line:84% and pair them with more recent poems 00:05:50.030 --> 00:05:56.090 align:middle line:84% and find connections when I put the poems I select for a reading 00:05:56.090 --> 00:05:57.410 align:middle line:90% together. 00:05:57.410 --> 00:06:00.020 align:middle line:84% Seeing connections in poems that were maybe 00:06:00.020 --> 00:06:05.070 align:middle line:84% written several years apart is interesting to me to do that. 00:06:05.070 --> 00:06:09.470 align:middle line:84% So the first two poems I'm going to read tonight 00:06:09.470 --> 00:06:11.840 align:middle line:84% are a kind of poem I like to write, 00:06:11.840 --> 00:06:15.380 align:middle line:84% which is an attempt to see if I can't prove something 00:06:15.380 --> 00:06:17.150 align:middle line:90% with language. 00:06:17.150 --> 00:06:21.860 align:middle line:84% I have-- maybe all poets secretly have the belief 00:06:21.860 --> 00:06:24.200 align:middle line:84% that if they just get something said right, 00:06:24.200 --> 00:06:26.970 align:middle line:90% it would have to be true. 00:06:26.970 --> 00:06:29.450 align:middle line:90% So I keep working at that. 00:06:29.450 --> 00:06:35.620 align:middle line:84% The first one is titled "On the Existence of the Soul." 00:06:35.620 --> 00:06:39.090 align:middle line:90% "How confident I am it is there. 00:06:39.090 --> 00:06:41.070 align:middle line:84% Don't I bring it as if it were enclo-- 00:06:41.070 --> 00:06:44.670 align:middle line:84% [AUDIO OUT] a fine leather case to particular places 00:06:44.670 --> 00:06:47.400 align:middle line:90% solely for its own sake? 00:06:47.400 --> 00:06:50.850 align:middle line:84% Haven't I set it down before the variegated canyon 00:06:50.850 --> 00:06:54.390 align:middle line:84% and the undeviating bald salt dome? 00:06:54.390 --> 00:06:59.340 align:middle line:84% Don't I feed it on ivory calcium and ruffled shell bellies, 00:06:59.340 --> 00:07:03.420 align:middle line:84% shore boulders, on the sight of the petrel motionless 00:07:03.420 --> 00:07:07.440 align:middle line:84% over the sea, its splayed feet hanging? 00:07:07.440 --> 00:07:11.850 align:middle line:84% Don't I make sure it apprehends the invisibly fine spray 00:07:11.850 --> 00:07:14.140 align:middle line:90% more than once? 00:07:14.140 --> 00:07:17.020 align:middle line:84% I have seen that it takes in every detail I 00:07:17.020 --> 00:07:21.550 align:middle line:84% can manage concerning the garden wall and its borders. 00:07:21.550 --> 00:07:24.280 align:middle line:84% I have listed for it the comings and goings 00:07:24.280 --> 00:07:29.320 align:middle line:84% of 100 species of insects explicitly described. 00:07:29.320 --> 00:07:31.810 align:middle line:84% I have named the chartreuse stripe 00:07:31.810 --> 00:07:35.530 align:middle line:84% and the fimbriated antenna, the bulbed thorax 00:07:35.530 --> 00:07:37.420 align:middle line:90% and the multiple eye. 00:07:37.420 --> 00:07:41.200 align:middle line:84% I have sketched the brilliant wings of the trumpet vine 00:07:41.200 --> 00:07:43.720 align:middle line:84% and invented new vocabularies descri-- 00:07:43.720 --> 00:07:46.510 align:middle line:84% [AUDIO OUT] the interchanges between rocks 00:07:46.510 --> 00:07:49.570 align:middle line:84% and their crevices, between the holly lip 00:07:49.570 --> 00:07:52.770 align:middle line:90% and its concept of itself. 00:07:52.770 --> 00:07:55.730 align:middle line:84% And if not for its sake, why would I 00:07:55.730 --> 00:08:00.020 align:middle line:84% go out into the night alone and stare deliberately straight 00:08:00.020 --> 00:08:04.490 align:middle line:84% up into 15 billion years ago and more? 00:08:04.490 --> 00:08:06.470 align:middle line:90% I have cherished it. 00:08:06.470 --> 00:08:08.300 align:middle line:90% I have named it. 00:08:08.300 --> 00:08:13.310 align:middle line:84% By my own solicitations, I have proof of its presence." 00:08:13.310 --> 00:08:19.330 align:middle line:90% 00:08:19.330 --> 00:08:21.250 align:middle line:90% Well, were you convinced? 00:08:21.250 --> 00:08:24.310 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:08:24.310 --> 00:08:25.790 align:middle line:90% Must be something there. 00:08:25.790 --> 00:08:27.940 align:middle line:84% Otherwise, what are we doing all this for? 00:08:27.940 --> 00:08:30.580 align:middle line:90% 00:08:30.580 --> 00:08:38.049 align:middle line:84% The second poem is also another attempt at a proof of a kind. 00:08:38.049 --> 00:08:44.900 align:middle line:84% And I read this poem one summer, and my husband 00:08:44.900 --> 00:08:46.310 align:middle line:90% happened to be in the audience. 00:08:46.310 --> 00:08:49.440 align:middle line:84% And there [AUDIO OUT] two men sitting in front of him. 00:08:49.440 --> 00:08:52.040 align:middle line:84% And when I said I was going to read this poem, 00:08:52.040 --> 00:08:54.020 align:middle line:84% one turned to the other one and said, 00:08:54.020 --> 00:08:57.050 align:middle line:84% I'll bet you she can't get through it without stumbling. 00:08:57.050 --> 00:09:00.170 align:middle line:90% And the other one took the bet. 00:09:00.170 --> 00:09:03.020 align:middle line:84% Anyway, I got through it without stumbling. 00:09:03.020 --> 00:09:05.720 align:middle line:84% But after my husband told me this, 00:09:05.720 --> 00:09:08.300 align:middle line:84% and I realized somebody thought this was hard to do, 00:09:08.300 --> 00:09:09.690 align:middle line:90% I can't do it anymore. 00:09:09.690 --> 00:09:10.640 align:middle line:90% So anyway-- 00:09:10.640 --> 00:09:12.950 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:09:12.950 --> 00:09:14.630 align:middle line:90% So don't place any bets on me. 00:09:14.630 --> 00:09:16.400 align:middle line:90% But we'll see if I get-- 00:09:16.400 --> 00:09:18.170 align:middle line:90% I'll try. 00:09:18.170 --> 00:09:22.070 align:middle line:84% "In Addition to Faith, Hope, and Charity." 00:09:22.070 --> 00:09:25.850 align:middle line:84% "I'm sure there's a god in favor of drums. 00:09:25.850 --> 00:09:30.080 align:middle line:84% Consider their pervasiveness-- the thump, thump, and slide 00:09:30.080 --> 00:09:33.080 align:middle line:84% of waves on a stretched hide of beach, 00:09:33.080 --> 00:09:37.220 align:middle line:84% the rising beat and slap of their crests against shore 00:09:37.220 --> 00:09:42.530 align:middle line:84% baffles, the rapping of otters cracking mollusks with stones, 00:09:42.530 --> 00:09:45.740 align:middle line:84% woodpeckers beak-banging, the beaver's 00:09:45.740 --> 00:09:49.680 align:middle line:84% whack of his tail paddle, the ape playing the bam [AUDIO OUT] 00:09:49.680 --> 00:09:53.570 align:middle line:84% own chest, the million tickering rolls of rain 00:09:53.570 --> 00:09:57.500 align:middle line:84% off the flat leaves and razor rims of the forest. 00:09:57.500 --> 00:10:00.590 align:middle line:84% And we know the noise of our own inventions-- 00:10:00.590 --> 00:10:08.180 align:middle line:84% snare and kettle, bongo, conga, big bass, toy tin, timbals, 00:10:08.180 --> 00:10:11.270 align:middle line:90% tambourine, tom-tom. 00:10:11.270 --> 00:10:16.310 align:middle line:84% But the heart must be the most pervasive drum of all. 00:10:16.310 --> 00:10:19.280 align:middle line:84% Imagine hearing all together every tinny 00:10:19.280 --> 00:10:23.990 align:middle line:84% snare of every heartbeat in every jumping mouse and harvest 00:10:23.990 --> 00:10:29.630 align:middle line:84% mouse, sagebrush vole and least shrew living across the prairie; 00:10:29.630 --> 00:10:33.860 align:middle line:84% And add to that cacophony the individual staccato tickings 00:10:33.860 --> 00:10:38.510 align:middle line:84% inside all gnatcatchers, kingbirds, kestrels, rock 00:10:38.510 --> 00:10:42.680 align:middle line:84% doves, pine warblers crossing, criss-crossing each other 00:10:42.680 --> 00:10:46.220 align:middle line:84% in the sky, the sound of their beatings overlapping 00:10:46.220 --> 00:10:50.090 align:middle line:84% with the singular hammerings of the hearts of cougar, coyote, 00:10:50.090 --> 00:10:52.580 align:middle line:84% weasel, badger, pronghorn, [AUDIO OUT] 00:10:52.580 --> 00:10:54.920 align:middle line:84% ponderous bass of the black bear; 00:10:54.920 --> 00:10:57.470 align:middle line:84% And on deserts, too, all the knackings, 00:10:57.470 --> 00:11:01.640 align:middle line:84% the flutterings inside wart snakes, whiptails, racers 00:11:01.640 --> 00:11:06.050 align:middle line:84% and sidewinders, earless lizards, cactus owls; 00:11:06.050 --> 00:11:10.970 align:middle line:84% plus the clamors undersea, slow booming in the breasts of beluga 00:11:10.970 --> 00:11:16.160 align:middle line:84% and bowhead, uniform rappings in a passing school of cod or bib, 00:11:16.160 --> 00:11:20.360 align:middle line:84% the thidderings of bat rays and needlefish. 00:11:20.360 --> 00:11:24.200 align:middle line:84% Imagine the earth carrying this continuous din, 00:11:24.200 --> 00:11:28.070 align:middle line:84% this multifarious festival of pulsing thuds, 00:11:28.070 --> 00:11:33.500 align:middle line:84% stutters and drumming, wheeling on and on across the universe. 00:11:33.500 --> 00:11:38.870 align:middle line:84% This must be proof of a power existing somewhere definitely 00:11:38.870 --> 00:11:40.550 align:middle line:90% in favor of such a racket. 00:11:40.550 --> 00:11:45.422 align:middle line:90% 00:11:45.422 --> 00:11:49.410 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:11:49.410 --> 00:11:53.220 align:middle line:84% Anyway, I think I did get through that din. 00:11:53.220 --> 00:11:55.875 align:middle line:84% All those thitterings and stutterings. 00:11:55.875 --> 00:12:02.010 align:middle line:84% But just think, they all are out there this very minute. 00:12:02.010 --> 00:12:04.320 align:middle line:84% Well, I'm going to talk about one 00:12:04.320 --> 00:12:08.910 align:middle line:90% of those little small creatures. 00:12:08.910 --> 00:12:13.920 align:middle line:84% I grew up in Missouri and really had my background under-- 00:12:13.920 --> 00:12:16.240 align:middle line:90% in a forest. 00:12:16.240 --> 00:12:18.960 align:middle line:90% So I was always under trees. 00:12:18.960 --> 00:12:22.590 align:middle line:84% Well, when we moved to Houston, or just outside of Houston, 00:12:22.590 --> 00:12:25.950 align:middle line:84% I had a very different environment to get used to, 00:12:25.950 --> 00:12:30.720 align:middle line:84% because we lived on the side of Houston that doesn't have trees, 00:12:30.720 --> 00:12:31.620 align:middle line:90% because-- 00:12:31.620 --> 00:12:34.050 align:middle line:90% part of it does. 00:12:34.050 --> 00:12:38.760 align:middle line:84% Houston used to be the beach of an ancient sea. 00:12:38.760 --> 00:12:44.010 align:middle line:84% But we lived on the side that was the sea bottom. 00:12:44.010 --> 00:12:47.340 align:middle line:84% Anyway, it's a kind of a Beaumont clay soil out there. 00:12:47.340 --> 00:12:49.860 align:middle line:84% Anyway, we didn't have any trees. 00:12:49.860 --> 00:12:53.910 align:middle line:84% So this was the first time I had ever really actually seen 00:12:53.910 --> 00:12:58.800 align:middle line:84% the moon rise from the horizon, and seen it full, 00:12:58.800 --> 00:13:01.290 align:middle line:84% and seen it go clear across the sky and sink, 00:13:01.290 --> 00:13:02.880 align:middle line:90% and the same way with the sun. 00:13:02.880 --> 00:13:06.120 align:middle line:84% And we lived across from a field. 00:13:06.120 --> 00:13:09.690 align:middle line:84% And I knew there were mice in that field, 00:13:09.690 --> 00:13:13.095 align:middle line:84% because our cat would bring home one every once in a while, 00:13:13.095 --> 00:13:15.630 align:middle line:90% an unwilling visitor. 00:13:15.630 --> 00:13:22.080 align:middle line:84% Anyway, so I thought about how the sky just came right down 00:13:22.080 --> 00:13:23.610 align:middle line:90% flat to the Earth. 00:13:23.610 --> 00:13:26.040 align:middle line:84% And I had just never thought of that before. 00:13:26.040 --> 00:13:28.570 align:middle line:84% And I thought about the mouse out in the field. 00:13:28.570 --> 00:13:33.330 align:middle line:84% And so this is a poem that rose from that kind of vision. 00:13:33.330 --> 00:13:37.650 align:middle line:84% And the title is "Being Accomplished." 00:13:37.650 --> 00:13:40.500 align:middle line:84% "Balancing on her haunches, the mouse 00:13:40.500 --> 00:13:44.070 align:middle line:84% can accomplish certain things with her hands. 00:13:44.070 --> 00:13:49.350 align:middle line:84% She can pull the hull from a barley seed in paperlike pieces 00:13:49.350 --> 00:13:51.570 align:middle line:90% the size of threads. 00:13:51.570 --> 00:13:55.260 align:middle line:84% She can turn and turn a crumb to create smaller 00:13:55.260 --> 00:13:58.190 align:middle line:90% motes the size of her mouth. 00:13:58.190 --> 00:14:01.090 align:middle line:84% She can burrow in sand and grasp [AUDIO OUT] 00:14:01.090 --> 00:14:04.450 align:middle line:84% crystal grain with both of her hands. 00:14:04.450 --> 00:14:08.780 align:middle line:84% A quarter of a dried pea can fill her palm. 00:14:08.780 --> 00:14:14.150 align:middle line:84% She can hold the earless, eyeless head of her furless baby 00:14:14.150 --> 00:14:16.980 align:middle line:90% and push it to her teat. 00:14:16.980 --> 00:14:19.530 align:middle line:84% The hollow of its mouth must feel 00:14:19.530 --> 00:14:23.280 align:middle line:84% like the invisible confluence sucking continually 00:14:23.280 --> 00:14:26.410 align:middle line:90% deep inside a pink flower. 00:14:26.410 --> 00:14:30.640 align:middle line:84% And the mouse is almost compelled to see everything. 00:14:30.640 --> 00:14:33.700 align:middle line:84% Her hand, held up against the night sky, 00:14:33.700 --> 00:14:37.930 align:middle line:84% can scarcely hide Venus or Polaris or even 00:14:37.930 --> 00:14:40.660 align:middle line:90% a corner of the crescent moon. 00:14:40.660 --> 00:14:45.370 align:middle line:84% It can cover only a fraction of the blue moth's wing. 00:14:45.370 --> 00:14:49.690 align:middle line:84% Its shadow could never mar or blot enough of the evening 00:14:49.690 --> 00:14:51.400 align:middle line:90% to matter. 00:14:51.400 --> 00:14:55.720 align:middle line:84% Imagine the mouse with her spider-sized hands holding 00:14:55.720 --> 00:14:59.770 align:middle line:84% to a branch of dead hawthorn in the middle of the winter field 00:14:59.770 --> 00:15:01.300 align:middle line:90% tonight. 00:15:01.300 --> 00:15:04.780 align:middle line:84% Picture the night pressing in around [AUDIO OUT] 00:15:04.780 --> 00:15:07.480 align:middle line:84% forced, simply by their presence, 00:15:07.480 --> 00:15:11.200 align:middle line:84% to fit its great black bulk exactly 00:15:11.200 --> 00:15:16.120 align:middle line:84% around every hair and every pin-like nail, forced 00:15:16.120 --> 00:15:20.050 align:middle line:84% to outline perfectly every needle-thin bone 00:15:20.050 --> 00:15:24.760 align:middle line:84% without crushing one, to carry its immensity right 00:15:24.760 --> 00:15:29.710 align:middle line:84% up to the precise boundary of flesh but no farther. 00:15:29.710 --> 00:15:32.560 align:middle line:84% Think how the heavy weight of infinity, 00:15:32.560 --> 00:15:36.370 align:middle line:84% expanding outward in all directions forever, 00:15:36.370 --> 00:15:39.880 align:middle line:84% is force, nevertheless, to mold itself 00:15:39.880 --> 00:15:45.630 align:middle line:84% right here and now to every peculiarity of those appendages. 00:15:45.630 --> 00:15:50.850 align:middle line:84% And even the mind, capable of engulfing the night sky, 00:15:50.850 --> 00:15:56.820 align:middle line:84% capable of enclosing infinity, capable of surrounding itself 00:15:56.820 --> 00:16:01.980 align:middle line:84% inside any contemplation, has been obliged, for this moment, 00:16:01.980 --> 00:16:05.910 align:middle line:84% to accommodate the least grasp of that mouse, 00:16:05.910 --> 00:16:09.870 align:middle line:84% the dot [AUDIO OUT] her knuckle, the accomplishment of her 00:16:09.870 --> 00:16:11.085 align:middle line:90% slightest intent." 00:16:11.085 --> 00:16:14.934 align:middle line:90% 00:16:14.934 --> 00:16:25.760 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:16:25.760 --> 00:16:28.220 align:middle line:84% Well, I'm going to read a couple of poems now 00:16:28.220 --> 00:16:33.050 align:middle line:84% that really have nothing to do with this stinking-hot desert. 00:16:33.050 --> 00:16:36.020 align:middle line:84% But I will read a stinking-hot-desert poem 00:16:36.020 --> 00:16:36.590 align:middle line:90% in a minute. 00:16:36.590 --> 00:16:40.310 align:middle line:84% But I hope you know I don't really think 00:16:40.310 --> 00:16:42.200 align:middle line:90% the desert is stinking hot. 00:16:42.200 --> 00:16:46.280 align:middle line:84% But it's a phrase I've gotten used to hearing. 00:16:46.280 --> 00:16:50.840 align:middle line:84% Anyway, the first poem I'm going to read that doesn't have one 00:16:50.840 --> 00:16:53.900 align:middle line:84% single thing to do with the desert is called "Rolling Naked 00:16:53.900 --> 00:16:55.610 align:middle line:90% in the Morning Dew." 00:16:55.610 --> 00:16:58.280 align:middle line:84% And I think that's probably because you 00:16:58.280 --> 00:17:00.290 align:middle line:84% wouldn't want to try that around here, 00:17:00.290 --> 00:17:02.240 align:middle line:90% supposing you even had dew. 00:17:02.240 --> 00:17:03.835 align:middle line:90% Do you ever have dew? 00:17:03.835 --> 00:17:04.849 align:middle line:90% Oh, you do have dew. 00:17:04.849 --> 00:17:06.109 align:middle line:90% OK, you have dew. 00:17:06.109 --> 00:17:07.730 align:middle line:90% [CHUCKLING] 00:17:07.730 --> 00:17:11.930 align:middle line:84% But I've seen a lot of plants that I don't think 00:17:11.930 --> 00:17:14.578 align:middle line:90% I'd want to roll naked over-- 00:17:14.578 --> 00:17:17.869 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:17:17.869 --> 00:17:20.940 align:middle line:84% --just in the few hours that I've been here. 00:17:20.940 --> 00:17:24.619 align:middle line:84% So anyway, this, we have to imagine, right? 00:17:24.619 --> 00:17:30.140 align:middle line:84% We have to project ourselves into a different landscape. 00:17:30.140 --> 00:17:33.230 align:middle line:84% "Rolling Naked in the Morning Dew." 00:17:33.230 --> 00:17:37.250 align:middle line:84% "Out among the wet grasses and wild barley-covered meadows, 00:17:37.250 --> 00:17:41.060 align:middle line:84% backside, frontside, through the white-clover and feather 00:17:41.060 --> 00:17:45.530 align:middle line:84% peabush, over spongy tussocks and shaggy-mane mushrooms, 00:17:45.530 --> 00:17:48.680 align:middle line:84% the abandoned nests of larks and bobolinks, 00:17:48.680 --> 00:17:53.900 align:middle line:84% face to face with vole trails, snail niches, jelly slug eggs; 00:17:53.900 --> 00:17:57.890 align:middle line:84% Or in a stone-walled garden, level with the stemmed bulbs 00:17:57.890 --> 00:18:01.310 align:middle line:84% of orange and scarlet tulips, cricket carcasses, 00:18:01.310 --> 00:18:05.330 align:middle line:84% the bent blossoms of sweet William, shoulder over shoulder, 00:18:05.330 --> 00:18:10.040 align:middle line:84% leg over leg, clear to the ferny edge of the goldfish pond-- 00:18:10.040 --> 00:18:12.590 align:middle line:84% some people believe in the rejuvenating powers 00:18:12.590 --> 00:18:13.550 align:middle line:90% of this act-- 00:18:13.550 --> 00:18:18.260 align:middle line:84% naked as a toad in the forest, belly and hips, thighs 00:18:18.260 --> 00:18:21.380 align:middle line:84% and ankles drenched in the dew-filled gulches of oak 00:18:21.380 --> 00:18:25.610 align:middle line:84% leaves, in the soft fall beneath yellow birches, all 00:18:25.610 --> 00:18:29.900 align:middle line:84% of the skin exposed directly to the killy cry of the kingbird, 00:18:29.900 --> 00:18:32.510 align:middle line:84% the buzzing of grasshopper sparrows, 00:18:32.510 --> 00:18:35.660 align:middle line:84% those calls merging with the dawn-red mists 00:18:35.660 --> 00:18:39.650 align:middle line:84% of crimson steeplebush, entering the bare body then, 00:18:39.650 --> 00:18:43.100 align:middle line:84% not merely through the ears, but through the skin 00:18:43.100 --> 00:18:46.550 align:middle line:84% of every naked person willing every event 00:18:46.550 --> 00:18:51.950 align:middle line:84% and potentiality of a damp transforming dawn to enter. 00:18:51.950 --> 00:18:54.560 align:middle line:84% Lillie Langtry practiced it, when 00:18:54.560 --> 00:18:59.240 align:middle line:84% weather permitted, lying down naked every morning in the dew, 00:18:59.240 --> 00:19:02.660 align:middle line:84% with all of her beauty believing the single petal 00:19:02.660 --> 00:19:06.860 align:middle line:84% of her white skin could absorb and assume that radiating 00:19:06.860 --> 00:19:09.320 align:middle line:90% purity of liquid and light. 00:19:09.320 --> 00:19:12.860 align:middle line:84% And I admit to believing myself, without question, 00:19:12.860 --> 00:19:16.040 align:middle line:84% in the magical powers of dew [AUDIO OUT] and breasts 00:19:16.040 --> 00:19:20.330 align:middle line:84% of Lillie Langtry, believing devotedly in the magical powers 00:19:20.330 --> 00:19:25.250 align:middle line:84% of early-morning dew on the skin of her body lolling in purple 00:19:25.250 --> 00:19:29.510 align:middle line:84% beds of bird's-foot violets, pink prairie mimosa. 00:19:29.510 --> 00:19:32.840 align:middle line:84% And I believe, without doubt, in the mystery 00:19:32.840 --> 00:19:37.100 align:middle line:84% of the healing energy coming from the wholehearted belief 00:19:37.100 --> 00:19:41.930 align:middle line:84% in the beneficent results of the good delights of the naked body 00:19:41.930 --> 00:19:45.950 align:middle line:84% rolling and rolling through all the silked and sun-filled, 00:19:45.950 --> 00:19:50.120 align:middle line:84% dusky-winged, sheathed and sparkled, looped and dizzied 00:19:50.120 --> 00:19:53.780 align:middle line:84% effluences of each dawn of the rolling earth. 00:19:53.780 --> 00:19:58.520 align:middle line:84% Just consider how the mere idea of it alone has already caused 00:19:58.520 --> 00:20:01.820 align:middle line:84% me to sing and sing this whole morning long." 00:20:01.820 --> 00:20:06.115 align:middle line:90% 00:20:06.115 --> 00:20:06.615 align:middle line:90% Well-- 00:20:06.615 --> 00:20:10.350 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:20:10.350 --> 00:20:11.670 align:middle line:90% You don't need to clap. 00:20:11.670 --> 00:20:15.120 align:middle line:84% You don't need to clap every time. 00:20:15.120 --> 00:20:16.710 align:middle line:84% Anyway, I have to tell this joke, 00:20:16.710 --> 00:20:21.150 align:middle line:84% because a friend of mine, who was giving a reading of his own, 00:20:21.150 --> 00:20:23.910 align:middle line:84% read a poem of mine before he did his reading. 00:20:23.910 --> 00:20:27.910 align:middle line:84% And afterwards, two women came up to him and said, 00:20:27.910 --> 00:20:29.370 align:middle line:90% do you know Pattiann Rogers? 00:20:29.370 --> 00:20:31.960 align:middle line:90% And he said, well, yes, I do. 00:20:31.960 --> 00:20:34.920 align:middle line:84% And they said, well, when you see her, 00:20:34.920 --> 00:20:37.500 align:middle line:84% will you please tell her that we have formed a group, 00:20:37.500 --> 00:20:41.070 align:middle line:84% and we meet twice a year, and we roll naked in the morning dew? 00:20:41.070 --> 00:20:44.220 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:20:44.220 --> 00:20:47.760 align:middle line:84% So I always like to let the audiences know that, in case you 00:20:47.760 --> 00:20:53.310 align:middle line:84% want to form your own group, because it's fast spreading 00:20:53.310 --> 00:20:54.840 align:middle line:90% across the country, I think. 00:20:54.840 --> 00:21:00.600 align:middle line:90% 00:21:00.600 --> 00:21:03.000 align:middle line:84% Well, I said I was going to read two poems that 00:21:03.000 --> 00:21:07.890 align:middle line:84% didn't have anything to do with the beautiful, warm desert. 00:21:07.890 --> 00:21:11.070 align:middle line:84% And "Rolling Naked in the Morning Dew" was one. 00:21:11.070 --> 00:21:14.130 align:middle line:84% And now I'm going to read a poem about toads. 00:21:14.130 --> 00:21:16.800 align:middle line:84% But I think you do have toads in the desert. 00:21:16.800 --> 00:21:20.910 align:middle line:84% And when it rains, that's when they come up and lay eggs. 00:21:20.910 --> 00:21:23.220 align:middle line:84% And everything has to happen real fast 00:21:23.220 --> 00:21:26.280 align:middle line:84% before the pond disappears, or the-- 00:21:26.280 --> 00:21:27.157 align:middle line:90% right? 00:21:27.157 --> 00:21:28.350 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:21:28.350 --> 00:21:29.242 align:middle line:90% Pardon? 00:21:29.242 --> 00:21:30.480 align:middle line:90% Spade-foot toads. 00:21:30.480 --> 00:21:31.330 align:middle line:90% Spade-foot toads. 00:21:31.330 --> 00:21:31.830 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:21:31.830 --> 00:21:35.040 align:middle line:84% I don't know if I have a spade-foot toad in here. 00:21:35.040 --> 00:21:38.100 align:middle line:84% But anyway, I wrote this partially 00:21:38.100 --> 00:21:42.000 align:middle line:84% because when we were living in Houston, we-- 00:21:42.000 --> 00:21:44.200 align:middle line:90% Hurricane Alicia went through. 00:21:44.200 --> 00:21:47.040 align:middle line:84% And of course, Houston is far enough from the coast 00:21:47.040 --> 00:21:49.830 align:middle line:84% that there wasn't a lot of damage. 00:21:49.830 --> 00:21:53.610 align:middle line:84% Of course, we lost our electricity, and nobody wanted-- 00:21:53.610 --> 00:21:56.610 align:middle line:84% knew what to do, because everything 00:21:56.610 --> 00:21:59.550 align:middle line:84% I could think of to do needed electricity. 00:21:59.550 --> 00:22:05.400 align:middle line:84% Anyway, so the hurricane did come through. 00:22:05.400 --> 00:22:07.470 align:middle line:90% And it was still pretty strong. 00:22:07.470 --> 00:22:10.470 align:middle line:84% The wind was blowing, and branches were breaking off 00:22:10.470 --> 00:22:14.020 align:middle line:84% the trees, and fences were blowing down, things like that. 00:22:14.020 --> 00:22:16.920 align:middle line:84% And right below our bedroom window, 00:22:16.920 --> 00:22:22.150 align:middle line:84% outside, there was probably a toad. 00:22:22.150 --> 00:22:23.350 align:middle line:90% Anyway, it was singing. 00:22:23.350 --> 00:22:25.390 align:middle line:84% It sang through this whole thing. 00:22:25.390 --> 00:22:28.510 align:middle line:84% The wind is roaring, and everybody is scared, 00:22:28.510 --> 00:22:30.790 align:middle line:84% and we don't know what's going to happen. 00:22:30.790 --> 00:22:33.700 align:middle line:84% And this little toad was just happy as could 00:22:33.700 --> 00:22:36.130 align:middle line:90% be, had some water. 00:22:36.130 --> 00:22:40.210 align:middle line:84% Anyway, so I just thought that was kind of a power. 00:22:40.210 --> 00:22:43.570 align:middle line:84% But that's the title of this poem, "The Power of Toads." 00:22:43.570 --> 00:22:48.460 align:middle line:84% But actually, it's about a different kind of power. 00:22:48.460 --> 00:22:52.300 align:middle line:90% And it's the way with all poems. 00:22:52.300 --> 00:22:55.315 align:middle line:84% They're not about what they are about. 00:22:55.315 --> 00:22:58.120 align:middle line:84% It's what makes people mad at poets, 00:22:58.120 --> 00:23:03.075 align:middle line:84% because why don't you write what you're [INAUDIBLE]. 00:23:03.075 --> 00:23:07.630 align:middle line:84% I had questions from the audience at West Point once, 00:23:07.630 --> 00:23:10.060 align:middle line:84% and everybody was being very polite. 00:23:10.060 --> 00:23:12.670 align:middle line:84% They're cadets, and they have to be polite. 00:23:12.670 --> 00:23:13.720 align:middle line:90% [CHUCKLING] 00:23:13.720 --> 00:23:16.360 align:middle line:84% I think they get some kind of demerit or something 00:23:16.360 --> 00:23:17.320 align:middle line:90% if they're not. 00:23:17.320 --> 00:23:21.290 align:middle line:84% But finally, one raised his hand, 00:23:21.290 --> 00:23:24.430 align:middle line:84% and I called on him, because they were just asking, when 00:23:24.430 --> 00:23:25.780 align:middle line:90% did you start writing poetry? 00:23:25.780 --> 00:23:28.960 align:middle line:84% And stuff like-- why don't poets just come right out 00:23:28.960 --> 00:23:30.460 align:middle line:84% and say what they're talking about? 00:23:30.460 --> 00:23:32.215 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:23:32.215 --> 00:23:36.560 align:middle line:84% Why beat around the bush the way you do? 00:23:36.560 --> 00:23:42.640 align:middle line:84% So anyway, just contrary, I guess. 00:23:42.640 --> 00:23:46.580 align:middle line:84% So this is ostensibly about toads. 00:23:46.580 --> 00:23:49.480 align:middle line:84% And it's also about something else. 00:23:49.480 --> 00:23:52.300 align:middle line:90% 00:23:52.300 --> 00:23:54.490 align:middle line:84% And there are human beings in the end. 00:23:54.490 --> 00:23:57.910 align:middle line:84% So if you're not interested in toads, just hang on, 00:23:57.910 --> 00:24:02.020 align:middle line:84% and there's a human interest as we get to the end. 00:24:02.020 --> 00:24:03.730 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:24:03.730 --> 00:24:07.000 align:middle line:84% But everyone should be interested in toads, right? 00:24:07.000 --> 00:24:08.980 align:middle line:90% Absolutely. 00:24:08.980 --> 00:24:11.230 align:middle line:90% "The Power of Toads." 00:24:11.230 --> 00:24:14.110 align:middle line:84% "The oak toad and the red-spotted toad 00:24:14.110 --> 00:24:16.990 align:middle line:84% love their love in a spring rain, 00:24:16.990 --> 00:24:21.490 align:middle line:84% calling and calling, breeding through a stormy evening clasped 00:24:21.490 --> 00:24:22.750 align:middle line:90% atop their mates. 00:24:22.750 --> 00:24:26.560 align:middle line:84% Who wouldn't sing, anticipating the belly pressed hard 00:24:26.560 --> 00:24:29.500 align:middle line:84% against a female's spine in the steady rain 00:24:29.500 --> 00:24:34.210 align:middle line:84% below writhing skies, the safe moist jelly effluence 00:24:34.210 --> 00:24:36.820 align:middle line:90% of a final exaltation? 00:24:36.820 --> 00:24:39.520 align:middle line:84% There might be some toads who actually believe 00:24:39.520 --> 00:24:43.360 align:middle line:84% that the loin-shaking thunder of the banks, the evening filled 00:24:43.360 --> 00:24:47.740 align:middle line:84% with damp, the warm softening mud and rising riverlets 00:24:47.740 --> 00:24:51.910 align:middle line:84% are the facts of their own persistent performance. 00:24:51.910 --> 00:24:56.230 align:middle line:84% Maybe they think that when they sing, they sing more than songs, 00:24:56.230 --> 00:24:59.620 align:middle line:84% creating rain and mist by their voices, 00:24:59.620 --> 00:25:03.040 align:middle line:84% initiating the union of water and dusk, 00:25:03.040 --> 00:25:07.240 align:middle line:84% females materializing on the banks shaped perfectly 00:25:07.240 --> 00:25:09.160 align:middle line:90% by their calls. 00:25:09.160 --> 00:25:12.580 align:middle line:84% And some toads may be convinced they have forced the heavens 00:25:12.580 --> 00:25:16.000 align:middle line:84% to twist and moan by the continual expansion 00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:19.420 align:middle line:84% of their lung sacs pushing against the dusk. 00:25:19.420 --> 00:25:22.240 align:middle line:84% And some might believe the splitting light, 00:25:22.240 --> 00:25:26.200 align:middle line:84% the soaring grey they see above them are nothing but a vision 00:25:26.200 --> 00:25:30.760 align:middle line:84% of the longing in their groins, a fertile spring heaven caught 00:25:30.760 --> 00:25:33.070 align:middle line:84% in its entirety at the [AUDIO OUT]. 00:25:33.070 --> 00:25:34.810 align:middle line:90% And they might be right. 00:25:34.810 --> 00:25:37.240 align:middle line:84% Who knows whether these broken heavens 00:25:37.240 --> 00:25:41.680 align:middle line:84% could exist tonight separate from trills and toad ringings? 00:25:41.680 --> 00:25:45.400 align:middle line:84% Maybe the particles of this rain descending on the pond 00:25:45.400 --> 00:25:48.340 align:middle line:84% are nothing but the visual manifestation 00:25:48.340 --> 00:25:53.260 align:middle line:84% of whistles and cascading love clicks in the shore grasses. 00:25:53.260 --> 00:25:56.320 align:middle line:84% Raindrops finding earth and coitus 00:25:56.320 --> 00:26:00.190 align:middle line:84% could very well be known here as one. 00:26:00.190 --> 00:26:03.190 align:middle line:84% We could investigate the causal relationship 00:26:03.190 --> 00:26:07.970 align:middle line:84% between rainstorm and love by pondside, if we wished. 00:26:07.970 --> 00:26:11.500 align:middle line:84% We could lie down in the grasses by the water's edge 00:26:11.500 --> 00:26:15.250 align:middle line:84% and watch to see exactly how the heavens were moved, 00:26:15.250 --> 00:26:18.460 align:middle line:84% thinking hard of thunder, imagining 00:26:18.460 --> 00:26:22.240 align:middle line:84% all the courses that slow, clean waters might take 00:26:22.240 --> 00:26:26.230 align:middle line:84% across our bodies, believing completely in the rolling 00:26:26.230 --> 00:26:30.190 align:middle line:84% and pressing power of heavens and thighs. 00:26:30.190 --> 00:26:33.917 align:middle line:84% And in the end, we might be glad, even if all we 00:26:33.917 --> 00:26:34.750 align:middle line:90% discovered for cer-- 00:26:34.750 --> 00:26:39.640 align:middle line:84% [AUDIO OUT] was the slick, sweet promise of good love beneath 00:26:39.640 --> 00:26:42.910 align:middle line:90% dark skies inside warm rains." 00:26:42.910 --> 00:26:46.300 align:middle line:90% 00:26:46.300 --> 00:26:50.410 align:middle line:84% Well, see, I suggest that after you have done the rolling part, 00:26:50.410 --> 00:26:55.540 align:middle line:84% then you do this other investigation. 00:26:55.540 --> 00:26:59.770 align:middle line:90% [CHUCKLING] 00:26:59.770 --> 00:27:05.140 align:middle line:84% It's a scientific experiment, right? 00:27:05.140 --> 00:27:09.890 align:middle line:84% Well, anyway, that leads into a couple of love poems. 00:27:09.890 --> 00:27:14.380 align:middle line:84% This first one is entitled "Love Song." 00:27:14.380 --> 00:27:16.960 align:middle line:90% 00:27:16.960 --> 00:27:19.870 align:middle line:84% "It's all right, together with me tonight, 00:27:19.870 --> 00:27:22.870 align:middle line:84% how your whole body trembles exactly 00:27:22.870 --> 00:27:25.930 align:middle line:84% like the locust establishing its dry symbol, 00:27:25.930 --> 00:27:30.100 align:middle line:84% quivering, even in the farthest branch-tip leaves of the tree 00:27:30.100 --> 00:27:32.380 align:middle line:90% in which it screams. 00:27:32.380 --> 00:27:36.010 align:middle line:84% Lying next to me, it's all right how similar 00:27:36.010 --> 00:27:38.740 align:middle line:84% you become to the red deer [AUDIO OUT] agitated, 00:27:38.740 --> 00:27:43.180 align:middle line:84% pacing on the open plains by the sea, in its sideling, 00:27:43.180 --> 00:27:49.190 align:middle line:84% haunch against haunch, in the final mastery of its mounting. 00:27:49.190 --> 00:27:51.440 align:middle line:84% And it's all right, in those moments, 00:27:51.440 --> 00:27:54.860 align:middle line:84% how you possess the same single-minded madness 00:27:54.860 --> 00:27:58.670 align:middle line:84% of the opened wood poppy, circling and circling, 00:27:58.670 --> 00:28:02.870 align:middle line:84% the same wild strength of its golden eye. 00:28:02.870 --> 00:28:07.130 align:middle line:84% It's true, you're no better than the determined boar, 00:28:07.130 --> 00:28:11.840 align:middle line:84% snorgling and rooting, no better than the ridiculous ruffled 00:28:11.840 --> 00:28:15.530 align:middle line:84% drumming of the prairie chicken, no better 00:28:15.530 --> 00:28:19.160 align:middle line:84% than the explosion of the milkweed pod spilling 00:28:19.160 --> 00:28:23.960 align:middle line:84% the white furl of the moon deep in the midnight field. 00:28:23.960 --> 00:28:26.210 align:middle line:84% You're completely indistinguishable 00:28:26.210 --> 00:28:29.180 align:middle line:84% from the enraged sand myrtle absurd 00:28:29.180 --> 00:28:33.590 align:middle line:84% in its scarlet spread on the rocky bluffs. 00:28:33.590 --> 00:28:35.240 align:middle line:90% But it's all right. 00:28:35.240 --> 00:28:38.840 align:middle line:84% Don't you know this is precisely what I seek? 00:28:38.840 --> 00:28:43.580 align:middle line:84% Mad myself [AUDIO OUT] every last droop and pearl-dropped 00:28:43.580 --> 00:28:49.220 align:middle line:84% oval, every nip and cry and needle fine boring, 00:28:49.220 --> 00:28:54.170 align:middle line:84% every drooping, spore-rich tassel of oak flower, 00:28:54.170 --> 00:28:58.490 align:middle line:84% all the whistling, wing-beating, heavy-tipped matings 00:28:58.490 --> 00:29:02.900 align:middle line:84% of an entire prairie of grasses, every wafted, 00:29:02.900 --> 00:29:08.090 align:middle line:84% moaning seed hook you can possibly manage to bring to me, 00:29:08.090 --> 00:29:12.080 align:middle line:84% that this is exactly what I contrive to take into my arms 00:29:12.080 --> 00:29:14.810 align:middle line:90% with you again and again." 00:29:14.810 --> 00:29:26.630 align:middle line:90% 00:29:26.630 --> 00:29:30.620 align:middle line:84% I read that poem in Missoula once. 00:29:30.620 --> 00:29:34.730 align:middle line:90% And afterwards, two men came up. 00:29:34.730 --> 00:29:38.570 align:middle line:90% They were brothers from Boulder. 00:29:38.570 --> 00:29:40.940 align:middle line:84% What that has to do with anything, I don't know. 00:29:40.940 --> 00:29:41.510 align:middle line:90% But-- 00:29:41.510 --> 00:29:42.900 align:middle line:90% [CHUCKLING] 00:29:42.900 --> 00:29:46.940 align:middle line:84% And he wanted to know what book that poem was in. 00:29:46.940 --> 00:29:49.700 align:middle line:84% And they said, we want to buy that book 00:29:49.700 --> 00:29:52.595 align:middle line:84% because we want our wives to read that poem to us. 00:29:52.595 --> 00:29:54.770 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:29:54.770 --> 00:29:57.650 align:middle line:84% So if anybody wants to know, it's in this book. 00:29:57.650 --> 00:30:00.410 align:middle line:90% 00:30:00.410 --> 00:30:02.270 align:middle line:90% OK, the next one-- 00:30:02.270 --> 00:30:06.950 align:middle line:90% this is another love poem. 00:30:06.950 --> 00:30:09.020 align:middle line:84% I'm not going to read love poems all night, 00:30:09.020 --> 00:30:11.240 align:middle line:90% so don't be counting on that. 00:30:11.240 --> 00:30:14.510 align:middle line:90% 00:30:14.510 --> 00:30:17.510 align:middle line:84% Now, I know you've got a lot of hummingbirds around here. 00:30:17.510 --> 00:30:21.050 align:middle line:84% And I'm going to try to-- hoping to go to the museum 00:30:21.050 --> 00:30:26.335 align:middle line:84% tomorrow and see the hummingbird aviary, right? 00:30:26.335 --> 00:30:27.710 align:middle line:84% Where they're zooming all around. 00:30:27.710 --> 00:30:32.870 align:middle line:84% So you probably know that the male hummingbird 00:30:32.870 --> 00:30:38.330 align:middle line:84% courts the female by displaying, in front of her, 00:30:38.330 --> 00:30:43.760 align:middle line:84% flying up and then dropping and then flying up and then 00:30:43.760 --> 00:30:44.780 align:middle line:90% dropping. 00:30:44.780 --> 00:30:51.950 align:middle line:84% And this evidently is a wonderful-- well, 00:30:51.950 --> 00:30:53.090 align:middle line:90% it works, right? 00:30:53.090 --> 00:30:56.030 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:30:56.030 --> 00:30:57.245 align:middle line:90% So it's pretty exciting. 00:30:57.245 --> 00:31:00.170 align:middle line:90% 00:31:00.170 --> 00:31:01.400 align:middle line:90% Anyway, I thought it-- 00:31:01.400 --> 00:31:02.900 align:middle line:90% I think it's pretty exciting. 00:31:02.900 --> 00:31:06.590 align:middle line:90% 00:31:06.590 --> 00:31:08.810 align:middle line:90% See, I think I like all this. 00:31:08.810 --> 00:31:11.060 align:middle line:84% I think it's wonderful to be a female 00:31:11.060 --> 00:31:16.880 align:middle line:84% and have the guys all doing things, trying to impress you, 00:31:16.880 --> 00:31:17.600 align:middle line:90% right? 00:31:17.600 --> 00:31:24.530 align:middle line:84% So anyway, I think it's romantic. 00:31:24.530 --> 00:31:30.980 align:middle line:84% So this poem is titled "The Hummingbird: A Seduction." 00:31:30.980 --> 00:31:35.450 align:middle line:84% "If I were a female hummingbird perched still and quiet 00:31:35.450 --> 00:31:39.320 align:middle line:84% on an upper myrtle branch in the spring afternoon, 00:31:39.320 --> 00:31:42.560 align:middle line:84% and if you were a male alone in the whole 00:31:42.560 --> 00:31:47.060 align:middle line:84% heavens before me, having parted yourself, for me, 00:31:47.060 --> 00:31:48.980 align:middle line:90% from cedar top and honeysu-- 00:31:48.980 --> 00:31:52.850 align:middle line:84% [AUDIO OUT] and earth down, your body hovering in 00:31:52.850 --> 00:31:57.680 align:middle line:84% midair far away from jewelweed, thistle, and bee-balm; 00:31:57.680 --> 00:32:01.700 align:middle line:84% And if I watched how you fell, plummeting before me, 00:32:01.700 --> 00:32:06.050 align:middle line:84% and how you rose again and fell with such mastery 00:32:06.050 --> 00:32:09.590 align:middle line:84% that I believed, for a moment, you were the sky, 00:32:09.590 --> 00:32:13.520 align:middle line:84% and the red-marked bird diving inside your circumference 00:32:13.520 --> 00:32:17.180 align:middle line:84% was just the physical revelation of the light's most perfect 00:32:17.180 --> 00:32:18.710 align:middle line:90% desire; 00:32:18.710 --> 00:32:22.250 align:middle line:84% And if I saw your sweeping and sucking performance 00:32:22.250 --> 00:32:26.090 align:middle line:84% of swirling egg and semen in the air, the weaving, 00:32:26.090 --> 00:32:30.920 align:middle line:84% twisting vision of red petal and nectar and soaring rump, 00:32:30.920 --> 00:32:33.980 align:middle line:84% the rush of your wing in its grand confusion 00:32:33.980 --> 00:32:37.370 align:middle line:84% of arching and splitting created completely 00:32:37.370 --> 00:32:40.370 align:middle line:90% out of nothing just for me; 00:32:40.370 --> 00:32:45.200 align:middle line:84% Then when you came down to me, I would call you my own spinning 00:32:45.200 --> 00:32:50.720 align:middle line:84% bloom of ruby sage, my funneling storm of sunlit sperm 00:32:50.720 --> 00:32:55.550 align:middle line:84% and pollen, my only breathless piece of scarlet sky, 00:32:55.550 --> 00:33:00.020 align:middle line:84% and I would bless the base of each of your feathers and touch 00:33:00.020 --> 00:33:04.670 align:middle line:84% the tine of string muscles binding your wings and taste 00:33:04.670 --> 00:33:08.870 align:middle line:84% the odor of your glistening oils and hunt the honey 00:33:08.870 --> 00:33:14.090 align:middle line:84% in your crimson flare, and I would take you and take you 00:33:14.090 --> 00:33:19.130 align:middle line:84% and take you deep into any kind of nest you ever wanted." 00:33:19.130 --> 00:33:25.750 align:middle line:90% 00:33:25.750 --> 00:33:30.580 align:middle line:84% Well, I said, too bad my husband is not a hummingbird, right? 00:33:30.580 --> 00:33:33.340 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:33:33.340 --> 00:33:36.580 align:middle line:90% But he does his best. 00:33:36.580 --> 00:33:40.370 align:middle line:90% 00:33:40.370 --> 00:33:52.630 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:33:52.630 --> 00:33:56.680 align:middle line:84% We have to help our human husbands along, right? 00:33:56.680 --> 00:34:03.130 align:middle line:84% OK, the next poem is entitled "Geocentric." 00:34:03.130 --> 00:34:08.889 align:middle line:84% "Indecent, self-soiled, bilious reek of turnip and toadstool 00:34:08.889 --> 00:34:13.690 align:middle line:84% decay, dribbling the black oil of wilted succulents, 00:34:13.690 --> 00:34:17.139 align:middle line:84% the brown fester of rotting orchids, 00:34:17.139 --> 00:34:22.120 align:middle line:84% in plain view, that stain of stinkhorn down your front, that 00:34:22.120 --> 00:34:26.710 align:middle line:84% leaking roil of bracket fungi down your back, 00:34:26.710 --> 00:34:31.600 align:middle line:84% you purple-haired, grainy-fuzzed smolder of refuse, 00:34:31.600 --> 00:34:36.070 align:middle line:84% fathering fumes and boils and powdery mildews, 00:34:36.070 --> 00:34:38.650 align:middle line:84% enduring the constant interruption 00:34:38.650 --> 00:34:43.929 align:middle line:84% of sink-mire flatulence, contagious with ear wax, corn 00:34:43.929 --> 00:34:49.030 align:middle line:84% smut, blister rust, backwash, and graveyard debris, 00:34:49.030 --> 00:34:52.540 align:middle line:84% rich with manure bog and dry rot, 00:34:52.540 --> 00:34:57.040 align:middle line:84% harboring not only egg-addled garbage and wrinkled lip 00:34:57.040 --> 00:35:00.610 align:middle line:84% of orange [AUDIO OUT] mold, but also the clotted breath 00:35:00.610 --> 00:35:04.300 align:middle line:84% of overripe radish and burnt leek, 00:35:04.300 --> 00:35:09.640 align:middle line:84% bearing every dank, malodorous rut and scarp, all sulphur 00:35:09.640 --> 00:35:15.730 align:middle line:84% fissures and fetid hillside seepages, old, old dependable, 00:35:15.730 --> 00:35:19.240 align:middle line:84% engendering forever the stench and stretch 00:35:19.240 --> 00:35:23.590 align:middle line:84% and warm seethe of inevitable putrefaction, 00:35:23.590 --> 00:35:27.274 align:middle line:90% nobody loves you as I do. 00:35:27.274 --> 00:35:31.210 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:35:31.210 --> 00:35:38.100 align:middle line:90% 00:35:38.100 --> 00:35:42.510 align:middle line:84% Well, I have two jokes to tell about that. 00:35:42.510 --> 00:35:46.603 align:middle line:84% One was that a poet came up to me after I read that once 00:35:46.603 --> 00:35:48.270 align:middle line:84% and said he didn't know whether that was 00:35:48.270 --> 00:35:49.920 align:middle line:90% about the earth or my husband. 00:35:49.920 --> 00:35:51.640 align:middle line:90% [CHUCKLING] 00:35:51.640 --> 00:35:57.270 align:middle line:84% And the other was, oh, this isn't a joke. 00:35:57.270 --> 00:35:58.740 align:middle line:84% It's really why I wrote the poem, 00:35:58.740 --> 00:36:03.270 align:middle line:84% because those of us who enjoy the natural world 00:36:03.270 --> 00:36:06.150 align:middle line:84% and write about it are always being accused 00:36:06.150 --> 00:36:10.050 align:middle line:84% of refusing to look at the repulsive and bad things 00:36:10.050 --> 00:36:12.130 align:middle line:90% about the natural world. 00:36:12.130 --> 00:36:15.720 align:middle line:84% So I just made a list of every repulsive thing 00:36:15.720 --> 00:36:19.260 align:middle line:84% I could think of, and then said, so what? 00:36:19.260 --> 00:36:22.020 align:middle line:90% 00:36:22.020 --> 00:36:25.050 align:middle line:90% I love you anyway. 00:36:25.050 --> 00:36:27.360 align:middle line:84% All right, the next three poems are 00:36:27.360 --> 00:36:33.810 align:middle line:84% going to be about death because poets have to write about death. 00:36:33.810 --> 00:36:36.300 align:middle line:90% That's one of our subjects. 00:36:36.300 --> 00:36:41.820 align:middle line:84% And anyway, I think we ought to write about death, 00:36:41.820 --> 00:36:44.580 align:middle line:90% because it's like I said. 00:36:44.580 --> 00:36:46.500 align:middle line:84% If it wasn't for death, we probably 00:36:46.500 --> 00:36:49.170 align:middle line:84% wouldn't be writing any poems at all, right? 00:36:49.170 --> 00:36:54.655 align:middle line:84% Because if you have infinity to do it in, why do it today? 00:36:54.655 --> 00:36:55.155 align:middle line:90% So-- 00:36:55.155 --> 00:36:57.570 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:36:57.570 --> 00:37:01.530 align:middle line:84% Anyway, so we've got to hurry here because we 00:37:01.530 --> 00:37:02.405 align:middle line:90% don't have much time. 00:37:02.405 --> 00:37:04.238 align:middle line:84% So we've got to write [AUDIO OUT] we can get 00:37:04.238 --> 00:37:07.590 align:middle line:90% written in our few brief years. 00:37:07.590 --> 00:37:09.390 align:middle line:90% Oh, OK. 00:37:09.390 --> 00:37:13.650 align:middle line:84% So that's what the subject is going to be here 00:37:13.650 --> 00:37:15.540 align:middle line:90% for the next three poems. 00:37:15.540 --> 00:37:17.400 align:middle line:84% And really, I have six more poems. 00:37:17.400 --> 00:37:21.060 align:middle line:84% So these three and then three more. 00:37:21.060 --> 00:37:26.370 align:middle line:84% So the first one is called "The Next Story." 00:37:26.370 --> 00:37:28.620 align:middle line:84% "All morning long, they kept coming 00:37:28.620 --> 00:37:35.370 align:middle line:84% back, the jays, five of them, blue-grey, purple-banded, 00:37:35.370 --> 00:37:38.160 align:middle line:90% strident, disruptive. 00:37:38.160 --> 00:37:41.550 align:middle line:84% They screamed with their whole bodies from the branches 00:37:41.550 --> 00:37:45.150 align:middle line:84% of the pine, tipped forward, heads toward earth, 00:37:45.150 --> 00:37:48.240 align:middle line:84% and swept across the lawn into the oleanders, 00:37:48.240 --> 00:37:53.250 align:middle line:84% dipping low as they flew over the half-skull and beak, 00:37:53.250 --> 00:37:57.690 align:middle line:84% the blood-end of the one wing lying intact, 00:37:57.690 --> 00:38:01.050 align:middle line:84% over the fluff of feathers scattered and drifting 00:38:01.050 --> 00:38:04.500 align:middle line:84% occasionally, easily as dandelion-- 00:38:04.500 --> 00:38:07.110 align:middle line:90% all that the cat had left. 00:38:07.110 --> 00:38:09.960 align:middle line:84% Back and forth, past one another, 00:38:09.960 --> 00:38:13.860 align:middle line:84% pausing as if listening, then sharply cutting the morning 00:38:13.860 --> 00:38:18.750 align:middle line:84% again into shard upon shard of frantic and crested descent, 00:38:18.750 --> 00:38:21.840 align:middle line:84% jagged slivers of raucous outrage, 00:38:21.840 --> 00:38:26.010 align:middle line:84% they kept at it, crying singly, together, 00:38:26.010 --> 00:38:31.320 align:middle line:84% alternately, as if on cue, discordant anthem. 00:38:31.320 --> 00:38:34.080 align:middle line:84% The pattern of their inconsolable fear 00:38:34.080 --> 00:38:38.220 align:middle line:84% could be seen against the flat spring sky as identical 00:38:38.220 --> 00:38:42.330 align:middle line:84% to the pattern made by that unmendable shatter 00:38:42.330 --> 00:38:48.000 align:middle line:84% of disjointed rubbish on the lawn, all morning long. 00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:54.150 align:middle line:84% Mothers, fathers, our kind, tell me again 00:38:54.150 --> 00:38:56.640 align:middle line:90% that death doesn't matter. 00:38:56.640 --> 00:38:59.790 align:middle line:84% Tell me it's just a limitation of vision, 00:38:59.790 --> 00:39:04.050 align:middle line:84% a fold of landscape, a deep flax and poppy 00:39:04.050 --> 00:39:09.330 align:middle line:84% filled gully hidden on the hill, a pleat in our perception, 00:39:09.330 --> 00:39:15.270 align:middle line:84% a somersault of existence, natural, even beneficent, 00:39:15.270 --> 00:39:19.980 align:middle line:84% even a gift, the only key to the red-lacquered door 00:39:19.980 --> 00:39:27.150 align:middle line:84% at the end of the hall, water within water, those old stories. 00:39:27.150 --> 00:39:31.710 align:middle line:84% But this time, whatever is said, when it's said, 00:39:31.710 --> 00:39:37.440 align:middle line:84% will have to be more reverent and more rude, more absolute, 00:39:37.440 --> 00:39:42.840 align:middle line:84% more convincing than these five jays who have become the five 00:39:42.840 --> 00:39:47.130 align:middle line:84% wheeling spokes and stays of perfect lament, who, 00:39:47.130 --> 00:39:50.940 align:middle line:84% without knowing anything, have accurately matched the black 00:39:50.940 --> 00:39:55.320 align:middle line:84% beaks and spread shoulders of their bodies to all the shrill, 00:39:55.320 --> 00:40:00.250 align:middle line:84% bird-shaped histories of grief, will have to be demanding 00:40:00.250 --> 00:40:06.850 align:middle line:84% enough, subtle enough, shocking enough, sovereign enough, 00:40:06.850 --> 00:40:12.220 align:middle line:84% right enough to rouse me, to move me from this window where I 00:40:12.220 --> 00:40:17.080 align:middle line:84% have pressed my forehead hard against the unyielding pane, 00:40:17.080 --> 00:40:19.030 align:middle line:90% unyielding all morning long." 00:40:19.030 --> 00:40:25.580 align:middle line:90% 00:40:25.580 --> 00:40:29.410 align:middle line:90% Oh, OK. 00:40:29.410 --> 00:40:33.470 align:middle line:90% I forgot the-- well, OK. 00:40:33.470 --> 00:40:40.160 align:middle line:84% The next poem is "The Dead Never Fight Against Anything." 00:40:40.160 --> 00:40:42.260 align:middle line:90% "It's always been that way. 00:40:42.260 --> 00:40:45.440 align:middle line:84% They've allowed themselves to be placed, knees to chin, 00:40:45.440 --> 00:40:48.620 align:middle line:84% in the corners of caves or in holes in the earth, then covered 00:40:48.620 --> 00:40:51.230 align:middle line:84% with stones; they've let their fingers 00:40:51.230 --> 00:40:55.490 align:middle line:84% be curled around old spears or diadems or favorite dolls, 00:40:55.490 --> 00:40:58.070 align:middle line:90% the stems of cut flowers. 00:40:58.070 --> 00:41:00.380 align:middle line:84% Whether their skulls were cracked open 00:41:00.380 --> 00:41:04.070 align:middle line:84% and their brains eaten by kin or whether their brains were 00:41:04.070 --> 00:41:06.200 align:middle line:84% pulled by tongs through their nostrils 00:41:06.200 --> 00:41:09.410 align:middle line:84% and thrown into the dog's dish as waste 00:41:09.410 --> 00:41:12.435 align:middle line:84% are matters that have never concerned them. 00:41:12.435 --> 00:41:13.852 align:middle line:84% They have never offered resistance 00:41:13.852 --> 00:41:17.060 align:middle line:84% to [AUDIO OUT] tied to rocks below the sea, left 00:41:17.060 --> 00:41:21.440 align:middle line:84% for days and nights until their flesh washed away, or likewise 00:41:21.440 --> 00:41:25.880 align:middle line:84% to being placed high in jungle trees or high on scaffolds 00:41:25.880 --> 00:41:29.780 align:middle line:84% alone in the desert until buzzards, vultures and harpy 00:41:29.780 --> 00:41:32.420 align:middle line:84% eagles stripped their bones bare. 00:41:32.420 --> 00:41:35.300 align:middle line:84% They have never minded jackals nosing 00:41:35.300 --> 00:41:39.770 align:middle line:84% at their haunches, coyotes gnawing at their breasts. 00:41:39.770 --> 00:41:43.940 align:middle line:84% The dead have always been so purely tolerant. 00:41:43.940 --> 00:41:45.710 align:middle line:84% They've let their bones be rubbed 00:41:45.710 --> 00:41:48.620 align:middle line:84% with ointments, ornamented with ochre, 00:41:48.620 --> 00:41:51.710 align:middle line:84% used as kitchen ladles and spoons. 00:41:51.710 --> 00:41:54.560 align:middle line:84% They've been imperturbably indifferent to the removal 00:41:54.560 --> 00:41:58.190 align:middle line:84% of all their entrails, the resulting cavities filled 00:41:58.190 --> 00:42:01.400 align:middle line:90% with palm wine, aromatic spices. 00:42:01.400 --> 00:42:04.670 align:middle line:84% They have lain complacently as their abdomens were infused 00:42:04.670 --> 00:42:06.920 align:middle line:90% by syringe with cedar oil. 00:42:06.920 --> 00:42:10.160 align:middle line:84% They've allowed all seven natural openings of their bodies 00:42:10.160 --> 00:42:12.470 align:middle line:90% to be closed with gold dust. 00:42:12.470 --> 00:42:15.410 align:middle line:84% They've been shrunken and their mouths sewn shut. 00:42:15.410 --> 00:42:17.990 align:middle line:84% They've been wrapped in [INAUDIBLE] bound 00:42:17.990 --> 00:42:22.010 align:middle line:84% upright, facing East, hung above coals and smoked, 00:42:22.010 --> 00:42:27.230 align:middle line:84% their ears stuffed with onions, sent to sea on flaming pyres. 00:42:27.230 --> 00:42:32.330 align:middle line:84% Not one has ever given a single sign of dissent. 00:42:32.330 --> 00:42:35.960 align:middle line:84% Oblivious to abuse, even today, you 00:42:35.960 --> 00:42:40.070 align:middle line:84% can hit them and pinch them and kick them. 00:42:40.070 --> 00:42:43.790 align:middle line:84% You can shake them, scream into their ears. 00:42:43.790 --> 00:42:45.450 align:middle line:90% You can cry. 00:42:45.450 --> 00:42:49.010 align:middle line:84% You can kiss them and whisper and moan, 00:42:49.010 --> 00:42:52.400 align:middle line:84% smooth their combed and parted hair, 00:42:52.400 --> 00:42:55.730 align:middle line:84% touch the lips that yesterday spoke, 00:42:55.730 --> 00:43:00.230 align:middle line:84% beseech, entreat with your finest entreaty. 00:43:00.230 --> 00:43:04.250 align:middle line:84% Still, they stare, without deviation, 00:43:04.250 --> 00:43:07.730 align:middle line:84% straight into distance and direction. 00:43:07.730 --> 00:43:15.590 align:middle line:84% Old stumps, old shameless logs, rigid knurls, snow-faced, 00:43:15.590 --> 00:43:18.430 align:middle line:90% pitiless, pitiless betrayal." 00:43:18.430 --> 00:43:23.750 align:middle line:90% 00:43:23.750 --> 00:43:27.590 align:middle line:84% Actually, it's going to be seven poems because I don't know how I 00:43:27.590 --> 00:43:31.820 align:middle line:84% left this poem out, the "Justification of the Horned 00:43:31.820 --> 00:43:41.050 align:middle line:84% Lizard" poem, because, see, I wrote "The Dead Never Fight 00:43:41.050 --> 00:43:44.900 align:middle line:84% Against Anything" after I wrote "Justification of the Horned 00:43:44.900 --> 00:43:45.400 align:middle line:90% Lizard." 00:43:45.400 --> 00:43:53.610 align:middle line:84% And I realized it was the flip version of that poem, 00:43:53.610 --> 00:43:57.450 align:middle line:84% because the dead don't fight against anything, 00:43:57.450 --> 00:44:00.690 align:middle line:84% and that seems a betrayal of those of us 00:44:00.690 --> 00:44:05.490 align:middle line:84% who are still alive and struggling with things. 00:44:05.490 --> 00:44:08.550 align:middle line:84% And this poem is about the horned lizard. 00:44:08.550 --> 00:44:12.690 align:middle line:84% And probably, everybody here knows about horned lizards, 00:44:12.690 --> 00:44:13.590 align:middle line:90% right? 00:44:13.590 --> 00:44:18.720 align:middle line:84% That their method of defense is to spray blood out of their eyes 00:44:18.720 --> 00:44:21.520 align:middle line:84% at whatever they feel is threatening them. 00:44:21.520 --> 00:44:22.980 align:middle line:90% That's one of their defen-- 00:44:22.980 --> 00:44:26.340 align:middle line:84% then to bury themselves in the sand, right? 00:44:26.340 --> 00:44:27.570 align:middle line:90% Am I right? 00:44:27.570 --> 00:44:28.920 align:middle line:90% And I was going to tell-- 00:44:28.920 --> 00:44:33.420 align:middle line:84% well, I know someone who said that when he was a boy, 00:44:33.420 --> 00:44:35.460 align:middle line:90% one thing he used to do was-- 00:44:35.460 --> 00:44:37.320 align:middle line:90% he lived around the desert-- 00:44:37.320 --> 00:44:41.850 align:middle line:84% was to, when he could catch baby horned lizards-- 00:44:41.850 --> 00:44:43.680 align:middle line:84% and he would put one in his mouth 00:44:43.680 --> 00:44:46.650 align:middle line:84% and then go up to his mother and open his mouth 00:44:46.650 --> 00:44:50.220 align:middle line:84% and stick his tongue out to show her. 00:44:50.220 --> 00:44:53.430 align:middle line:84% So I thought that sounded just like a boy. 00:44:53.430 --> 00:44:57.669 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:44:57.669 --> 00:45:03.030 align:middle line:84% There are only a very few enthnobiologists 00:45:03.030 --> 00:45:07.680 align:middle line:84% and boys who are interested in horned lizards, right? 00:45:07.680 --> 00:45:12.900 align:middle line:84% OK, so this is my poem for desert people. 00:45:12.900 --> 00:45:14.760 align:middle line:84% "Justification of the Horned Lizard." 00:45:14.760 --> 00:45:16.650 align:middle line:84% I hope I don't mispronounce anything. 00:45:16.650 --> 00:45:22.650 align:middle line:84% If I do, I'm sure I'll be told about it after this reading 00:45:22.650 --> 00:45:23.550 align:middle line:90% by someone. 00:45:23.550 --> 00:45:26.010 align:middle line:84% "Justification of the Horned Lizard." 00:45:26.010 --> 00:45:29.680 align:middle line:84% "I don't know why the horned lizard wants to live. 00:45:29.680 --> 00:45:34.920 align:middle line:84% It's so ugly-- short prickly horns and scowling eyes, 00:45:34.920 --> 00:45:40.170 align:middle line:84% lipless smile forced forever by bone, hideous scaly hollow 00:45:40.170 --> 00:45:42.420 align:middle line:90% where its nose should be. 00:45:42.420 --> 00:45:44.250 align:middle line:84% I don't know what the horned lizard 00:45:44.250 --> 00:45:48.480 align:middle line:84% has to live for, skittering over the sun-irritated sand, 00:45:48.480 --> 00:45:51.120 align:middle line:90% scraping the hot dusty brambles. 00:45:51.120 --> 00:45:54.900 align:middle line:84% It never sees anything but gravel and grit, 00:45:54.900 --> 00:45:59.910 align:middle line:84% thorns and stickery insects, the towering creosote bush, 00:45:59.910 --> 00:46:02.970 align:middle line:84% the ocotillo and its whiplike branches, 00:46:02.970 --> 00:46:05.820 align:middle line:84% the severe edges of the Spanish dagger. 00:46:05.820 --> 00:46:12.580 align:middle line:84% Even [AUDIO OUT] in waves in the current by the bank or the blue 00:46:12.580 --> 00:46:15.340 align:middle line:84% [AUDIO OUT] fronds of the water clover. 00:46:15.340 --> 00:46:18.070 align:middle line:84% It will never have a smooth glistening belly 00:46:18.070 --> 00:46:22.510 align:middle line:84% of white like the bullfrog or a dew-heavy trill like a mating 00:46:22.510 --> 00:46:23.620 align:middle line:90% toad. 00:46:23.620 --> 00:46:26.200 align:middle line:84% It will never slip easily through mud 00:46:26.200 --> 00:46:29.170 align:middle line:84% like the skink or squat in the dank humus 00:46:29.170 --> 00:46:32.530 align:middle line:84% at the bottom of a decaying forest in daytime. 00:46:32.530 --> 00:46:35.200 align:middle line:90% It will never be free of dust. 00:46:35.200 --> 00:46:39.700 align:middle line:84% The only drink it will ever know is in the body of a bug. 00:46:39.700 --> 00:46:43.060 align:middle line:84% And the horned lizard possesses nothing noble-- 00:46:43.060 --> 00:46:48.550 align:middle line:84% embarrassing tail, warty hide covered with sharp dirty scales. 00:46:48.550 --> 00:46:52.570 align:middle line:84% No touch to its body, even from its own kind, 00:46:52.570 --> 00:46:56.440 align:middle line:84% could ever be delicate or caressing. 00:46:56.440 --> 00:47:00.640 align:middle line:84% I don't know why the horned lizard wants to live. 00:47:00.640 --> 00:47:02.920 align:middle line:84% Yet threatened, it burrows frantically 00:47:02.920 --> 00:47:06.340 align:middle line:84% into the sand with a surprisingly determined fury 00:47:06.340 --> 00:47:09.310 align:middle line:90% of forehead, limbs and ribs. 00:47:09.310 --> 00:47:12.340 align:middle line:84% Pursued, it even fights for itself, 00:47:12.340 --> 00:47:16.600 align:middle line:84% almost rising up, posturing on its [AUDIO OUT] legs, 00:47:16.600 --> 00:47:21.400 align:middle line:84% propelling blood out of its eyes in tight straight streams shot 00:47:21.400 --> 00:47:25.330 align:middle line:84% directly at the source of its possible extinction. 00:47:25.330 --> 00:47:29.830 align:middle line:84% It fights for itself, almost rising up, 00:47:29.830 --> 00:47:33.820 align:middle line:84% as if the performance of that act, the posture, 00:47:33.820 --> 00:47:36.580 align:middle line:84% the propulsion of the blood itself, 00:47:36.580 --> 00:47:40.750 align:middle line:84% were justification enough and the only reason needed." 00:47:40.750 --> 00:47:45.660 align:middle line:90% 00:47:45.660 --> 00:47:47.850 align:middle line:84% See, to me, that's one of the things that's 00:47:47.850 --> 00:47:51.180 align:middle line:84% so affirming about the natural world, 00:47:51.180 --> 00:47:56.070 align:middle line:84% that there's no question that life is good. 00:47:56.070 --> 00:47:59.490 align:middle line:84% And so you walk out into a landscape. 00:47:59.490 --> 00:48:01.944 align:middle line:90% There's nothing there but yes. 00:48:01.944 --> 00:48:04.830 align:middle line:90% Yes. 00:48:04.830 --> 00:48:05.972 align:middle line:90% Put asphalt over us. 00:48:05.972 --> 00:48:07.680 align:middle line:84% We're going to come up through it anyway, 00:48:07.680 --> 00:48:10.770 align:middle line:90% so that kind of thing. 00:48:10.770 --> 00:48:13.470 align:middle line:84% Anyway, I wrote this also because I'd 00:48:13.470 --> 00:48:16.140 align:middle line:84% been reading a lot of contemporary poems 00:48:16.140 --> 00:48:20.430 align:middle line:84% in which poets were complaining about their-- 00:48:20.430 --> 00:48:23.580 align:middle line:84% and I thought, I don't know any poet that has a life as bad 00:48:23.580 --> 00:48:24.840 align:middle line:90% as the horned lizard, and-- 00:48:24.840 --> 00:48:26.650 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:48:26.650 --> 00:48:31.290 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] the horned lizard seems to think 00:48:31.290 --> 00:48:32.910 align:middle line:90% it's worth fighting for. 00:48:32.910 --> 00:48:34.335 align:middle line:90% So OK. 00:48:34.335 --> 00:48:41.458 align:middle line:90% 00:48:41.458 --> 00:48:45.170 align:middle line:84% It's getting warm in here, isn't it, a little bit? 00:48:45.170 --> 00:48:47.370 align:middle line:90% This is the last poem. 00:48:47.370 --> 00:48:49.620 align:middle line:84% That poem was not about death, obviously. 00:48:49.620 --> 00:48:51.180 align:middle line:90% It was about life. 00:48:51.180 --> 00:48:54.510 align:middle line:84% But this is the last poem about death. 00:48:54.510 --> 00:48:57.990 align:middle line:90% And the title is "Trinity." 00:48:57.990 --> 00:49:03.210 align:middle line:84% "I wish something slow and gentle and good would happen 00:49:03.210 --> 00:49:08.700 align:middle line:84% to me, a patient and prolonged kind of happiness coming 00:49:08.700 --> 00:49:12.870 align:middle line:84% in the same way evening comes to a wide-branched sycamore 00:49:12.870 --> 00:49:18.330 align:middle line:84% standing in an empty field; each branch, not succumbing, 00:49:18.330 --> 00:49:21.300 align:middle line:84% not taken, but feeling its entire exi-- 00:49:21.300 --> 00:49:25.650 align:middle line:84% [AUDIO OUT] a willing revolution of cells; even asleep, 00:49:25.650 --> 00:49:29.280 align:middle line:84% feeling a decision of gold spreading over its ragged bark 00:49:29.280 --> 00:49:33.750 align:middle line:84% and motionless knots of seed, over every naked, vulnerable 00:49:33.750 --> 00:49:40.110 align:middle line:84% juncture; each leaf becoming a lavender shell, a stem-deep line 00:49:40.110 --> 00:49:44.550 align:middle line:84% of violet turning slowly and carefully to possess 00:49:44.550 --> 00:49:50.470 align:middle line:84% exactly the pale and patient color of the sky coming. 00:49:50.470 --> 00:49:56.520 align:middle line:84% I wish something that slow and that patient would come to me, 00:49:56.520 --> 00:50:00.990 align:middle line:84% maybe like the happiness growing when the lover's hand, 00:50:00.990 --> 00:50:05.190 align:middle line:84% easy on the thigh or easy on the breast, 00:50:05.190 --> 00:50:10.800 align:middle line:84% moves like late light moves over the branches of a sycamore, 00:50:10.800 --> 00:50:15.690 align:middle line:84% causing a slow revolution of decision in the body; even 00:50:15.690 --> 00:50:18.960 align:middle line:84% asleep, feeling the spread of hazy coral 00:50:18.960 --> 00:50:21.690 align:middle line:84% and ivory-grey rising through the legs 00:50:21.690 --> 00:50:25.770 align:middle line:84% and spine to alter the belief behind the eyes; 00:50:25.770 --> 00:50:30.360 align:middle line:84% feeling the slow turn of wave after wave of acquiescence 00:50:30.360 --> 00:50:35.160 align:middle line:84% moving from the inner throat to the radiance of a gold belly 00:50:35.160 --> 00:50:41.340 align:middle line:84% to a bone-center of purple; an easy, slow-turning happiness 00:50:41.340 --> 00:50:45.660 align:middle line:84% of possession like that, prolonged. 00:50:45.660 --> 00:50:50.550 align:middle line:84% I wish something that gentle and that careful 00:50:50.550 --> 00:50:54.600 align:middle line:84% and that patient would come to me. 00:50:54.600 --> 00:51:00.810 align:middle line:84% Death might be that way if one knew how to wait for it, 00:51:00.810 --> 00:51:06.525 align:middle line:84% if death came easily and slowly, if death were good." 00:51:06.525 --> 00:51:13.470 align:middle line:90% 00:51:13.470 --> 00:51:13.970 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:51:13.970 --> 00:51:19.640 align:middle line:84% The three last poems I'm going to read are all bedtime poems-- 00:51:19.640 --> 00:51:22.470 align:middle line:90% 00:51:22.470 --> 00:51:23.590 align:middle line:90% put you to sleep. 00:51:23.590 --> 00:51:26.566 align:middle line:90% 00:51:26.566 --> 00:51:28.870 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] is titled "When At Night." 00:51:28.870 --> 00:51:32.250 align:middle line:90% 00:51:32.250 --> 00:51:37.470 align:middle line:84% "Suppose all of you came in the dark, each one, up to my bed 00:51:37.470 --> 00:51:40.890 align:middle line:84% while I was sleeping; suppose one of you 00:51:40.890 --> 00:51:45.090 align:middle line:84% took my hand without waking me and touched my fingers, 00:51:45.090 --> 00:51:47.970 align:middle line:84% moved your lips the length of each one, down 00:51:47.970 --> 00:51:51.060 align:middle line:84% into the crotch with your tongue and up again, 00:51:51.060 --> 00:51:54.600 align:middle line:84% slowly sucking the nipple of each knuckle with your eyes 00:51:54.600 --> 00:52:00.090 align:middle line:84% closed; suppose two of you were at my head, the breath of one 00:52:00.090 --> 00:52:02.580 align:middle line:84% in my ear like a bird/moth thuddering 00:52:02.580 --> 00:52:06.930 align:middle line:84% at a silk screen; the other fully engaged, mouth tasting 00:52:06.930 --> 00:52:10.950 align:middle line:84% of sweet meats and liquors, kissing my mouth; 00:52:10.950 --> 00:52:14.580 align:middle line:84% Suppose another drew the covers down to my feet, 00:52:14.580 --> 00:52:18.990 align:middle line:84% slipped the loops from the buttons, spread my gown, 00:52:18.990 --> 00:52:22.980 align:middle line:84% ministering mouth again around the dark of each breast, 00:52:22.980 --> 00:52:27.240 align:middle line:84% pulling and puckering in the way that water in a stir 00:52:27.240 --> 00:52:32.070 align:middle line:84% pulls and puckers a fallen bellflower into itself; 00:52:32.070 --> 00:52:36.780 align:middle line:84% Two at my shoulders to ease the gown away, take it down 00:52:36.780 --> 00:52:42.550 align:middle line:84% past my waist and hips, over my ankles to the end of the bed; 00:52:42.550 --> 00:52:46.740 align:middle line:84% one of you is made to adore the belly; one of you 00:52:46.740 --> 00:52:50.640 align:middle line:84% is obsessed with dampness; at my bent knees 00:52:50.640 --> 00:52:55.800 align:middle line:84% now, another watching, at my parted thighs, another; 00:52:55.800 --> 00:53:00.450 align:middle line:84% and one to oversee the separation and one to guard 00:53:00.450 --> 00:53:05.010 align:middle line:84% the joining and one to equal my trembling 00:53:05.010 --> 00:53:08.340 align:middle line:90% and one to protect my moaning. 00:53:08.340 --> 00:53:13.980 align:middle line:84% And at dawn, if everything were put in place again, clothing, 00:53:13.980 --> 00:53:17.040 align:middle line:84% feeling, my legs together straight, 00:53:17.040 --> 00:53:20.770 align:middle line:84% the quilt folded and tucked to my chin, 00:53:20.770 --> 00:53:25.950 align:middle line:84% if all of you stepped back away into your places, 00:53:25.950 --> 00:53:29.940 align:middle line:84% into the translucence of glass at the window, 00:53:29.940 --> 00:53:33.930 align:middle line:84% into the ground breezes swelling the grasses, 00:53:33.930 --> 00:53:38.280 align:middle line:84% into the river of insect rubbings below the field 00:53:38.280 --> 00:53:42.990 align:middle line:84% and the light expanding the empty spaces of the elm, 00:53:42.990 --> 00:53:48.000 align:middle line:84% back into the rising black of the hawk deepening the shallow 00:53:48.000 --> 00:53:55.440 align:middle line:84% sky, and we all woke then so much happier than before, well, 00:53:55.440 --> 00:53:58.860 align:middle line:84% there wouldn't be anything wrong in that, would there?" 00:53:58.860 --> 00:54:06.630 align:middle line:90% 00:54:06.630 --> 00:54:08.760 align:middle line:84% See, I have to tell you, that's-- 00:54:08.760 --> 00:54:11.400 align:middle line:90% [CHUCKLING] 00:54:11.400 --> 00:54:20.070 align:middle line:84% In case you think we've just experienced an orgy, the title-- 00:54:20.070 --> 00:54:22.118 align:middle line:84% do you know where the title comes from? 00:54:22.118 --> 00:54:22.785 align:middle line:90% "When At Night"? 00:54:22.785 --> 00:54:24.960 align:middle line:90% 00:54:24.960 --> 00:54:26.430 align:middle line:90% Yes. 00:54:26.430 --> 00:54:34.780 align:middle line:84% So "When at night, I go to bed, 14 angels 'round my head." 00:54:34.780 --> 00:54:39.880 align:middle line:84% So these are all angels, so it's all right. 00:54:39.880 --> 00:54:40.380 align:middle line:90% So-- 00:54:40.380 --> 00:54:51.300 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:54:51.300 --> 00:54:55.890 align:middle line:84% The next poem-- now, you can go to bed with that poem if you 00:54:55.890 --> 00:55:00.090 align:middle line:84% wish, or here's another poem about sleeping, because, see, 00:55:00.090 --> 00:55:03.090 align:middle line:84% I think there's something about sleeping, 00:55:03.090 --> 00:55:07.140 align:middle line:90% or watching someone else sleep-- 00:55:07.140 --> 00:55:09.880 align:middle line:90% it hardly matters what-- 00:55:09.880 --> 00:55:12.330 align:middle line:84% well, I won't say this entirely since we've 00:55:12.330 --> 00:55:15.870 align:middle line:84% had a crime committed recently while someone was asleep. 00:55:15.870 --> 00:55:21.270 align:middle line:84% But typically, the person looks so-- 00:55:21.270 --> 00:55:24.000 align:middle line:90% 00:55:24.000 --> 00:55:28.080 align:middle line:84% I want to say innocent, but that's not the exact word. 00:55:28.080 --> 00:55:34.290 align:middle line:84% It's something we know about life when we see someone asleep. 00:55:34.290 --> 00:55:37.605 align:middle line:84% And this was a poem in which I tried 00:55:37.605 --> 00:55:40.350 align:middle line:90% to [AUDIO OUT] that question. 00:55:40.350 --> 00:55:42.900 align:middle line:84% And I don't know that I did it completely. 00:55:42.900 --> 00:55:46.800 align:middle line:84% But anyway, that was the impetus of the poem. 00:55:46.800 --> 00:55:49.380 align:middle line:90% 00:55:49.380 --> 00:55:51.930 align:middle line:90% "When You Watch Us Sleeping." 00:55:51.930 --> 00:55:55.290 align:middle line:84% "When you see us lying scented in our nightclothes, 00:55:55.290 --> 00:55:57.990 align:middle line:84% the patchwork quilt wadded at our feet, 00:55:57.990 --> 00:56:01.530 align:middle line:84% coverlet kicked aside, when you see us still 00:56:01.530 --> 00:56:03.840 align:middle line:84% at midnight, our bare arms covered 00:56:03.840 --> 00:56:06.180 align:middle line:84% with the moon-shadows of the hemlock 00:56:06.180 --> 00:56:09.540 align:middle line:84% by the window, our hands latent and half-open 00:56:09.540 --> 00:56:11.670 align:middle line:90% on the pillows by our heads; 00:56:11.670 --> 00:56:14.310 align:middle line:84% When you come upon any of us buried 00:56:14.310 --> 00:56:16.740 align:middle line:84% but breathing, close to the earth, 00:56:16.740 --> 00:56:20.430 align:middle line:84% motionless as oak leaves beneath drifts of oak leaves 00:56:20.430 --> 00:56:25.050 align:middle line:84% or curled inside silk body-vases hanging from greasewood 00:56:25.050 --> 00:56:29.100 align:middle line:84% and vetch or sprawled, languid under the broad branches 00:56:29.100 --> 00:56:33.630 align:middle line:84% of a baobab in summer heat, when you hear us humming hoarsely 00:56:33.630 --> 00:56:38.310 align:middle line:84% sometimes, scarcely wheezing, murmuring like white hens 00:56:38.310 --> 00:56:39.630 align:middle line:90% at their roost; 00:56:39.630 --> 00:56:43.980 align:middle line:84% When you watch the [AUDIO OUT] on the banyan, cool and slender 00:56:43.980 --> 00:56:48.000 align:middle line:84% as a pod, the onyx grain of his eye closed deep 00:56:48.000 --> 00:56:53.010 align:middle line:84% in green sunlight, when you can see how he obviously possesses 00:56:53.010 --> 00:56:56.670 align:middle line:84% in his body, even in the slack scaly skin of 00:56:56.670 --> 00:57:01.440 align:middle line:84% rose beneath his jaw, even in the posing net of his ribs, 00:57:01.440 --> 00:57:05.460 align:middle line:84% even in the corpuscle of blood at the tip of his tail, 00:57:05.460 --> 00:57:09.000 align:middle line:84% how he possesses in his body alone all 00:57:09.000 --> 00:57:14.670 align:middle line:84% the power he needs to rise and declare, not merely truth, 00:57:14.670 --> 00:57:16.740 align:middle line:90% but rapture; 00:57:16.740 --> 00:57:20.280 align:middle line:84% The living body asleep, so great a sum of beauty 00:57:20.280 --> 00:57:25.140 align:middle line:84% that a billion zeroes follow it, the eyes sealing the head so 00:57:25.140 --> 00:57:28.260 align:middle line:84% tightly during those moments that the infinity 00:57:28.260 --> 00:57:33.870 align:middle line:84% of possible heavens inside can be clearly perceived by anyone; 00:57:33.870 --> 00:57:39.150 align:middle line:84% When you watch us sleeping, when you see the purest architecture 00:57:39.150 --> 00:57:42.930 align:middle line:84% of the ear, the explicit faith of the knee, 00:57:42.930 --> 00:57:47.410 align:middle line:84% the [AUDIO OUT] guiltless unforgiving adoring sweet 00:57:47.410 --> 00:57:51.930 align:middle line:84% momentary tremble of claim in the breast-- 00:57:51.930 --> 00:57:53.850 align:middle line:90% aren't you sorry? 00:57:53.850 --> 00:57:55.230 align:middle line:90% Don't you love us?" 00:57:55.230 --> 00:58:11.990 align:middle line:90% 00:58:11.990 --> 00:58:16.475 align:middle line:84% The last poem, then, is entitled "Before I Wake." 00:58:16.475 --> 00:58:21.200 align:middle line:84% You may know it's a take-off of the old prayer "Now I Lay Me 00:58:21.200 --> 00:58:21.905 align:middle line:90% Down To Sleep." 00:58:21.905 --> 00:58:25.920 align:middle line:90% 00:58:25.920 --> 00:58:28.830 align:middle line:84% I used to say that-- now I lay me down to sleep. 00:58:28.830 --> 00:58:31.860 align:middle line:90% I pray the Lord my soul to keep. 00:58:31.860 --> 00:58:35.640 align:middle line:84% But I think it's "I pray thee, Lord"-- 00:58:35.640 --> 00:58:38.370 align:middle line:84% T-H-E-E, whether that makes a difference to anybody. 00:58:38.370 --> 00:58:39.300 align:middle line:90% It kind of does. 00:58:39.300 --> 00:58:41.520 align:middle line:90% The rhythm of it changes. 00:58:41.520 --> 00:58:45.600 align:middle line:84% I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep. 00:58:45.600 --> 00:58:47.370 align:middle line:90% "Before I Wake." 00:58:47.370 --> 00:58:50.490 align:middle line:84% "The turning of the marsh marigold coming slowly 00:58:50.490 --> 00:58:53.790 align:middle line:84% into its emergent bloom underwater, the turning 00:58:53.790 --> 00:58:57.240 align:middle line:84% of the coral sands over themselves and over their dunes 00:58:57.240 --> 00:58:59.250 align:middle line:84% and over the scratchings of the scarab 00:58:59.250 --> 00:59:02.640 align:middle line:84% beetles turning over the dung of the desert doe; 00:59:02.640 --> 00:59:05.340 align:middle line:84% the pivoting of the eye of the bluefish turning 00:59:05.340 --> 00:59:08.610 align:middle line:84% inside the drawing light of its multiple school 00:59:08.610 --> 00:59:11.940 align:middle line:84% shifting its constellation in the dark sea; 00:59:11.940 --> 00:59:16.440 align:middle line:84% this is the prayer of sleep in which I lay myself down 00:59:16.440 --> 00:59:18.210 align:middle line:90% to dream. 00:59:18.210 --> 00:59:21.990 align:middle line:84% The quiet enclosed by the burrowing wolf spider dragging 00:59:21.990 --> 00:59:24.900 align:middle line:84% its egg sac to the surface to sun; 00:59:24.900 --> 00:59:28.260 align:middle line:84% the stillness covered by the barren strawberry making 00:59:28.260 --> 00:59:31.890 align:middle line:84% its fleshless seed on the rocky hill; 00:59:31.890 --> 00:59:35.070 align:middle line:84% the study in the desert mushroom knotting itself 00:59:35.070 --> 00:59:39.540 align:middle line:84% in the arid heat; the silence of the fetal sea horses 00:59:39.540 --> 00:59:42.280 align:middle line:84% bound in the pouch of their father; 00:59:42.280 --> 00:59:48.150 align:middle line:84% this is the dream of the soul in which I lay myself down to pray. 00:59:48.150 --> 00:59:49.270 align:middle line:90% And I've asked the out-- 00:59:49.270 --> 00:59:53.160 align:middle line:84% [AUDIO OUT] motion of the hollow web of the elm making leaf, 00:59:53.160 --> 00:59:57.120 align:middle line:84% and I've asked the inward motion of every glinting fin making 00:59:57.120 --> 01:00:01.110 align:middle line:84% the focus of the carp, and I've asked the involution of the egg 01:00:01.110 --> 01:00:06.030 align:middle line:84% buds carried in the dark inside the cowbirds circling overhead, 01:00:06.030 --> 01:00:10.440 align:middle line:84% and I've asked the tight coiling and breaking of light traveling 01:00:10.440 --> 01:00:14.280 align:middle line:84% in the beads of the sawgrass and the net of the sea oats 01:00:14.280 --> 01:00:19.290 align:middle line:84% splitting and binding and splitting again over and over 01:00:19.290 --> 01:00:24.360 align:middle line:84% across the open lands to keep me in this dream tonight through 01:00:24.360 --> 01:00:27.150 align:middle line:90% one prayer more." 01:00:27.150 --> 01:00:27.850 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 01:00:27.850 --> 01:00:29.445 align:middle line:84% You've been a wonderful audience. 01:00:29.445 --> 01:00:32.415 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 01:00:32.415 --> 01:00:50.565 align:middle line:90% 01:00:50.565 --> 01:00:51.940 align:middle line:84% Thank you all for coming tonight, 01:00:51.940 --> 01:00:54.500 align:middle line:84% and join us for a reception in the back. 01:00:54.500 --> 01:00:55.000 align:middle line:90%